originally posted by Danlo on 18 Mar 2008 17:59:
(CNN) -- Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, died Wednesday at age 90, an associate confirmed.
Visionary author Arthur C. Clarke had fans around the world.
Clarke died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
"He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit," Chase said.
Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick shared an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay for "2001."
response from Moonwatcher on 19 Mar 2008 00:25:
I'm very saddened by Clarke's passing. He was one of my heroes, a man of great intellect who was able to convey tantalizing and terrifying visions of humanity's possible futures through some of the most lucid prose I have ever read by anybody.
Rendezvous With Rama is my favorite science fiction novel of all time.
2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite science fiction film of all time.
Now that both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke are gone, it signifies to me the formal end of an era in science fiction - that peculiar and paradoxical kind of optimism about the future that came out of the Sixties' space race. Even though I was born after that point in history, I only need to read Clarke's books or watch 2001 to feel a deep connection to the spirit of that time.
Mr. Clarke, you will be missed. But I'll be forever grateful that you were among us to share your awesome visions of the cosmos and of our place in it.
response from duchess of malfi on 19 Mar 2008 21:42:
One of the Giants has left us.
