Sci-fi author, futurist Arthur C. Clarke, 90, dies

Arthur C. Clarke, the world-famous science fiction writer, futurist and unofficial poet laureate of the space age, died of a respiratory ailment early today at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was 90.

Clarke co-wrote, with director Stanley Kubrick, the screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which is regarded by many as one of the most important science fiction films made. A prolific writer, with more than 100 published books, he was praised for his ability to foresee the possibilities of human innovation and explain them to non-scientific readers.

The most famous example is from 1945, when he first proposed the idea of communications satellites that could be based in geostationary orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground.

Some scoffed, but the idea was proved almost a generation later with the launch of Early Bird, the first of the commercial satellites that provide global communications networks for telephone, television and high-speed digital communication. The orbit is now named Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

In addition to his books, he wrote more than 1,000 short stories and essays. One of his short stories, “Dial F for Frankenstein” (1964), inspired British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web in 1989.

Clarke also popularized the idea of a space elevator as an energy-efficient alternative to rockets. Conceived by a Russian engineer in 1960 and re-invented at least four times in the next decades, Clarke’s inclusion of the idea in a 1979 novel brought it to popular attention and helped launch a new field of study. He told New Scientist magazine last year that it would be built “50 years after everyone stops laughing.”

But it was his collaboration with Kubrick in the 1968 film that made him internationally famous. The screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey” was based on Clarke’s 1951 short story “The Sentinel,” and Clarke simultaneously wrote the companion novel, which was released three months after the film and was believed by many to be a more detailed explanation of the ideas in the film.

Clarke’s work inspired the names of spacecraft, an asteroid and a species of dinosaur. He was knighted in 1998, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 and received the Franklin Institute gold medal, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization-Kalinga Prize and other honors.

Clarke, a resident of Sri Lanka since 1956, worked with Jacques Cousteau and others to help perfect scuba equipment. He moved to the country, then known as Ceylon, to open a dive shop and explore the undersea world. Disabled by post-polio syndrome, the lingering effects of a disease that had paralyzed him for two months in 1959, Clarke said diving was as close as he could get to the weightless feeling of space.