I found some notes about Sir Arthur C. Clarke that I had filed somewhere and didn’t have handy at the time of his unexpected death, so they got left out of the things I wrote about him at the time. So here they are:
* * *
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur wasn’t a religious man in any usual sense — in the instructions he left for his own funeral, he was emphatic that there be no religious aspects to the services. He thought — as is described in The Last Theorem
He wasn’t much of a believer in psionics or any of the other New Age fads of the 20th century, either; he was a hard-headed skeptic who didn’t believe in anything that didn’t provide good evidence of its reality. But bear in mind his famous declaration that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The obvious corollary to that is that some kinds of magic could perhaps represent a previously unknown technology.
You can see traces of that thought in some of the best Clarkes, like Childhood’s End
I’m proud to say that I was the one who rescued Arthur C. Clarke from that particular flimflam. Then and there, in the restaurant that evening, I did the Geller spoon-bending trick before his very eyes.
The Amazing Randi
I hadn’t been smart enough to figure it out for myself, but I was lucky in my choice of neighbors. One of them was my good friend, the former stage magician The Amazing Randi, who had taught me how to do it.
Unfortunately, I can’t teach it to any of you, because I am bound by the stage magician’s creed not to reveal any other magician’s secret tricks. Ah, but you say, how can that be, Fred, since you aren’t a stage magician yourself? Simple, I say. Randi gave me honorary magician status. He couldn’t really avoid that, since one of his best effects was levitating a beautiful girl. The beautiful girl was usually one of my beautiful daughters, Randi not having any of his own, and the muscle-supplying levitator was my muscular son, so I was going to find out his secrets anyway.
Also, Johnny Carson had just had a magician on his show who was able to order his trained dog to go to any specific person in the audience and take from his or her lap any one specific item — pair of gloves, scarf, handbag, whatever — and bring it up to him on stage. Randi couldn’t figure that one out, but I could: I had read an animal psychologist’s piece in, I think, Nature about how to train animals or pre-verbal children to do something like it, and I had clipped the article. I explained it to Randi, so he owed me.
By the way, if any of you happen to pass near the Hotel Chelsea — West 23rd Street near Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, NYC — take a look at the plaques around the entrance. As I remember they have several, including one for Brendan Behan, the Irish author of Borstal Boy, 
Related post:
RAB says:
Yep. It was put up on September 29, 2004…which seems a bit late if you ask me! I don’t have a photo of my own, but here’s the first one I found online:
http://entropybound.blogspot.com/2008/03/arthur-c-clarke-starchild.html
June 8, 2010, 2:43 amKen Houghton says:
There was a petition/campaign for Clarke to get a plaque at the Chelsea several years ago. It was clearly successful; see <a href=\"http://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2008/03/arthur-c-clarke.html\">here</a>.
June 8, 2010, 8:29 amKen Houghton says:
Oops, make that here.
June 8, 2010, 8:29 amJohn H says:
It’s amazing what you can find on the Interwebs: Here is a link to the plaque for Arthur at the Chelsea — http://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2008/03/arthur-c-clarke.html
June 8, 2010, 8:58 amTJIC says:
> Unfortunately, I can’t teach it to any of you
Happily, Google and Youtube exist. It takes about three seconds to find dozens of folks explaining and demonstrating the trick.
June 8, 2010, 9:01 amPatrick Di Justo says:
Yes indeed, there is a brass plaque right near the front door of the Chelsea, stating that Sir Arthur C Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” right there at the Chelsea Hotel.
June 8, 2010, 12:38 pmPatrick Di Justo says:
Here is a picture of the plaque: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinerob/2463338431/
June 8, 2010, 12:39 pmRoss Presser says:
He sure did.
http://famousankles.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/20071026-chelsea-hotel-04-plaque-2.jpg
(Elapsed time from reading your post to finding this image with Google: less than 5 minutes)
June 8, 2010, 4:01 pmBill Higgins-- Beam Jockey says:
\"Well. Arthur did much the same thing and, I believe, rather expected much the same treatment. What I don’t know is whether he got it.\"
He did.
Picture, courtesy of the Famous Ankles blog:
http://famousankles.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/20071026-chelsea-hotel-04-plaque-2.jpg
I quote from the plaque:
SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE
He invented communication satellites in 1945.
His \"Exploration of Space\" (1952) was used by Wernher von Braun to convince President John F. Kennedy to go to the Moon.
and
he wrote \"2001: A Space Odyssey\"
here at the Chelsea Hotel.
[picture of HAL\'s camera lens]
\"I\’m sorry, Dave. I can\’t do that.\"
June 8, 2010, 6:19 pmKarl Johanson says:
I wish you had a video of doing the spoon trick for Clarke. You created the image in my head though, so thank you for that!
June 8, 2010, 8:52 pmBrian says:
As always, a great little story. Thanks!
To return the favor, I’m happy to report that, yes, Arthur C. Clarke is memorialized on the facade of the Chelsea Hotel. It commemorates his work overall, and in particular, the fact that he wrote a goodly portion (or was it the entirety?) of 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying there.
June 8, 2010, 9:32 pmGary Farber says:
“What I don’t know is whether he got it.”
He did, apparently:
June 8, 2010, 11:02 pmBald Guy says:
I have happy memories of reading OMNI magazine in the late 70′s, and enjoying Randi’s attacks on Geller.
June 9, 2010, 12:14 pm