Visionary And Author Arthur C. Clarke Dead At Age 90

Visionary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the age of 90 in Colombo. Sir Arthur was a resident in Sri Lanka for several decades.

Sir Clarke had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s.

Most famous for expanding his short story “The Sentinel” into a novel and screenplay that served as the basis for Stanley’s Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the British-born Arthur C. Clarke authored more than 100 books involving space, science, and science fiction, and he’s often credited with inventing the concept of satellite communications. He first proposed the idea in 1945 with a paper called “Extra-terrestrial Relays.”

Today, the International Astronomical Union refers to a geostationary satellite orbit as The Clarke Orbit.

Sir Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England on December 16, 1917. In 1936, he moved to London, where he worked as a clerk in Her Majesty’s Exchequer and Audit Department and joined The British Interplanetary Society. He soon was contributing to the Society Bulletin, while trying his hand at science fiction.

During the Second World War, he joined the RAF and was eventually put in charge of a new radar-based blind landing system. Then, in May 1946, his first published story, “The Rescue Party,” appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. “The Sentinel” was published two years later.

Kubrick approached Sir Clarke in 1964, and after four years of collaboration, they received a joint Academy awards nomination for their work on the 2001 screenplay.

Sir Clarke’s “2001″ novel, written alongside the screenplay, was followed by three sequels: “2010,” “2061,” and “3001: The Final Odyssey.” Other well-known Clarke books include “Childhood’s End,” “The City and The Stars,” “The Nine Billion Names of God,” “Rendezvous with Rama,” “Imperial Earth,” and “The Songs of Distant Earth.”

Sir Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.

Source: Government of Sri Lanka

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