Arthur C. Clarke dead in Sri Lanka

MSNBC staff and news service reports

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Arthur C. Clarke, 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. local time after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva told The Associated Press.

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.

Clarke's best-known novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey," became the basis of the 1968 film of the same name, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film and the book elevated the plot's mentally unbalanced computer, HAL 9000, into the pantheon of great fictional characters.

Three "2001" book sequels followed, and one of them — "2010" — was made into a movie as well.

In addition to the "2001" series, Clarke's best-known works included "Childhood's End" and "Rendezvous With Rama." The latter novel is reportedly being adapted for film, with actor Morgan Freeman as producer and star.

Clarke was regarded as a technological seer as well as a science-fiction writer.

After Clarke's World War II service as a radar specialist in the Royal Air Force, he proposed the idea of using geostationary satellites as relays for radio communication. It took decades for the idea to bear fruit, but his prediction earned him the title "godfather of the telecommunications satellite." Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

In the 1940s, Clarke predicted that man would reach the moon by the year 2000 — an idea that experts at the time dismissed as nonsense. In the late 1960s, Clarke served as a commentator along with CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite for the Apollo missions that turned his prediction into reality. Later, NASA Administrator Tom Paine wrote in an inscription for Clarke that the science-fiction author "provided the essential intellectual drive that led us to the moon."

Another novel of Clarke's, "The Fountains of Paradise," helped spark the real-world efforts to build a space elevator from Earth to orbit.