Typed Letter Signed ('Arthur') from the science-fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke, sendng personal news to Arthur Bourne of the Academic Press Inc., including that he is 'happily retired with theh completion of my last and best novel.

1p., 12mo. Air mail letter on blue paper, addressed to Arthur Bourne, Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd, 24-28 Oval Road, London, NW1 7DX, England. In good condition, lightly aged and creased. Clarke begins by thanking Bourne for his letter, and informing him that he has 'sent a card of thank [sic] to Dr. Allan Cottey'. 'I am now happily retired with the completion of my last and best novel "The Fountains of Paradise" (Playboy January and February - HBJ; Gollancz, January). I expect to be back in England in August to attend the World S. F. Con at Brighton and to wind-up my affairs - after which I hope to do all my "travelling" via INTELSAT.' He informs him that the 'underwater business' (which he conducted with with a Ceylonese partner, Hector Ekanayake, brother of his boyfriend Leslie Ekanayake, who had died in a motorcycle accident in 1977) is 'now very active', but that he has 'little to do with it', although he hopes 'to start some modest diving again'. He ends with the news that Bill Jovanovich of his American publishers Harcourt Brace Jovanovich has 'persuaded me to join the Board of Sea World and perhaps one day I'll go to one of its meetings at San Diego'.