DESKTOP ★
MOBILE

Back to galleries

Arthur C Clarke's House, Colombo, February 2024

Arthur C Clarke is a bit of a legend locally. Although he was born in the UK, he lived most of his life in Sri Lanka - first moving to Unawatuna for scuba diving, and then later to Colombo. All of his famous books were written here (e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey; Rendezvous with Rama; Fountains of Paradise). He used his winnings from the Marconi Award (for the idea of geostationary satellites) to start what is now the largest government research lab here, the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies. A lot of the scientists from Sri Lanka were inspired by him, and many worked with him.

His house is few blocks away from ours, and I walked over there yesterday. The security guard rang the bell, and introduced me to the home's two caretakers, Punchibanda and Sumana.

The house is not technically a museum, but (like many things in Sri Lanka) it's been preserved essentially untouched, in this case since ACC died in 2008. The housekeepers walked me through a tour right up to his office, filled with books, VHS tapes, signed photos, and space trinkets. Of the 1000-odd books, Clarke wrote about half himself - certainly some kind of record. Downstairs is a cemetery where his dogs are buried (8 chihuahuas!); his two turtles currently roam in the grass, and a now-huge fish swims laps inside a modest tank.

And of course I loved seeing the cheap Dialog satellite dish bolted onto his roof pointed at the sky. Clarke invented the concept of the geostationary satellite in a JBIS paper in 1945 at age 27... and there it is, exactly as he imagined, the fixed dish not only on his house, but billions of others across the globe.

One personal anecdote: I never met ACC, but I did participate once in a group call with him. It was October 2002, and he was the featured 'remote guest' at a public event at the annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. The intent of the evening was to have a discussion of 'SciFi vs. Reality,' on how the actual 2001 compared to the one in the book. That was the idea. But in truth... the call was 50 minutes of "Sir Arthur, can you hear us? Can you -- what was that? Repeat? You're breaking up..." With the technology of the time, not only were humans not exploring the monolith on Europa, but we could barely place a long-distance call to Sri Lanka.

The house is in a residential area in Colombo. The housekeepers tell me that fans come to visit occasionally... maybe once a week. "Many from Czech. And Germany."

His housekeeper Sumana in Clarke's office.

Every single book on this shelf was written by Arthur C Clarke.

His housekeeper Sumana in the office...

Table of Technology! Clarke's Questar telescope (he wrote about it a lot). An early cell phone. An ancient iMac. And a Sony Aibo = robotic chihuahua.

Nice moonwalk front-page NYT in the background too!

The Questar is pretty famous - he used it for birding and photography as well. I had heard rumors that "ACC's Questar has been sold!" over the years. I don't know the full story, but I was happy to see it apparently still there.

I love the "I Made Contact" pins, which I assumed were a production souvenir from the film. Then I realized that was Carl Sagan's book, not Arthur C Clarke's -- but still...

NASA's "2001 Mars Odyssey" orbiter is still flying as of 2023! NASA got permission from ACC to adopt the name of the book to their spacecraft. I ran NASA's senior review of this mission in 2019 and 2022... the science is still coming, so NASA's keeping it turned on til at least through 2025. It's NASA's oldest operating planetary mission... except the Voyagers, which are now classified as heliophysics missions, and win by another 25 years.

Well, how appropriate that Clarke has at least one Space Pen on his shelf!

Hah! Looks to me like Arthur C Clarke never returned his Blockbuster VHS copy of... "The Death of HAL." This is awesome. Hopefully they won't see this and come after him.

The housekeepers didn't speak much English, so I don't know what the photos are, but I love them.

Photo with Neil Armstrong (ACC is on the left).

Chihuahua xing!

In the hallway right next to the invitatiion to dinner at the White House, is this certificate from Salaka Colour and the Otter Aquatic Club. Which is still around, so ACC's effort was well-placed!

"I Love my KAYPRO"! Bumper sticker referring to one of the first 'luggable' computers. It had a keyboard and a tiny screen in a suitcase-sized box, c. 1980.

And note the HAL logo, in the style of the IBM logo. This is a reference to the (apparently coincidental?) fact that if you take the letters in IBM and advance them one letter each, you get IBM.

I like the portrait inside with ACC, a satellite dish, and a chihuahua.

"The fish is very old now. Very large, many many years."

The satellite dish on ACC's roof looks totally unremarkable... which is the whole point. Clarke didn't invent the idea of a communications satellite. But he did come up with the idea of a geostationary satellite -- that is, an orbit where the satellite appears fixed in the sky, so that a cheap dish can be bolted into place, with no motors or tracking, and keep in communication. He published this idea in 1945, 12 years before Sputnik became the first human-made satellite, and 19 years before the first satellite in geostationary orbit (Syncom 3, which transmitted the 1964 Olympics from Japan).

Burial plot in the yard for his chihuahuas, including Laika, Sputnik, Rex, and Pepsi.

Burial plot for eight chihuahuas! A couple of friends of mine met Pepsi.

Arthur C Clarke's pair of turtles still own the yard.

Return to list of galleries

Henry Throop

Last modified 03 Mar 2024