Celebrated science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka after a cardio-respiratory attack. He was 90.
The author, whose short story The Sentinel was made into the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (a screenplay he co-wrote with director Stanley Kubrick), was known as the grand old man of science fiction after writing more than 100 fiction and non-fiction science epics.
Sir Arthur, who worked in the development of radars during World War II, wrote detailed adventures of super computers and space shuttles years before they were developed. He was derided for saying in the 1940s that man would reach the moon by the end of the century.
His friend Sir Patrick Moore, who met Clarke at the British Interplanetary Society when they were teenagers, paid tribute. "He was a great visionary, a brilliant science fiction writer and a great forecaster.
"He foresaw communications satellites, a nationwide network of computers, interplanetary travel, he said there would be a man on the moon by 1970 - while I said 1980 - and he was right.
"I spoke to him only a couple of weeks ago - I knew he had been ill and I was rather concerned for him."
Sir Arthur had largely been confined to a wheelchair since 1995.