Dear Arthur, what do you think?”: The Kubrick-Clarke collaboration in their correspondence from the Smithsonian and London Archives

From their fruitful four-years partnership on one of the watershed in the history of movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1964-68) to the unsuccessful effort –in the early 90’s– of developing a story based on Brian Aldiss’s short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long (eventually brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg as A.I.: Artificial Intelligence), Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke enjoyed a long friendship that lasted until their deaths, and that has been described as a “successful cerebral marriage”; the two constantly stimulated one another with a flow of ideas and challenges, ever since the first letter written by the director on March 31, 1964, where he mentioned his intention to work with the writer on the “the proverbial ‘really good’ science-fiction movie”.Usually discussed only through the lenses of Clarke’s published memoirs about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the relationship between the writer and the director has often been described as difficult or conflicted, true to the usual narrative about Kubrick the “dictatorial genius”. By making use of the correspondence held in the Kubrick Archive and in the recently opened Arthur C. Clarke Collection in the Smithsonian Museum in Virginia, I will shed some new light on their collaboration on 2001, using as case histories the key points in the evolution of the plot and the issue over the publication of the book. I will also cover their (so far) largely ignored collaboration in the development of Supertoys to compare the two experiences and see if their attitudes, interests and working methods changed over time.