http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7304004.stm

OK, now I AM depressed. He did beat Heinlein and Asimov by a good margin tho.

That's a bad evening there. I hope there is something after death, just because loosing someone as him for the eternity is a shame.

What a pitty. Speaking about a golden sci-fi triangle I still can't understand that Dick never wasn't between Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke.

I heard.
He was one of very few "classic" SF writers I feel actually lived up to his hype. He was spot on on so many inventions and technological concepts it's scary, and on top of that the man could write. We've lost a great author and visionary.

NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo!

Ah well, the inventor of the satellite had to die some day.

I rate Clarke as a much better writer than Asimov, and generally better than Heinlein, but some of Heinleins stuff was pretty damn good.

This is sad news indeed.

On a sidenote, this reached a.cc before it was slashdoted, which doesn't happen all that frequently.

Very true.

Not that it shocked me like Gygax's, but he will be missed. He was lucky to write stories when marketing was not everything.

I didn't even know he was still alive. I liked everything of his that I read, which was more than a little.

The world has just lost one of the last, maybe even the last, remaining classic sci-fi author. I hope there will be others at least on par with this old generation (Asimov, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein, Herbert).

I liked most of his works - though harder to read, because generally there isn't that much action - mainly for those visions of future and inventions. I think his short stories were somewhat better than some of his books. What I didn't really liked were the books he wrote with co-operation with other authors - Richter 10 and last three books of Rama series.

I wonder if we shall be afraid...

Talent like theirs will exist again. That talent may not be interested in writing sci-fi, which would be unfortunate, but it will exist.

While they are very different from the greats of the last generation, I get a lot of enjoyment from the current generation of sci-fi.

I loved the first Rama book, the rest of the series, not so much.

Pretty much same here. I almost gave up reading the second book. Fortunatelly it got better in the third and in the last. I quite liked the idea, but...

I read... three of the books I think. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck finding the first one again when I have money.

You mean that you haven't read the original Rendevouz with Rama?

I didn't know him.

I thought he was dead a long time ago? Or was that Heinlein?

Do you mean geosynchronous satellite?

That surely was Heinlein.

Frank Herbert was the same way.

Dune is surely exception to that rule. But only the first one.

Sure, the first Dune novel was brilliant, but in general his novels were extremely dry. If you filled a book with nothing but the Catalogue of Ships from Homer's Iliad endlessly repeated, it'd still be more entertaining than most of his novels.

His short stories... very nice. They were all quite enjoyable from what I remember.

I read it this morning .. sad news

I liked the man and his work

I checked it out from my high school, but I haven't been able to find it since at a time when I've had money.

Come to think of it, my high school had a lot of great sci-fi in it's library. Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein. It was awesome.

IMHO it will be more of a loss when Terry Pratchett dies.

RP: and it doesn't look good for him, I've heard something about Alzheimer disease.

If you haven't watched Arthur C Clarke's 90th birthday reflections, do so.