Arthur C. Clarke Trivia
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60 free Arthur C. Clarke trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Arthur C. Clarke trivia for science fiction readers, space nerds and anyone who has ever quoted the line about advanced technology and magic. The quiz covers the whole of Clarke's life: the Somerset farm boy who joined the British Interplanetary Society as a teenager, the RAF radar officer, the 1945 Wireless World paper that gave the geostationary orbit its nickname, and the move to Ceylon in 1956 for the diving. The books get proper attention - Childhood's End and the Overlords, the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick, HAL and the Discovery, Rendezvous with Rama and its awards sweep, The Fountains of Paradise and the space elevator, and the two lesser-known Odyssey sequels. There are also questions on the three laws, the Clarke-Asimov Treaty, his television series on mysteries, the CBS Apollo 11 broadcast, the knighthood, and the gamma-ray burst that arrived hours before he died. Expect a spread from easy to genuinely obscure. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1968 film did Arthur C. Clarke co-write with its director, Stanley Kubrick?
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in April 1968, months before Clarke's novel appeared in July, which he felt made the book look like a mere novelisation of Kubrick's film.
Q 02In which country did Arthur C. Clarke live from 1956 until his death in 2008?
Sri Lanka
Clarke moved to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, in 1956 to pursue scuba diving, and in 2005 received Sri Lankabhimanya, the island's highest civil honour.
Q 03Along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, Clarke was one of science fiction's so-called what?
Big Three
Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein were dubbed the Big Three of science fiction; under the 'Clarke-Asimov Treaty', each would call Clarke the better SF writer and Asimov the better science writer.
Q 04Complete Clarke's third law: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from...' what?
Magic
Clarke's third law ends 'indistinguishable from magic'; he set it down in the 1973 revision of his essay 'Hazards of Prophecy' and quipped that three laws were good enough for Newton, so he would stop there.
Q 05Clarke's 1945 paper proposed satellites in which orbit as ideal telecommunications relays?
Geostationary
Clarke's October 1945 paper argued that three satellites in geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km above the equator, could relay signals worldwide; the orbit is often called the Clarke Orbit.
Q 06In which magazine did Clarke's 1945 satellite paper 'Extra-Terrestrial Relays' appear?
Wireless World
Wireless World printed 'Extra-Terrestrial Relays' in October 1945; asked why he never patented the idea, Clarke liked to say a patent is 'really a licence to be sued'.
Q 07In which English county was Clarke born, in the seaside town of Minehead?
Somerset
Minehead is in Somerset; Clarke grew up on a farm at Bishops Lydeard, stargazing and collecting fossils, and attended Huish's Grammar School in Taunton.
Q 08During the Second World War, Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a specialist in what?
Radar
Clarke was an RAF radar specialist, working mostly on ground-controlled approach, the radar landing system that later proved vital in the Berlin Airlift; he turned it into his only non-SF novel, Glide Path.
Q 09Which organisation, devoted to space travel, did Clarke join as a teenager in 1934 and later chair twice?
The British Interplanetary Society
Clarke joined the British Interplanetary Society in 1934, the year after its founding, and chaired it in 1946-47 and 1951-53; he first circulated his satellite idea among its members.
Q 10Which 1948 short story, rejected by a BBC competition, became the seed of Clarke and Kubrick's 1968 film?
The Sentinel
'The Sentinel', written in 1948 for a BBC contest that rejected it, gave Kubrick and Clarke their starting point when they met in New York in 1964; they wrote the novel first to let their imaginations run.
Q 11In the novel version of the 1968 Kubrick film, the Discovery's mission is to which planet?
Saturn
In the novel Discovery is bound for Saturn; Kubrick switched the film to Jupiter because convincing rings could not be built, and Clarke followed the film's Jupiter in his sequels.
Q 12In the 2001 novel, on which moon does Bowman find the second, much larger monolith?
Iapetus
Bowman finds the larger monolith on Iapetus (spelled Japetus in the book); in 2007 Clarke recorded a greeting for Cassini's close flyby of Iapetus, months before he died.
Q 13What does 'TMA-1', the designation of the monolith dug up on the Moon in 2001, stand for?
Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One
Q 21As Rama nears the Sun, which planet's government fires a nuclear missile at the alien ship?
Mercury
The Hermians, Mercury's colonists, launch a nuclear missile at Rama; Lieutenant Boris Rodrigo, a devout Cosmo Christer, spacewalks out and disarms it while exploiting the radio lag to its controllers.
Q 22In Childhood's End, what are the mysterious aliens who take peaceful control of Earth called?
The Overlords
The Overlords rule Earth benevolently from their ships for decades before revealing themselves, and they look like the traditional Christian image of demons: horns, leathery wings and barbed tails.
Q 23In Childhood's End, who is the alien Supervisor for Earth who meets the UN Secretary-General?
Karellen
TMA-1 stands for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One, found buried in the crater Tycho; its sides are in the exact ratio 1:4:9 and it screams a radio burst when sunlight first strikes it.
Q 14What is the man-ape whose tribe meets the monolith at the start of the 2001 novel called?
Moon-Watcher
His rival, the leader of 'the Others', is One-Ear; the monolith teaches Moon-Watcher's tribe to use tools and kill for meat.
Q 15Which of Clarke's sequels to 2001 was made into a 1984 film directed by Peter Hyams?
2010: Odyssey Two
2010: Odyssey Two (1982) became Peter Hyams's film 2010 in 1984; a Time cover seen in the film shows Clarke as the US President and Kubrick as the Soviet Premier.
Q 16Clarke's 2061: Odyssey Three involves a visit to which celestial object on its next inner Solar System pass?
Halley's Comet
2061: Odyssey Three (1987) sends Heywood Floyd to land on Halley's Comet during its 2061 return; a second ship crash-lands on Europa, where native life is developing under the Monolith's protection.
Q 17In 3001: The Final Odyssey, whose freeze-dried body is found beyond Neptune and revived?
Frank Poole
Frank Poole, the astronaut HAL cast adrift during a spacewalk in 2001, is found frozen beyond Neptune in 3001 and revived a thousand years on.
Q 18Which 1973 Clarke novel about a giant alien cylinder swept the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards?
Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama (1973) won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and British SF awards; in the book, astronomers name the cylinder Rama because Greek and Roman mythology had long been used up and they had moved on to the Hindu pantheon.
Q 19What do the explorers of Rama name the frozen band of water dividing the alien ship's interior?
The Cylindrical Sea
The Cylindrical Sea, a frozen band ringing Rama's interior that thaws as the ship nears the Sun, holds a central island the explorers dub New York for its skyscraper-like structures.
Q 20What do the crew exploring the alien ship Rama call the part-biological, part-robotic creatures inside?
Biots
The crew call them biots, short for biological robots; Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst dissects a dead three-legged, three-eyed 'spider' and finds it part creature, part machine.
Karellen, the alien Supervisor for Earth, deals only with Secretary-General Rikki Stormgren at first; his race serves the Overmind, a cosmic intelligence into which humanity's children finally merge.
Q 24Which 1950 short story did Clarke expand into the first part of Childhood's End?
Guardian Angel
'Guardian Angel', published in 1950, became the opening section of Childhood's End (1953); the novel sold out its first printing and was adapted by Syfy as a 2015 miniseries.
Q 25What kind of megastructure is built in Clarke's novel The Fountains of Paradise?
A space elevator
The Fountains of Paradise (1979) builds a space elevator, which Clarke called an 'orbital tower' and thought might one day rank with his satellite idea; the novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Q 26Sri Kanda in Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise is a thinly veiled version of which real Sri Lankan mountain?
Adam's Peak
Sri Kanda stands in for Adam's Peak (Sri Pada), the island's conical sacred mountain with a footprint-shaped hollow at its summit revered by several faiths, which Clarke moved south toward the equator for the story.
Q 27What underwater discovery did Clarke and Mike Wilson make off Trincomalee in 1956?
The ruins of the original Koneswaram Temple
Diving off Swami Rock in 1956, Clarke and Mike Wilson found the ruins of the original Koneswaram Temple, razed by the Portuguese in 1622, including carved columns; Clarke described the find in The Reefs of Taprobane (1957).
Q 28The wreck Mike Wilson found off Great Basses Reef in 1961 belonged to which ruler?
The Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb
The Great Basses wreck carried fused bags of silver rupees struck at Surat in 1702 for the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb; Clarke told the story in The Treasure of the Great Reef (1964).
Q 29Which 1951 Clarke book did Wernher von Braun reportedly use to convince Kennedy a Moon landing was possible?
The Exploration of Space
The Exploration of Space (1951) won the International Fantasy Award for non-fiction in 1952; von Braun reportedly used it to persuade President Kennedy that a Moon landing was feasible.
Q 30For which US network did Clarke commentate on the Apollo 11 Moon landing on 20 July 1969?
CBS
Clarke joined Walter Cronkite and astronaut Wally Schirra on CBS for the Apollo 11 landing; the fame of 2001 was such that Apollo 13's command module was later named Odyssey.