The author of 2001: A Space Odyssey passed away in his home in Sri Lanka. While Gawker's sci-fi blog io9 will have a fuller obituary reflecting upon all his work, my favorite Arthur C Clarke book was actually Tales from the White Hart, which included a story about a man, working alone on an island, helping a colony of ants invent fire. In the same book, Clarke invented the idea of noise-canceling headphones, though his fictional version turned into a bomb. Clarke was the last of the golden-era sci-fi greats, and I'll be drinking to him tonight. [Photo: Getty]

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