A tearful farewell to Clarke

Visionary science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke was buried yesterday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, where the nation paused for an international "titan" it had adopted as its own.British-born Clarke, best known for his work on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, died aged 90 of respiratory complications and heart failure, which doctors linked to the post-polio syndrome that for years kept him wheelchair-bound.

"We feel so privileged that you left your mark on us. Your footprint will never fade. If anything, it will only magnify what we do," Tamara Ekanayake, who grew up at Clarke's Colombo home and whose family he adopted, told mourners.

Close family and friends wept and threw yellow roses onto his body in a final gesture of respect as it lay on a white bed beneath curved elephant tusks to music from the Space Odyssey movie before burial at Colombo's main cemetery.

His brother Fred and sister Mary watched on as hundreds of monks, mourners and sci-fi pilgrims clasped hands in prayer for a man who preferred the hard fact of science to organised religion.