From MSNBC:

MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 3:23 p.m. PT, Tues., March. 18, 2008

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 was regarded as a technological seer as well as a science-fiction writer, and was known as "the godfather of the telecommunications satellite."

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