Yesterday a few of us got the opportunity to go visit Sir Arthur C Clarke at his home in Colombo. He just recently had cataract surgery, and so didn’t want a lot of flash photos taken. Several pictures were taken with Ken’s camera, and hopefully I’ll have them soon.

Sir Arthur is still a great presence in the room. Knowing that one is in the same room with the guy that wrote Rama was pretty amazing.

His home is full of the awards and collections of a full life. There were signed photos from the crew of various spacecraft, as well as various movie spacecraft crews. And the original geosync paper was there in a frame.

Danese sent some photos, which she had taken last year, for me to give to Sir Arthur. I had them on my ApacheCon US ’05 flash drive. The guy that handles the computers there wasn’t in, and so I ended up leaving my flash drive with him. So Arthur C Clarke now has an ApacheCon flash drive, which is kinda cool. I wish we’d taken an ApacheCon T-Shirt to him as well.

I’ve now met two of the authors whose work I most admire – Arthur C Clarke and Douglas Adams. And having seen a little of Sri Lanka, I can understand why someone would choose to live here. It is certainly very beautiful. Sir Arthur is evidently held in very high regard by the people here.