SCI FI PI

Oh no!

One of the greatest Sci Fi authors ever, Sir Arthur C.Clarke, has died at the age of 90 at his home in Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. Film fans will know him as the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but avid readers will tell you that he's been writing Science Fiction stories and novels since 1948.

Famously, he is credited as having predicted the satellite, although he is more correctly acknowledged for his concept of using geosynchronous satellites for communication.

He was knighted in 2000.

His books include Islands in the Sky (1952), Childhood's End (1953) Earthlight (1955), The City and the Stars (1956), A Fall of Moondust (1961), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Rendezvous with Rama (1972) and The Fountains of Paradise (1979). In later years he collaborated with noted Sci Fi Authors Peter Baxter, Gentry Lee and Gregory Benford, writing continuously for more than fifty years until 2007's Firstborn, with Peter Baxter.

His writing often combined strict adherence to scientific principles and speculative engineering with encounters with alien life, typically far in advance of humans. For example, his novel, The Fountains of Paradise, featured a detailed description of a work on a space elevator, stretching from the Earth's surface to low earth orbit while a strange alien craft enters the solar system.

Arthur C. Clarke is considered one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction, standing alongside the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, dragging the impression of Sci Fi creators as 'scientist as author' to that of popular entertainers bridging the gap between what is and what could be.

Stanley Kubrick's filmed version of Clarke's 1948 short story, The Sentinel, resulted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and is still considered one of the finest Sci Fi films of all time.

Films based on his works Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End are currently in various stages of development in Hollywood.