Legendary science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke at 80

Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and arguably the world's foremost futurologist, celebrates his 80th birthday this week. Clarke's most renowned prediction was about the growth of communications satellites, which he first outlined in 1945. Although born in Britain, he has spent the last 30 years in Sri Lanka. Miles Warde looks back.

According to Arthur C Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and to a 1960s audience, the talking computers and space stations of 2001: A Space Odyssey must have seemed incredible.

While man may not yet have colonised the moon as he predicted, Arthur C Clarke's science fiction does have a habit of becoming science fact.

But the invitation to write the film came as a complete surprise.

"I got a letter out of the blue from Stanley Kubrick, saying that he wanted to do the proverbial `good' science fiction movie, and did I have any ideas. I wrote back saying yes I have."

Clarke's "ideas" began taking shape when - as a civil servant before the war - he started writing tales about outer space.

But the obsession with the stars dates back even further, to the schoolyard where his nickname was Spaceship Clarke.

During the war a spell working on the development of radar helped ground some of his ideas in fact.

Then in 1945 he published a paper proposing the concept of space stations which would orbit the Earth and be able to act as transmitters of radio waves.

For this idea Clarke received a cheque of £15 from the magazine Wireless World and two decades later the title of father of satellite communications.

He says: "In my fiction I'm not necessarily tempted to predict the sort of future that would necessarily happen.

"In fact often I've written science fiction about the sort of futures I sincerely hope wouldn't happen.

"I've writen about six books about the end of the world, so obviously they can't all be accurate, but certainly I've always tried to write about things that were possible."

Perhaps the most notorious of these ideas is the space elevator, which Clarke writes about in The Fountains of Paradise.

He describes the concept: "A vertical tower, square in section, reaching from the equator up to the synchronous - or stationary - orbit 22,000 miles high, and on each of the four faces of the tower there were railway tracks, along which capsules, passengers and freight ran up and down at a very high speed, perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 an hour.

"What we're talking of is a vertical electrical railroad, and the costs of transportation into space would be just trivial - a few pounds per passengers.

"What is more you get most of the energy back because on the return journey you're falling back into the earth's gravitational field, and it could even be an electric generator if it's designed properly."

Clarke first visited in 1954 encouraged, as he puts it, "with considerable impetus from a disintegrating marriage" and later decided to stay.

His books were already a success, but it was from a space age home he built near Colombo that the bulk of his work has been done - more than 60 titles of science fact and fiction, translated into more than 20 twenty languages around the world.

Apart from the obligatory satellite dishes and computers Clarke's home is decorated with photographs of him next to the Pope, the Apollo astronauts and Steven Spielberg.

His fascination also extends to the deep - he has explored much of the water off Sri Lanka, once discovering a sunken galleon full of silver treasure.

In 1989 he was awarded a CBE for cultural services to Sri Lanka, which he has refused to leave despite the civil war between Tamils and Sinhalese.

Now 80, he is largely confined to a wheelchair as a result of a post-polio syndrome.

But Clarke seems as popular as ever with his public - a recent exhibition aout him at Science Museum in London was extended from three to 18 months by popular demand.

Critics accuse him of scant attention to the presentation of character in his books, but rival writer Isaac Asimov says: "No one has done more than Clarke in the way of enlightened prediction."

Clarke says modestly: "Lots of things worked out very differently - I mean, no one ever dreamed that we'd be on the moon by 1969, still less that having got there we'd abandon the place and not be going back again until perhaps the end of the century."