Fountains of Paradise

Arthur C Clarke moved to Sri Lanka in 1956 and it was from here that many SF books were written including the concept of HAL which was dreamed up for 2001:A Space Odyssey. So the last SF book he would write before the supposed retirement would be based on Sri Lankan sites.  Many of the scenes in this book are real places and I have seen some of them.  The subject of the story is a mega elevator from the ground to a fixed point space station.  It seems the theory has all been tabulated in many scientific papers and is only a matter of time before someone tries it.

  This one is not a Hugo but I must have picked it up on one of my Hugo Hunts.