| | COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Dec. 27) - Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, | author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," urged the world in a New Year message | Wednesday to celebrate "the real beginning" of the new millennium on Jan. 1. | "The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real | beginning of the 21 century and the Third Millennium," British-born Clarke | said in a statement from his home in Colombo. | | "Those who celebrated the twin events a year too soon are also invited to | join in the celebrations," said Clarke, who has been deluged with requests | for media interviews ahead of the New Year. | | 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. | | Clarke thanked film director 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)," Clarke said, | referring to George Orwell's book "1984," which was written in the 1940s and | predicted a grim, totalitarian world by 1984. | 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. | | Clarke, who turned 83 last month, has lived to see many of his predictions | come true including a then controversial theory in 1945 which forecast a | world linked by a network of geo-stationary satellites. | Reuters | --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.225 / Virus Database: 107 - Release Date: 22/12/00