Ever since seeing Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope at the impressionable age of twelve, Jeroen Lapré has been inspired by science fiction. His favorite science fiction authors include Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, and Larry Niven.
    Jeroen's passion for science fiction has influenced his career and is a large reason why he has been employed for the last  sixteen years as a digital artist. Jeroen feels very fortunate to have worked on the Star Wars prequels and Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence, and look forward to the opportunity to work on Star Wars Episode 3.
    In the year 2000, Jeroen was fortunate to befriend a computer scientist by the name of Jay Trimble. They lived in the same town and met in a local cafe. Jeroen was very excited to learn that Jay works at NASA Ames, in Mountain view. Jay is currently working on the Mars Exploration Rover mission. Their goal is to land two new rovers on Mars in 2004.
    Jeroen and Jay share a mutual respect for each other's field of work. Jay always enjoys seeing the movies that Jeroen works on, and they have long discussions on science fiction and the entertainment industry. Jeroen is always excited when Jay invites him to NASA Ames for tours and conferences. Recently Mr Lapré was invited to Contact 2003, a conference on the search for life in the Universe.
    By extraordinary coincidence, Jay knows Arthur C. Clarke! They had collaborated on space science educational projects in the past. Jay introduced Jeroen to Arthur C. Clarke on January 2001, via email.
    Arthur C. Clarke turned out to be very enthusiastic corresponding with someone whom had worked on the Star Wars prequels. In fact a few of the actors from Star Wars have visited him in Sri Lanka, including Harrison Ford, and Carry Fischer.
    In his correspondence Jeroen refers to Dr Clarke as “Sir Arthur”, as he received an OBE from the Queen of England in the 1990s.
    He asked Sir Arthur, “of all the novels and short stories, you have written, what scenes would you like most to see visualised?” He replied with a list of three, one of which was from the chapter Room with a View from 3001: The Final Odyssey.
    Jeroen rendered an image based on the descriptions in this chapter, then emailed it to him on Christmas Day, 2001. (Clarke fans will appreciate the date). Dr Clarke liked the illustration, and they have been corresponding on a regular basis ever since.
    Jeroen realised that we had a unique relationship and  a unique opportunity as a digital artist. He wanted to produce and direct a digital film short, based on one of Arthur C. Clarke's short science fiction stories.
    With this in mind, Jeroen started re-reading his short stories, chronologically backwards, for a title that fitted the following criteria;

Compelling concept(s).

Minimum number of characters

Minimum number of locations/sets.

Minimum number of props.

    The hope is these constraints will maximise the chances of the project being completed.
He found the perfect short story that met all of the above: Maelstrom II. Maelstrom II was first published in Playboy in 1963, then collected in The Wind from the Sun, then most recently in The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.
    Jeroen summoned up the courage to approach Sir Arthur with this idea. Dr Clarke was delighted and immediately put Jeroen in touch with his literary representative, Russell Galen. They negotiated over several months and came to an option/purchase agreement for the limited short movie rights to Maelstrom II.
    Jay then put Jeroen in touch with “Moon Experts” at NASA Ames. In the tradition of Stanley Kubrick, Jeroen want this movie to be as technically accurate as possible. Kubrick had hired scientists from NASA to consult on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    Lisa Chu-Thielbar, who worked on the Lunar Prospector Mission is very excited about this project and has been very helpful. Lisa, in turn introduced Roger Arno, resident NASA artist, and Ken Galal, an astrophysics trajectory expert.
    Jeroen had many questions for them, including space suit design, mass driver design, how humanity would colonise the moon, and build a space faring infrastructure between the Earth, Moon and other planets in the solar system. Jeroen's goal was to build, as plausible as possible, a near future space colonisation scenario.
    This would serve as a background onto which he would develop his screenplay. Not all of the information would be spelled out to the audience. However, it will influence the overall look and feel of the movie, hopefully adding an extra layer of believability.
    Jay, Lisa, Roger, and Ken have been invaluable in answering his questions and providing feedback on the screenplay and illustrations.
    Since unclassified documentation and science data from NASA is public domain, Jeroen intends to include supplemental material on the DVD release of Maelstrom II. This way, school teachers could use the DVD in the science class room. The students would first view the movie, then go through the supplemental NASA material for a more complete space science experience.