Courtesy of Dennis Gilliam
In 1992 an event was held in Arthur C. Clarke's hometown of Minehead in the West Country of England to celebrate his achievements. An exhibition was organised which featured artworks, models and Scifi memorabilia related to his works over the years.
Piers Bizony and Simon Atkinson were at that time attempting to get their book project '2001: filming the future' off the ground and were invited by Fred Clarke (ACC's brother and event organiser) to set up a display to promote the book. Some funding was obtained from the 3M company.
Simon and Piers were thrilled to be joined by 2001:a space odyssey Production Designer Harry Lange who provided several of his original artworks and photographs from his collection. A great deal of help and support came from US Aerospace Engineer and 2001 memorabilia collector Dennis Gilliam who travelled at his own expense from California in order that the display include the original helmet worn by Keir Dullea as astronaut Dave Bowman.
During the evening a special showing of 2001: a space odyssey was arranged to be followed by a Q&A session which featured Arthur C.Clarke, Gentry Lee,Heather Couper and Harry lange amongst others.
Special thanks to Mat Irvine & Dennis Gilliam for the use of their original photographs in this section - please note that these are copyright and must not be copied without permission of the copyright holders.
The setting for the event were these group of buildings tucked away in a sidestreet of Minehead. (Photograph courtesy of Dennis Gilliam)
In a room specially constructed to recreate Arthu C. Clarke's writing room Simon & Piers presented him with an early rendering of the EVA Pod produced by Simon prior to the final artworks seen in the final book. More information and detail on this illustration can be seen here
Photograph courtesy of Mat Irvine
Friend and co-author on the RAMA series of books Gentry Lee presenting an original artwork to Arthur C. Clarke (Photograph by Simon Atkinson)