“2001” Then and Now

“So where did Clarke go wrong in his projections? Where are the permanent moon bases? The giant wheel of a space station? The nuclear powered spacecraft and cryogenic chambers for deep-space missions? Most curious of all, where’s the awesome artificial intelligence of Hal, the self-conscious, homicidal HAL 9000 supercomputer from Urbana, Ill., who controlled all aspects of the mission to Saturn (Jupiter in the movie)?”

“A man claiming to be one of the people responsible for the mysterious monolith that first appeared, then disappeared from Magnuson Park says it was stolen from that spot before it surfaced again yesterday at Green Lake, on a small, remote bird sanctuary called Duck Island. “

“Dawn of the new year, 2001: A mysterious steel monolith appears on a windswept hilltop in a public park. Its orientation is the line between sunrise and sunset. Its dimensions: 1 foot by 4 feet by 9 feet–the square of the first three prime numbers. Then, as suddenly and inexplicably as it appeared, the monolith vanishes.”

“A black, steel monolith nearly three metres high has mysteriously appeared in a park in the American city of Seattle. The unmarked sculpture, planted on a grassy knoll in Magnuson Park, seems to have been put in place on New Year’s Eve.”

“As the Greatest Escapes Travel Webzine moves into its fourth year online, its decided to do so with a bang. The January 2001 issue of the popular publication will include an excerpt from the soon-to-be-published Literary Trips 2: Following in the Footsteps of Fame, taken from Victoria Brooks’ story on the legendary Sir Arthur C. Clarke and his Sri Lanka. It includes exclusive photographs taken by
noted writer and photographer Christopher Ondaatje and original material based on visits with Clarke.”

“Arthur C. Clarke will not be on board himself and the timing might be off by a couple of years, but a message penned by the science fiction writer and a DNA sample extracted from his hair will set off on a space odyssey in 2003.”

“FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) – The Fairfield Arts Council thinks it’s fitting in 2001 to honor actor Keir Dullea, who starred in ”2001: A Space Odyssey” more
than three decades ago. “

“There was only one point where I actually laughed out loud and that was when there was a Newsnight-type interview at mission control after the spacecraft had left for Jupiter. It was conducted by a man from something called BBC12 and I do not think Jeremy Paxman has anything to worry about “

“GAIL COLLINS: The definitive thing about 2001, when you saw it back then, was how pretty it was. But it was also really boring. It seems so realistic because the idea of something becoming more efficient and more boring at the same time seemed like the way we were obviously going to go. (Clip from “2001: Space Odyssey” shown)”

Granted, “2001” got the part about a space station right, sort of: the real International Space Station began hosting its first long-term crew in November. But the pioneering trio doesn’t have the luxury of artificial gravity, as provided by the centrifugal force in Arthur C. Clarke’s spinning version, much less a barbershop, drugstore, movie theater or souvenir shops.”

“… we should gauge our accomplishments [in space] by how many people take no notice at all …”

“The year 2001 got off to a painful start for science fiction writer
Arthur C. Clarke, who spent New Year’s Day resting.”

“For all that, “2001” gets one thing quite right, and it’s not trivial. At the millennium, we are certainly preoccupied with technology and its implications. The movie turns out to be prescient in one of its central themes: Technology is empowering, but it also bites back.
“

“2001: A Space Odyssey held out the promise of travel into deep space. But as the year itself finally dawns, the reality could not be more different. Leo Enright compares the film’s vision of the future with current space missions and looks at the answers science offers to the perennial question: are we truly alone?”

“Now that the year 2001 is almost upon us, interest in the movie is stronger than ever. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (of which I am a patron, with Sigourney Weaver) recently launched 2001: An Ape Odyssey in the hope of saving our surviving relatives. And Nasa has named its forthcoming Mars Mission 2001: A Mars Odyssey.”

“Clarke wrote 2001 on a typewriter. Now, armed with half a dozen computers, he spends hours each day using e-mail to keep in touch with friends, colleagues and fans. “I don’t know where half my friends are physically on the planet and it doesn’t matter,” he says. “

“Marc Rayman, project manager of Deep Space 1 at the Pasadena laboratory, saw ”2001” at age 11 and found it “wonderful, though like everybody else, I didn’t understand the ending.” ”`2001′ tells us more about 1968 than it does about the future,” said Rayman, technical adviser on the 1984 sequel, ”2010.”

“Clarke thanked late film director Stanley Kubrick, who made a movie based on “2001 A Space Odyssey,” for the almost universally acknowledged association between himself and the year 2001. “Perhaps no other year before or since 1984 has been awaited with such eager anticipation (and I like to think, with far less apprehension),” Clarke said, referring to George Orwell’s book “1984,” which was written in the 1940s and predicted a grim, totalitarian world by 1984.”

“In terms of prediction, the preliminary scorecard does not look good for Messrs Kubrick and Clarke. Forget the Pan Am label that adorns the space shuttle in the movie or the Bell Telephone logo on the picture phone. Forget the pillbox hats on the exclusively female flight attendants and the luxuriously empty flights themselves. Needless to say, there are no colonies on the Moon in the real year 2001. And current space stations more resemble ratty dungeons than the loungelike spaces in “2001.”