Arthur C. Clarke Says 2001 Is 'Real' Party Time
Updated 6:55 AM ET December 27, 2000
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, author of "2001: A Space
Odyssey," urged the world in a New Year message Wednesday to celebrate "the real beginning" of the
new millennium on Jan. 1.
"The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21
century and the Third Millennium," British-born Clarke said in a statement from his home in
Colombo.
"Those who celebrated the twin events a year too soon are also invited to join in the celebrations,"
said Clarke, who has been deluged with requests for media interviews ahead of the New Year.
Clarke felt so strongly about people calling the year 2000 the beginning of the new millennium that
he issued a statement in 1999 to try and correct them.
"Though some people have great difficulty in grasping this... we'll have had only 99 years of this
century by January 1 2000," he said at the time.
EAGER ANTICIPATION
Clarke thanked film director Stanley Kubrick, who made a movie based on "2001 A Space Odyssey,"
for the almost universally acknowledged association between himself and the year 2001.
"Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation (and I like
to think, with far less apprehension)," Clarke said, referring to George Orwell's book "1984," which
was written in the 1940s and predicted a grim, totalitarian world by 1984.
Clarke also made a New Year wish for peace in Sri Lanka, the war-torn country in which he has lived
for more than 30 years.
Clarke, who turned 83 last month, has lived to see many of his predictions come true including a
then controversial theory in 1945 which forecast a world linked by a network of geo-stationary
satellites. |
