PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED INTERVIEW WITH ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Arthur C. Clarke looks back on the lifetime of influences that led him to become a science-fiction Grand Master. Story by George Zebrowski writing in SciFi Weekly this week.

Arthur C. Clarke happily recalls that "at the age of 12 I saw my first science-fiction magazine, the November 1928 Amazing Stories."The cover is in front of me at the moment—and it really is amazing, for a reason which neither Hugo Gernsback nor artist Frank Paul could ever have guessed.

"A spaceship looking like a farm silo with picture windows is disgorging its exuberant passengers onto a tropical beach, above which floats the orange ball of Jupiter, filling half the sky. The foreground is, alas, improbable, because the temperature of the Jovian satellites is around minus 150 centigrade. But the giant planet is painted with such stunning accuracy that one could use the cover to make a very good case for precognition; Paul has shown turbulent cloud formations, cyclonic patterns and enigmatic white structures like earth-sized amoebae which were not revealed until the Voyager missions over 50 years later. How did he know?"

Arthue C. Clarke afficianados should read the read the full interview at the online SciFi.com site.