A Futurist in a Hula Skirt

Clarke, who died of a heart attack last week in Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956, thrilled fans with his uncanny predictions and darkly prophetic stories, including " 2001: A Space Odyssey. " He co-wrote his final novel, " The Last Theorem, " with Frederik Pohl, a longtime friend who shared these memories:

Arthur was a celebrity, but he was also a regular cutup on the futurist circuit. We traveled the world together in the 1960s and 1970s, attending conferences and joking about the shape of things to come. Of course, Arthur's jokes had a way of coming true. He had so much confidence in his own ability—some people even called him "Ego Clarke"—that distant predictions didn't scare him. He talked in detail about moon landings and satellite communication before anyone else. In fact, he often joked that his visions were too distant to profit from—"the patent would be expired if I got it now." He was loquacious and intelligent, competitive and solitary, with very few close friends. But he loved to entertain a crowd. One min-ute he'd play the self-serious sage, the next he'd thrown on a hula skirt. During a break from a NASA conference in Georgia, when we were still young and spry, we bicycle-jousted with other colleagues. I pedaled, with Arthur on the handlebars. I don't recall if we won. With friends, he never kept score.

© 2008