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Sir Arthur’s playboy past
Playboy at 50. That's the sale title of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's correspondence with Playboy Editor, A.C. Spectorsky that will be auctioned by Christie's at the Rockefeller Plaza, New York on December 17, Clarke’s 86th birthday.

The correspondence includes 27 typed letters and seven autographed letters, 40 pages in all, written on air letter envelopes and several other internal memos, Spectorsky's responses and related letters from Sir Arthur's agent, mostly carbon copies. The letters are expected to fetch US$ 2,000 to 3,000 when they fall under the gavel.

"I felt flattered," Sir Arthur laughs, when asked for a comment. He has no idea what the letters contained as they were written 40 years ago. Most of them, he says, were short stories and articles with a few editorial suggestions thrown in.

"I knew Spectorsky fairly well and wrote to him on various matters as well as a bit of gossip," he explains. Considered "fascinating and revealing correspondence" by Christie's, the letters show the long and personal relationship that developed between Sir Clarke and his editor at Playboy.

Christie's website mentions that Sir Arthur's early letters discussed his methods of writing as also his accumulated research and novels. In subsequent letters, he is reportedly pushing ideas. Several typed manuscripts with corrections by him, published between 1960 and 1966, are included in the pack.

In one humourous note to Spectorsky, Sir Arthur says, "Just had a brilliant idea. Since the outline of the female form divine (at least its salient attributes) is a fairly simple curve, it can be expressed in a compact mathematical form. Why don't you let some of the local computer boys loose on a few famous profiles, get them to derive the equations…."

One of Sir Arthur's letters acknowledges receipt of all issues of Playboy that were being enjoyed by a large audience in Ceylon. Writing to Hugh Hefner (creator of Playboy) in 1964, he notes, "despite the ban here (in Ceylon) all my Playboys seem to have been arriving safely and are much enjoyed by a very large audience - - though this latter fact is small compensation to you, I'm afraid…. Judging by the stockpile you have, '64 should have about the highest concentration of Clarke yet, and I hope your readers are not satiated."

As for bringing in the magazine to Ceylon despite the ban, Sir Arthur says that he must have written it as a joke. He is not aware if there was a ban. "Maybe I ignored it," he says.

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