(March 19, 2008)—Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future has died.
Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 am local time after suffering breathing problems.
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was also regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.
Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the US Apollo moon shots in the late 1960s.
Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
All things considered, it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him his greatest fulfillment.
From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year.
He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.
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.
In 1989, Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the honorary title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his "services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka."
Born in Minehead, England, on December 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Clarke died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka on March 19, 2008 at 90 years young, a pioneer of the Science Fiction industry.
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