Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer who co-wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey with director Stanley Kubrick, died March 19 at his home in Sri Lanka. He was 90 years old.

Clarke won worldwide acclaim by authoring more than 100 books on space, science, and the future. Born in western England on December 16, 1917, Clarke served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, as a radar instructor and technician. He was also credited with proposing communications satellites decades before they became a practical reality. In 1963, he was awarded the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Gold Medal, and in 1994 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. He served as chairman of the Interplanetary Society from 1947 to 1950. He also fought for the preservation of lowland gorillas, and served as long-time host of the British television series “Mysterious World.” He emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956.

In 1962, Clarke postulated the first of what would become known as “Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction,” which state famously:
1.) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke was buried on March 22, and, pursuant to his final wishes, “absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith,” were associated with his funeral. Clarke’s gravestone was engraved, as he had instructed, “Here lies Arthur C. Clarke. He never grew up and did not stop growing.”