Arthur C. Clark,  a visionary science fiction writer who co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” and won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, has died. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died at 1:30 a.m. in his adopted home of Sri Lanka after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Clarke was 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 U.S. Apollo moonshots 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.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered,” Clarke said recently. “I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”

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.

Some of his best-known books are “Childhood’s End,” 1953; “The City and The Stars,” 1956, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” 1967; “Rendezvous with Rama,” 1973; “Imperial Earth,” 1975; and “The Songs of Distant Earth,” 1986.

When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke’s shorter pieces, including “The Sentinel,” written in 1948, and “Encounter in the Dawn.” As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with “2010,” “2061,” and “3001: The Final Odyssey.”

In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: “2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.”

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.

Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine “Amazing Stories” at Woolworth’s. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.

Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty’s Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.

It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King’s College in London.

In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.

But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications — an idea whose time had decidedly not come.

Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.

Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.

He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, discovered that scuba-diving approximated the feeling of weightlessness that astronauts experience in space. He remained a diving enthusiast, running his own scuba venture into old age.

“I’m perfectly operational underwater,” he once said.

Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.

At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka’s raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.

“One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time,” he said. “Move over, Stephen King.”

If you have time, please read my Movie Monday review of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I posted on last November 4. Many people still read that post and tell me how much they enjoyed it. So if you are an Arthur C. Clarke fan, feel free to stop by. I’d love to hear from you.  

Here’s the link:http://lauritasita.multiply.com/journal/item/142

2001: A Space Odyssey

delete reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 18, ’08 Ha, synchronicity, really!! Some movie indeed! What a loss!

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 18, ’08 He was the best science fiction writer that ever lived.

delete reply seth360 wrote on Mar 18, ’08 Wow laura thank you for the post easily hands down the best sci fi writer of the 20th century 2001 is my favorite sci fi book of all time it was my first

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 18, ’08 Thanks for your comment, seth. Feel free to read my post on 2001: A Space Odyssey at: http://lauritasita.multiply.com/journal/item/142

delete reply seth360 wrote on Mar 18, ’08 Funny thing is just 2 weeks ago i caught the movie again on tv, uninterrupted in its original format and it was just as intriguing and thought provoking now as it was then, perhaps even more so I remember going to see it with my dad and Uncle when it first came out (I was 9 or 10 at the time)…I thought it was just a cool movie and i had NO idea what it was about, but it made me want to check out the book when i got older. The discussion between my Dad and Uncle that followed is my first memory of thinking about the existence of god…my first existential thoughts As I watch it now its so much more than that, and even though it was done in 1969 its still so relevant today….

delete reply seth360 wrote on Mar 18, ’08 I grew to love the book and the movie

delete reply seth360 wrote on Mar 18, ’08 and Stanley Kubrick….2 masters of their respective crafts

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 18, ’08 He was truly one of a kind. I was very young when I saw this movie. I was speechless about it for years.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 18, ’08 Gone, but not forgotten.

delete reply seth360 wrote on Mar 18, ’08 both are gone now but not their legacies

delete reply markg1 wrote on Mar 19, ’08 Arthur C Clarke was an amazing writer and far more prolific as a writer than most. In a day and age of belittling the human race, Clarke’s writing shows the potential of humanity and our ability to advance in both technology, but in the spirit and potential of humanity. He will be missed.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 19, ’08 That is so well said, markg. He was a scientist, but also a true humanitarian. A strange, but wonderful combination of human qualities.

delete reply welshdoug wrote on Mar 19, ’08 Always sad when a real ground-breaker dies.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 19, ’08 He will really be missed by people who followed his work.

delete reply nemo4sun wrote on Mar 22, ’08 ((((hug)))) 🙂

delete reply mamabearcherei wrote on Mar 23, ’08 He is the man.. who OPENED the world and the universe for my eager young mind.. I was lucky.. and found him.. almost immediately after I learned how to read! lol.  A collection of short stories.. just perfect for a little kid.. with a VERY active imagination.  What is truly funny.. we connected.. I understood what he was writing.. and I was a child.. that NEVER changed!  He was a truly great man!

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Mar 23, ’08 mambearcherei, thanks for stopping by. Your comments are welcome !

delete reply instrumentalpavilion wrote on Apr 3, ’08 This guy was great period. I read a lot of his stuff. I wonder if any of his books will be given the big screen treatment. I know they have talked a bout doing “A Fall of Moondust” for a long time as wel as “Childhood’s End”. Hopefully they won’t give those stories the MTV science fiction treatment (you know, no cast members over 30)!

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Apr 3, ’08 LOL!!! Yeah, I know what you mean. I heard of Childhood’s End, but I never read it.