The Juno space probe is now in orbit around Jupiter, meaning space buffs around the world are eagerly awaiting whatever new data the probe sends back. One of those space buffs is science fiction author Stephen Baxter, who recently collaborated with Alastair Reynolds on the novel The Medusa Chronicles. The book is an authorized sequel to Arthur C. Clarke’s famous 1971 novella “A Meeting with Medusa,” about an astronaut who discovers intelligent life on Jupiter.

“All this comes from Carl Sagan, the great astronomer, who hypothesized that somewhere in Jupiter’s deep cloud layers … you could have a great ocean, a gaseous ocean, where gigantic creatures could live,” Baxter says in Episode 211 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Baxter is well-positioned to carry on Clarke’s legacy, having collaborated with Clarke on four novels, a process that was sometimes complicated by the fact that the two men lived on different continents.

“He lived in Sri Lanka, of course, so there was a big time difference, and plus he was in his eighties when we were working together,” Baxter says. “He’d be awake at three in the morning and he’d want to work on something, and sometimes he’d call at ungodly hours.”

“A Meeting with Medusa” imagines human exploration of Jupiter in 2099. That may have seemed reasonable back in 1971, but these days it’s looking pretty unlikely. For The Medusa Chronicles, Baxter and Reynolds were obliged to invent an alternate timeline to justify the dates in Clarke’s original story. Still, Baxter says that Clarke wouldn’t be too disappointed that we haven’t lived up to his predictions.

“I spoke to Clarke a lot about this, actually,” Baxter says. “I asked him whether he was disappointed that the kind of alternate future that we describe in Medusa didn’t come about, with missions to Jupiter by the end of the century and so on. And he said no, he wasn’t disappointed at all. He said that, realistically, when he started, back in the ’30s or the ’40s, he didn’t really believe that humans would walk on the Moon in his lifetime, or that we’d get as far as we have.”

Baxter says that one of the most inspiring things about Clarke was that he never became jaded or rested on his laurels.

“He’d always want to talk about the latest book, the next project,” Baxter says. “That was always the big thing with him, the going forward and producing new stuff, new ideas.”

Listen to our complete interview with Stephen Baxter in Episode 211 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Stephen Baxter on Arthur C. Clarke’s influence:

“He worked on experimental radar techniques during the Second World War, for the RAF, and he came out of that with an understanding of telecommunications and satellites. As you say, he came up with the notion of 24-hour orbital satellites beaming signals across the whole hemisphere of the Earth. … So he was a genuine visionary in terms of his nonfiction output as well, and definitely inspired the NASA guys who later went to the moon. As I recall, one of the Apollo craft was called Odyssey, after 2001: A Space Odyssey. And one of the Apollo orbital missions—I think it was Apollo 10—they were planning to play a prank. Going around the back of the moon, they were going to say there was a huge monolith standing there. If only they had, but they chickened out in the end. But that shows his influence—you’re going around the moon and you’re thinking of Clarke’s movie.”

Stephen Baxter on meeting Arthur C. Clarke:

“I only actually met him once. He came to Britain—when was this, in the early ’90s?—for one of the Arthur C. Clarke Award events—that’s for the best [science fiction] novel published in Britain each year. I was nominated, although I didn’t win, and it was in his home town, so he came there with his brother, who was also a successful writer—in plumbing, would you believe? He wrote a plumbing textbook that became the standard for students in Britain. He claimed he made more money from writing that textbook than Arthur did from his science fiction, which could well be true. Face-to-face, Clarke was quite a shy man—you know, he wasn’t a great socialite. He found it difficult to make small talk, but he was friendly. I think he found it easier to communicate through email, to tell you the truth. But after that we communicated mainly through email and phone calls.”

Stephen Baxter on the utopianism of H. G. Wells:

“In A Modern Utopia, for instance, which is his most striking fictional version of this, it’s actually an alternate history that develops from a Roman Empire that never fell. But they have a kind of Senate of self-appointed scientific minds who run everything on behalf of everybody else. So at that point in his life—this is about 1905—I think he thought democracy was a bit of a bust.”

Stephen Baxter on facing challenges:

“I think when my generation were kids—we didn’t think there’d be a nuclear war tomorrow, but I think we didn’t think we’d grow old. Sometime between now and then, we thought, the bombs would fall, so we’d never get to plant a tree in a garden and see it grow fully, that kind of thing. That kind of nightmare seems to have gone away, but now there are different kinds of nightmares for the new generation that’s coming up. But I’m basically an optimist. If we can survive the threat of nuclear war—the fall of the Berlin Wall, all that happened—then I think we can muddle our way through this in the end. But it’s a challenge that we can’t shirk. And previous generations haven’t shirked their challenges. Go back to Clarke’s generation, the West stood up to the Nazis. Even though that was a huge human and political and economic hit—if you look at it that way—we all came out better in the end.”