http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7304004.stmArthur C Clarke has sadly passed, while not inventing the sci-fi genre he certainly had a hand in making it popular. Without the success of 2001 the chance of Star trek or Star wars ever being made and thus the multitude of great TV and Film Science fiction of today would of been small.
There would also be no GPS, Google map or Sky TV. The man was a true visionary.