'Space Odyssey' Author Clarke Dies at 90 -

Writer Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka. He was 90. He's best known for writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he wrote many dozens of science fiction novels. Clarke, a trained scientist who united intellectual rigor with imagination, inspired generations of writers and scientists with his powerfully humane vision of the future.

I woke up to a very different world. Arthur Clarke died yesterday in Sri Lanka where, due to the magic of time zones, it was, uh, today. I didn't know much about Clarke or his movie 2001--a little before my time and was introduced to him when I took Science Fiction and Fantasy at Purdue, where I read Childhood's End. The book was filled with engineering marvels (I was going to Purdue, y'all), aliens, transformation and a hero who was, essentially the last man on Earth. That did it for me and I began to read his many other works.

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