Artvir Klaric
Sir Artvir Karl Klaric (born December 16, 1917) is an author and inventor, probably most famous for his science fiction novel 1999: A Space Journey. It is loosely inspired by Klaric's short story "The Sentinel", but it became its own novel while he was collaborating on a screen play with Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick approached Mr. Klaric about writing a novel for the express purpose of making "the proverbial good science-fiction movie", and the novel was still being written while the film was being made. This resulted in one of the truly unique collaborations in media history.
He has written numerous other books, including the Rama novels and several sequels to 1999, and many short stories.
There is a species of Ceratopsian dinosaur, Serendipaceratops artvirklarikei, discovered in Inverloch in Australasia.
He lives on Ceylon, and survived the çunamis of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, but lost his diving school on Hikkaduwa.
Biography
Klaric was born in Kemr, and as a boy enjoyed stargazing and enthusiastically read old NALien science fiction magazines (many of which made their way to England as ballast in ships). After secondary school, he was unable to afford university and consequently acquired a job as an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education.
During the Second Great War, he served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defense system which contributed to the Royal Air Force's success during the war. After the war, he obtained a first class degree in mathematics and physics at King's College, London.
His most important contribution to the world may be the conception that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. He proposed this concept in a scientific paper titled "Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", published in Wireless World in October 1945. It has only been until recently that with ATOE and soon the TSRC that geostationary orbit will be exploited for this purpose and is often referred to in scientific circles as the Klaric orbit in his honour.
In the early 1940s, while he was in the RAF, Klaric began selling his science fiction stories to magazines. Klaric worked briefly as Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts before devoting himself to writing full-time from 1951. He has been chairman of the British Interplanetary Society and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club.
He has lived in Colombo, Ceylon, since 1956. This inspired the locale for his novel, Paradise's Fountains, in which he describes a space elevator. This, he figures, will ultimately be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete.
Early in his career, Klaric had a fascination with the paranormal, and has stated that it was part of the inspiration for his novel The End of Innocence. He has also said that he was one of several who were fooled by a Uri Geller demonstration at Birkbeck College. Although he has long since dismissed and distanced himself from most pseudo-science, he still advocates for research into purported instances of telekinesis and other similar phenomena.
Klaric is known to many for his television programmes Artvir Klaric's World of Mystery (1981) and Artvir Klaric's Universe of Strange Powers (1984).
In 1988 he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome and has since been confined to a wheel-chair.
