Lots of Brits here, I assume there are some Clarke fans

I first encountered his work in the mid 60s. There was a pair of his novels in one binding, The Deep Range and The City And The Stars. I loved the latter: set in the far future, Earth is a desert with only one self-sustaining city left. All the inhabitants were emotionally programmed to fear leaving the city, but every few generations a 'unique' was introduced to the population. In this case he actually left the city waay behind...I reread the story a couple of years ago and enjoyed it very much.

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in its first theatrical run, and it blew my mind. I believe it was expanded from an earlier short story, The Sentinel. I still watch it when it shows up on TV.

Next I think was his collection of short stories, The Nine Billion Names Of God, great classic sci-fi. I also enjoyed the novel A Fall Of Moondust, a good example of 'realistic' science fiction, believable yet gripping.

I read the first two Rama books, enjoyable if unspectacular. I got through the 2001 sequels; the last one, 3001, is actually kind of humorous, and ties up all the loose ends.

I heard he was involved in a scandal, was it child-molesting? Anyone know if he was eventually cleared?

Can't say i've too much - but hotdawwg, I love this guy's work. He certainly earned himself a place in the history books. Can't say I've ever heard about any scandals though.

My mum mentioned him in connection with a child molesting scandal a few years ago but nowadays I take such pernicious rumours with a pinch of salt.

I recently read 2001: a space oddyssey which was written while Clarke was collaborating with Stanley Kubrick on the story of the book and film.

It's a terrific book in addition to a great film.

Arthur C. Clarke retired to Sri Lanka decades ago and founded several charitable foundations to help the local people.

As is the normal case in S.Asian countries some local family thought they could make a few bucks from a false accusation. It's rare but it happens in The Philippines too. You're right, knight-errant, it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Since Arthur C. was a distinguished guest and benefactor (and already very old) the Sri-Lankan Government saw it as cheap opportunism.

There's a good MRA point here. Young and energetic western men that head east will find themselves inundated with so many beautiful prospective wives. Even in Paradise it pays to be wary.

Writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90
By RAVI NESSMAN
Associated Press
Tue Mar 18, 7:50 PM ET


COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Arthur C. Clarke, 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, died Wednesday, an aide said. 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 Society 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."

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On the Net:

The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation: http://www.clarkefoundation.org