This was never so evident as in the year that began with the TV quiz scandals, progressed with “payola” and “public images,” and included the launchings of the “Echo” and “Courier” satellites, advance scouts of moon-relayed worldwide no-fail radio, telephone and television communication.
No one is better qualified than Arthur Clarke to write about the possibilities inherent in the Echo program: world-traveler, cosmopolite, and lecturer of note. Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and past President of the British Interplanetary Society, Mr. Clarke is the very model of a modern major science-fictionist. In addition to a quantity of superior fiction (see Harcourt Brace’s 1959 omnibus collection, Across the Sea of Stars), he has written both technical and popular books on space flight, at least one vividly descriptive book on skin diving in Australian coral reefs, and any number of short articles. Between lecture seasons, space conferences, underwater explorations, and appearances before House Investigations Committees, he makes his home, in Ceylon.
My name is Arthur C. Clarke, and I wish I had no connection with the whole sordid business, but as the moral— repeat, moral—integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aid of the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of western civilization.
Back in 1945, while a radar officer in the Royal Air Force, I had the only original idea of my life. Twelve years before the first Sputnik started beeping, it occurred to me that an artificial satellite would be a wonderful place for a television transmitter, since a station several thousand miles in altitude could broadcast to half the globe. I wrote up the idea the week after Hiroshima, proposing a network of relay satellites 22,000 miles above the equator; at this height, they’d take exactly one day to complete a revolution, and so would remain fixed over the same spot on the Earth.
The piece appeared in the October 1945 issue of Wireless World; not expecting that celestial mechanics would be commercialized in my lifetime, I made no attempt to patent the idea, and doubt if I could have done so anyway. (If I’m wrong, I’d prefer not to know.) But I kept plugging it in my books, and today the idea of communication satellites is so commonplace that no one knows its origin.
I did make a plaintive attempt to put the record straight when approached by the House of Representatives Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; you’ll find my evidence on page 32 of its report, The Next Ten Years in Space. And as you’ll see in a moment, my concluding words had an irony I never appreciated at the time: “Living as I do in the Far East, I am constantly reminded of the struggle between the western world and the U.S.S.R. for the uncommitted millions of Asia...When line-of-sight TV transmissions become possible from satellites directly overhead, the propaganda effect may be decisive....”
I still stand by those words, but there were angles I hadn’t thought of—and which, unfortunately, other people have.
It all began during one of those official receptions which are such a feature of social life in eastern capitals. They’re even more common in the west, of course, but in Colombo there’s little competing entertainment. At least once a week, if you are anybody, you get an invitation to cocktails at an embassy or legation, the British Council, the U.S. Operations Mission, L’Alliance Française, or one of the countless alphabetical agencies the UN has begotten.
At first, being more at home beneath the Indian Ocean than in diplomatic circles, my partner and I were nobodies and were left alone. But after Mike godfathered Dave Brubeck’s tour of Ceylon, people started to take notice of us— still more so when he married one of the island’s best-known beauties. So now our consumption of cocktails and canapés is limited chiefly by reluctance to abandon our comfortable sarongs for such western absurdities as trousers, dinner jackets and ties.
It was the first time we’d been to the Soviet Embassy, which was throwing a party for a group of Russian oceanographers who’d just come into port. Beneath the inevitable paintings of Lenin and Stalin, a couple of hundred guests of all colors, religions and languages were milling around, chatting with friends, or single-mindedly demolishing the vodka and caviar. I’d been separated from Mike and Elizabeth, but could see them at the other side of the room. Mike was doing his “There was I at fifty fathoms” bit to a fascinated audience, while Elizabeth watched him quizzically, and more people watched Elizabeth.
Ever since I lost an eardrum while pearl diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I’ve been at a considerable disadvantage at functions of this kind; the surface noise is about 6 db too much for me to cope with. And this is no small handicap, when being introduced to people with names like Dharmasirawardene, Tissaverasinghe, Goonetilleke and Jayawickrame. When I’m not raiding the buffet, therefore, I usually look for a pool of relative quiet where there’s a chance of following more than fifty percent of any conversation in which I may get involved. I was standing in the acoustic shadow of a large ornamental pillar, surveying the scene in my detached or Somerset Maugham manner, when I noticed that someone was looking at me with that “Haven’t we met before?” expression.
I’ll describe him with some care, because there must be many people who can identify him. He was in the mid-thirties, and I guessed he was American; he had that well-scrubbed, crew-cut, man-about-Rockefeller-Center look that used to be a hallmark until the younger Russian diplomats and technical advisers started imitating it so successfully. He was about six feet in height, with shrewd brown eyes and black hair, prematurely gray at the sides. Though I was fairly certain we’d never met before, his face reminded me of someone. It took me a couple of days to work it out: remember John Garfield? That’s who it was, as near as makes no difference.
When a stranger catches my eye at a party, my standard operating procedure goes into action automatically. If he seems a pleasant enough person, but I don’t feel like introductions at the moment, I give him the Neutral Scan, letting my eyes sweep past him without a flicker of recognition, yet without positive unfriendliness. If he looks a creep, he receives the coup d’oeil, which consists of a long, disbelieving stare followed by an unhurried view of the back of my neck; in extreme cases, an expression of revulsion may be switched on for a few milliseconds. The message usually gets across.
But this character seemed interesting, and I was getting bored, so I gave him the Affable Nod. A few minutes later he drifted through the crowd and I aimed my good ear toward him.
“Hello,” he said (yes, he was American), “my name’s Gene Hartford. I’m sure we’ve met somewhere.”
“Quite likely,” I answered, “I’ve spent a good deal of time in the States. I’m Arthur Clarke.”
Usually that produces a blank stare, but sometimes it doesn’t. I could almost see the IBM cards flickering behind those hard brown eyes, and was flattered by the brevity of his access time.
“The science writer?”
“Correct.”
“Well, this is fantastic.” He seemed genuinely astonished. “Now I know where I’ve seen you. I was in the studio once, when you were on the Dave Garroway show.”
(This lead may be worth following up, though I doubt it; and I’m sure that “Gene Hartford” was phony—it was too smoothly synthetic.)