The real beginning of the new millennium

COLOMBO, DEC. 28. The science fiction writer, Mr. Arthur C. Clarke, author of ``2001: A Space Odyssey'', has urged the world to celebrate ``the real beginning'' of the new millennium on Jan. 1.

``The intelligent minority of this world will mark January 1, 2001, as the real beginning of the 21 Century and the third millennium,'' the British-born writer said in a statement from his home in Colombo on Wednesday. ``Those who celebrated the twin events a year too soon are also invited to join in the celebrations,'' said Mr. Clarke, who has been deluged with requests for media interviews ahead of the new year.

Mr. Clarke felt so strongly about people calling the year 2000 the beginning of the new millennium that he issued a statement in 1999 to try and correct them. ``Though some people have great difficulty in grasping this... We'll have had only 99 years of this century by January 1, 2000,'' he said at the time. Mr. Clarke thanked the film director, Mr. Stanley Kubrick, who made a movie based on ``2001: A Space Odyssey'', for the almost universally acknowledged association between himself and the year 2001.

``Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation (and I like to think, with far less apprehension),'' Mr. Clarke said, referring to George Orwell's book ``1984'', which was written in the 1940's and predicted a grim, totalitarian world by 1984.

Mr. Clarke also made a new year wish for peace in Sri Lanka, the war-torn country in which he has lived for more than 30 years. Mr. Clarke, who turned 83 last month, has lived to see many of his predictions come true, including a then theory in 1945 which forecast a world linked by a network of geo- stationary satellites.

- Reuters

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Section  : International
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