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Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke

Sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke buried in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lanka on Saturday buried visionary British sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke amid tears and tributes from family and fans as the government ordered a minute’s silence across the island.

The 90-year-old author, who died at the age of 90 on Wednesday following a brief illness, was buried in a plot owned by his Sri Lankan business partner with whose family he lived for decades.

The government asked people to observe a minute’s silence at mid-afternoon when the eminent futurist was laid to rest while newspaper headlines mourned the “final voyage of a titan.”

The prolific writer’s body had earlier been kept at his home in Colombo’s fashionable Barnes Place diplomatic quarter and a large number of students, fans, clergy and politicians gathered to pay their respects.

“We thank you for the times you listened, the times you laughed,” Tamara Ekanayake, daughter of his business partner, Hector Ekanayake, said minutes before Clarke’s coffin was taken from their family home.

“He wanted us to write on his tombstone: ‘Here lies Arthur Clarke. He never grew up, but didn’t stop growing’. And with that, we celebrate your life to this day,” she said.

Family, friends, school children and space buffs later walked behind Clarke’s coffin as it made its way to Colombo’s General Cemetery, led by police and security personnel.

Clarke had asked for a funeral without any political pomp and religious rites. But politicians, a dozen saffron-robed Buddhist monks and a Catholic priest joined mourners and watched as the sci-fi guru’s body was laid to rest.

The author, who suffered from post-polio syndrome — a progressive illness marked by muscle weakness that confined him to a wheelchair for many years — shot to fame in 1968 when director Stanley Kubrick turned his short story “The Sentinel” into the film classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Knighted in 1998 in recognition of his status as the grand old man of science fiction, Clarke settled down in Sri Lanka in 1956.

“He always loved it here — the warm climate and the friendly people,” his younger brother, Fred Clarke, told AFP. “He said he had managed to escape 40 British winters and had no regrets.”

Trained in physics and mathematics, Clarke penned more than 100 books and over 1,000 short stories as well as essays on space travel, communication technologies, underwater exploration and future studies over 60 years.

On his 90th birthday in December, he expressed a wish for lasting peace in his adopted homeland, which has been wracked by more than 35 years of fighting between troops and Tamil separatists.

Clarke is survived by his brother Fred and sister Mary, who were among the relatives who flew from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to attend the funeral. (AFP)

Thank images from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clarke_sm.jpg
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