[FPSPACE] Arthur C. Clark dies...

[Peter Pesavento]

I just read the sad news that Arthur C. Clarke has just died, at age 90.

 

I remember when in junior highschool (7-9 grade) I read all of the Clarke
"Omnibuses" that the school library had.  

 

>From the Ocean, from the Stars

 

Across the Sea of Stars

 

I think the publisher was Harcourt Brace and World.

 

I also read from that same library

 

The City and the Stars

 

2001 Space Odyssey.

 

And there was a nonfiction book too-The Coming of the Space Age (which I
have a copy in my personal library).

 

These books lit a fire in my brain, which has never left.

 

Subsequently, I think I read perhaps over 80% of all his works.

 

Here is the Associated Press wire story.

 

March 18, 2008


Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:06 p.m. ET

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Arthur C. Clarke
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/arthur_c_clark
e/index.html?inline=nyt-per> , a visionary science fiction writer who won
worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future,
died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and
sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing
problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Clarke moved to Sri Lanka in 1956, lured by his interest in marine diving
which he said was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of
space.

''I'm perfectly operational underwater,'' he once said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/stanley_kubric
k/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  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
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/walter_cronkit
e/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in
the late 1960s.