Happy 90th Birthday Arthur and thanks for many, many hours spent lost in one of your books. My faves are "Childhoods End", "The City and the Stars" and "Rendezvous with Rama".

...suggesting using geostationary satellites for global telecommunications. I think that was somewhere around 1948, in Wireless World.

Happy birthday to the man that predicted telecommunications satellites, (almost predicted that every phone call, local and international would be free by 2000), and has and continues to enthrall me with visionary works such as the aforementioned Space Odyssey series, Rendezvous With Rama series, The City and the Stars, and many more.

Add Earthlight to the list of fav stories.

Many happy returns and all my thanks for imagining the possibilities.

City and the Stars for me. That story has stayed with me since reading it in my early teens in the late 70's.

Thanks ACC.

James

So I won't.

Happy Birthday Mr Clarke.

Arthur C. Clarke was the first SF author I read, closely followed by the kings of the Golden Age, but it was Clarke who made me realise that the future was coming, and it wouldn't always be the High Frontier of Americans in spacesuits. He wrote of the arrival of aliens both on Earth and in space (still waiting), the space elevator (closer than he imagined 25 years ago) and created the foundations for the world of the future that still often remains just around the corner. He has seen 2001 pass with no hotel in space, and no human beings outside of Earth orbit: I hope he lives long enough to see one or the other happen. Happy birthday Sir Arthur, may there be many more.

Almost right. Read "Childhoods End" and "Quarantine".

"Earth's flaming debris still filled half the sky..."

My first memories of science fiction was when my father read "Islands in the Sky" to me and my brother as a bedtime story. Oh, happy days.

Thanks Mr Clarke (and Dad).

I loved the space oddesy series, and the Rama series, although my favourite is A Fall Of Moondust.

As for a favourite quote:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic"

which has been adapted in so many ways, I may have misquoted it. Apologies!

Adding to the chorus, my thanks and happy birthday to Sir Clark. Hope I live enough to see his 100th birthday... :-)

Happy Birthday Sir Clarke. May all your dreams, past present and future come true.

May I add my good wishes to the others, and thanks again for the entire Rama series. All your books, really - I grew up reading them. Fantastic!

All these heartfelt mails and not a cynical comment in site. Kind of restores ones faith etc. (He has done some amazing stuff, and appears so modest too).

Happy Christmas all

All the contributers before me have said what I wanted to say!

I grew up on a diet of ACC and Isaac Asimov. To my mind they are the two finest Sci-Fi writers of the 20th Century, between them(and HG Wells)

they predicted almost every 'wonder' that we have today.

Happy Birthday!!

If it wasn't his quote, who originally said it?

I'd always thought it was one of his as it's usually referred to as "Clarke's Third Law"

The alien, because it's the closest I can manage to contacting ET...

A wonderful 90th birthday Mr Clarke! Your stories have given me so much pleasure and sense of wonder ... thank you!

With love

Maike