Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka. He was 90 years old.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems.

He was most famous for his short story “The Sentinel,” which was expanded into the novel on which Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” was based.