'Secular' funeral for Clarke

 

British-born science fiction guru Arthur C Clarke is likely to be buried at the main cemetery in Colombo at this week at a "strictly secular" funeral, his secretary said. "The funeral is most likely to be on Saturday," his secretary Nalaka Gunawardena said. "We are awaiting the arrival of family members from Britain and Australia. They are already on the way."

He had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome for years and died after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Clarke, who shot to fame after writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, died at a hospital here yesterday at the age of 90. He had made Sri Lanka his adopted home since 1956.

"Sir Arthur's wish was that his funeral be held in Sri Lanka as a private event," he said.

He had wanted to be buried in the plot owned by the family of his business partner here, Hector Ekanayake, at the General Cemetery in Colombo.

"Sir Arthur has also left written instructions that his funeral be strictly secular," Gunawardene said.

The 1968 story 2001: A Space Odyssey - written simultaneously as a novel and screenplay with director Stanley Kubrick - was a frightening prophecy of artificial intelligence run amok.

He was also credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfilment.

Clarke's office said he had recently reviewed the final manuscript of his latest novel, The Last Theorem, co-written with Frederik Pohl and will be published later this year, it said.

Some of his best-known books are Childhood's End, 1953; The City and The Stars, 1956; The Nine Billion Names of God, 1967; Rendezvous with Rama, 1973; Imperial Earth, 1975; and The Songs of Distant Earth, 1986.

Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989 and made a knight in 1998.

He was born as a son of a farmer in Minehead, western England, on December 16, 1917.

Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children. He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef.

Clarke is survived by his brother, Fred, and sister, Mary.