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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 1984)
Novelist: Arthur C. Clarke By SHAWN BEHLEN Staff Writer "I spent 10 years thinking it was impossible to write a sequel to "2001," says Arthur C. Clarke, co-writer of "2001" with Stanley Kubrick and writer of the novel "2010." And now he's thinking of a third in the series. "I have agreed in principle to write a third part," he says. "I will wait until I feel like it and wait until the Galileo mission to Jupiter in Aug. '88, when I'll start thinking about the next stage." Clarke says he decided to start the series back up with a definite purpose in mind. "The reason for writing '2010' was to create a self-fulfilling prophecy," he says. "I talked about this at a recent Senate hearing, 'You may not remem ber that the Apollo-Soyuz mis sion was itself directly inspired by a Hollywood movie.' "Frankly, one of my purposes for writing '2010' was to start people thinking seriously again about space exploration." Both "2001" and "2010" have become major motion pictures, of course, and Clarke has had several other novels optioned. He says the two mediums place different restrictions on the story and that he is pleased with the total narrative that has come from both movies and both books. "There are things you can spend time on explaining in a novel that you can't spend time on in a film," he says. "In '2010,' Hyams cut out com pletely the Chinese section, in side Europa, inside Jupiter. That would have been very dif ficult to do of course and made it a billion dollar, thirty hour film, so he was right to make that decision. "But all the spirit, all the feel ing, all the storyline was there. It's amazing how much he got into two hours running time, as it is. I think there was a dull quarter of a second in the third reel, but that was it." Clarke agrees with most viewers of "2010" that it is more accesible to a general audience than "2001." "It's a much more emotional film," he says. "It's a two or three handkerchief movie, which '2001' certainly wasn't." And he thinks the flashback sequences at the beginning of the film make it enjoyable to people who haven't seen its predecessor. "It was very well done," he says. "That put it across very well for the three or four people who haven't seen the original movie." Clarke thinks Director Stan ley Kubrick will be pleased with the sequel to his classic "2001." "The first thing I said to Peter after the screening was, T think Stanley would have been jeal ous.'" Kubrick's film dealt very little with the notion of politics in comparison to the treatment that subject receives in "2010." Clarke says that makes the film timely and in line with the mood of his novel. "Peter has strength in that," he says. "He made it more crit ical, more crucial and I think quite rightly, I must say I had a pretty weird feeling about some of the narrative in the film. That was written a year ago and it's in today's headlines. "One of my friends has coined the phrase aggressive cooperation. We must make them (the Russians) see that it's to their benefit to cooperate. The Russians won't do any thing, because they're suspi cious and paranoid. They've earned their paranoia the hard way. "We've got to build up trust and that's really what this book is about. And the movie."