# - Clarke, Arthur C.

in blue ink with substantial revisions throughout, lined paper, punch holes, 6 pages, small folio, 29 September 1979; with a photocopy  typescript of the final version of the piece with an autograph subscription to the title page ("Xerox of final copy typed by myself | Arthur C Clarke | 28 June 81"), 5 pages; together with an autograph note signed ("...This is the original MS of a movie outline, handwritten only because I did not have access to a typewriter at the time. It is the only handwritten piece of any length I've done for many years..."), 1 page, headed stationery, 28 June 1981; and related material (14)

Clarke's original short story 'The Songs of Distant Earth' appeared in 1958, and was expanded into a novel published in 1986. This movie outline was published in Omni magazine in September 1981 but no film was ever produced.  

"...They enter the hibernaculum. At its portal stands one of the greatest works of art ever produced by mankind – the golden mask of the young Pharoah Tutankhamen, one of the last treasures saved from Earth. Now it guards the sleeping, as once it guarded the dead..."