Clarke Dies

Arthur C. Clarke
(1917 - 2008)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the ABC's from SF's pioneering days -- Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, (and add in H, for Heinlein,) has died. He was ninety. He spent his last years in Sri Lanka, where he moved, he said, because the water was warm and he could approximate the condition of weightlessness by scuba-diving.

He had been in poor health for years, secondary to post-polio syndrome he began suffering the 1960's.

If he had done nothing else but the short story upon which Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was based, he'd be remembered, but he did a lot more. He was not only a science fiction writer, but also a scientist, and those are fewer and farther between.

Of the grand old men, only Ray Bradbury is left to us now.