LEGACY
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect
A Date with Destiny
Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect
A Date with Destiny
The other pages in this site have quite obvious themes running through them. This one is a bit harder to pin down to any single topic. Nevertheless, there is a common intent that runs through the various subjects. It is that 2001 gives us strands leading off in all directions, some of them closely connected with the film, others more tenuous. I have picked on a number of these strands and allowed myself to muse a little, and bring together a lot of thoughts that have independently sprung up over the years.
I have chosen the name "Legacy" for the page, because I feel all of these thoughts have been bestowed by the film and its continuing influence, which shows no sign of lessening. In fact, the act of putting this site together has redefined the admiration I always had for 2001, and turned it into something that now figures very strongly in my consciousness. It was my good fortune to have been in the right place, at the right time, at the right age, to be a small but inseparable part of the 2001 experience.
New possibilities.
Having reached a verdict on Hal, there are still some aspects of 2001 to address, and wider issues suggested by three decades of thinking too much about the film while going about "normal" business, something made necessary by the fact that somebody goofed and I wasn't born rich.
 | How to greet a monolith | | By-ways | | What motivates an alien? | | Levitation, homage and special effects |
| Other intelligences | | Violent tendencies | | Clairvoyance | | Back to reality |
| Epilogue |
The fascinating prospect arises of what would have happened if Hal had survived intact, and it was the humans who had all been eliminated. How would Hal have met the monolith, given the knowledge he already had of it?
Take that, monolith.
Certainly a surprise for the monolith, which was "programmed" to expect what actually happened - the arrival of a human being. How would this unexplained intelligence have coped with the unexpected - the ape- man turning into an artificial intelligence? What environment would the alien have created to take the place of the "hotel apartment"?
What else about the monolith?
The monolith is very satisfying in its precision, impenetrability and featureless form, which does in fact reveal something about its creators. In my 2010 page, I point to how humans would go about presenting a monolith. Whatever else the aliens may be, we can be sure that they are not prisoners of untrammelled commercialism, as we are whether we like it or not.
How many monoliths are there in 2001? Did the aliens have one for every situation, or did they economise by moving one from place to place? Is Moonwatcher's monolith the same one that was subsequently buried at Tycho? How about the one near Jupiter? In 2010's opening scene, we learn that the Tycho monolith was transported back to the USA for examination. The tests are fruitless - nothing has been found that will even scratch the surface. That means, though, that there are at least two monoliths, one from Tycho and one from Jupiter's orbit.
That, of course, is before Peter Hyams decides he likes monoliths so much he gives us 1,355,000 of them. Good job Hal was around to count them.
Dumb aliens.
We learn nothing directly about the aliens behind the monolith, either in 2001 or 2010. To think of them carelessly leaving monoliths lying around the universe without any thought as to what effect they would eventually have makes them sound just plain sloppy, and presents us with an interesting concept. We always assume aliens are bound to be either incredibly intelligent, or incredibly aggressive, or both. Just consider, though, the idea of an alien race capable of sophisticated technological achievement, but for all that just plain dumb. Able to create monoliths and cart them around the universe, but without a clue as to what the point of it all is.
Or is the whole notion of aliens an unnecessary diversion in 2001? Does the existence of the monoliths necessarily imply the existence of aliens?
The 2001 comfort zone.
As human beings, we find other human beings more "predictable" than electro-mechanical devices - we think of humans' unpredictability as one of their essential characteristics. In this sense, a Hal- dominated encounter with the monolith in 2001 would have made the film even less comfortable for most people!
Might this not have made 2001 an even more "honest" or daring picture? In the end, Arthur C Clarke signed his name to a popular novel which gives us a "moralising", if not downright religious, tale. Man makes sacrifices (given that there are not that many people in 2001, it is surprising how many of them end up dead - see my piece about violence below), is foiled in a conspiracy (Hal knows all about the secret plan), revives just in time to beat the machine (Dave makes it back on board Discovery - just - and pulls Hal's plugs out) and finally reaps the ultimate rewards (Dave gets to go on an exciting trip) - when reality may prove to be much less comforting.
Yet it is Clarke, too, who was reputed to have tantalised Stanley Kubrick with the notion that perhaps his aliens might be considered a race for whom organic life is a disease to be eradicated, so he can hardly be accused of meekly toeing a religious line, despite the search by some for a religious significance in 2001. Thinking of which:
"'M-G-M doesn't know it yet, but they've footed the bill for the first ten- and- a- half- million- dollar religious film', popular sf writer Arthur C. Clarke declared of Stanley Kubrick's film based on his script". (Another quote from Franz Rottensteiner's "The Science Fiction Book - An Illustrated History", Thames and Hudson, London, 1975, also quoted in my Spectacle page).
Taking a break.
The challenge Kubrick faced with 2001 was, in its way, arguably more daunting than anything ever attempted by any other director, and what he achieved was a triumph without equal. I can imagine the whole experience taking over his life for a long period and needing to be decisively flushed out. Was this a factor in following 2001 with the painfully uncomfortable Clockwork Orange? Alex tethered to a front- row seat with his eyes clamped open says quite a lot about what Kubrick must have felt like doing with some of those critics (if he thought anything of them at all), so perhaps ACO was not such an odd switch of moods as it has usually appeared to be.
Leopard, leopard, burning bright...
Was there any connection between those glowing eyes of the leopard in the Dawn of Man scenes, and Gary Lockwood (Frank) in another incarnation?
Trekkers will be well aware of what I mean by that. Gary Lockwood starred in the debut televised episode of Star Trek as the first helmsman (handpicked by his great mate Captain Kirk, we are told) of the Enterprise. This episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (familiar words? This was the only televised episode that did not feature them in the opening voiceover!), actually followed "The Cage" in production, but the latter was not originally screened.
As Lt Commander Gary "bright eyes" Mitchell, Lockwood had probably the biggest part in the whole episode, but like many others in that and subsequent stories his role was strictly a one- episode affair. Kirk, Spock, Scotty and the other permanent Trek staffers could always rely on McCoy to cure them of alien maladies, but he did not appear in this episode and, besides, his healing powers usually seem to have been withheld from the weekly guests.
What prompted my suggestion about the leopard's eyes above, though, is Mitchell / Lockwood's own eyes. This all happened around the time that 2001 was being filmed, so it must be quite possible that Kubrick was aware of the effect.
Murder comes to earth.
The significant thing about Moonwatcher and his friends bouncing bones across the skull of their unfortunate victim is that, for the first time in earth's history, one member of a race has been consciously killed by other members of the same race - the kill is not made on another species to obtain food or defend against attack, but is an act that was premeditated as a means of gaining territorial advantage over some important real estate. The perpetrators are hesitant at first. Since no such act had ever been performed before, it is difficult to know quite what would have been running through their minds at the time. All it takes to break the spell is the first blow, a signal for a frenzy of violence, and once it happens Moonwatcher, his companions and all their descendants right down to 2001 are hooked on it for ever.
What prompted this use of the tool, which was to irreversibly set the entire pattern of human development? It might have been the invention of Moonwatcher and the man- apes themselves. The attraction of this idea is that it allows us to believe that mankind's ascendancy over other species came about as the result of original thought and brain power.
But this would suggest an alarming lack of foresight by the intelligence behind the monolith and a remarkcbly rapid development of the man- apes' capacity for innovation. Can you really believe that the monolith would have been so naive as to implant the notion of using a bone to club animals to death, without any expectation that the man- apes would find it equally useful against each other?
I have a more provocative suggestion.
So much to do, so little time.
Consider: the monolith had to get this right. There would not have been much use allowing humans to develop, if their evolution had taken so long that some astronomical catastrophe was bound to have intervened. If the characteristics that differentiated humans from other life forms offered only marginal divergence, then the monolith may have doomed mankind to wait until there was simply not enough time in the universe to evolve to the extent necessary to meet the planned date with destiny among the moons of Jupiter.
Consider, too, the investment involved in placing those monoliths. It would have required an unthinkable expenditure of energy. Why waste that investment for want of a bit of forethought?
He-man gets the nod.
I suggest, therefore, that the monolith's plan did not stop at helping mankind predominate over other species. The plan also allowed for the strongest, most ruthless of mankind to have the upper hand right from the start. Using the bone as a weapon against fellow creatures was a precondition for the success of the plan. Such a conclusion was easy to draw from the pointed flashback to the monolith as Moonwatcher pauses before the bones, clearly struggling with the sudden dawning of a thought never before considered by any creature on Earth.
In this context, it is also timely to think back to my earlier remarks about the male domination of 2001 and the nature of injustice. These are explained if, indeed, man's supremacy came about through sheer brute force. Harnessing physical strength and aggression as a way of breaking through the potential bind of evolution was always bound to favour the male of the species.
Clarke and Kubrick tie us all in knots.
If you can accept any of this, then aggression and injustice added to a fierce sense of self preservation made Kubrick / Clarke's humanity what it is! No wonder Hal was foiled. His makers never gave him a chance, because they never told him what human beings could be like with their backs to the wall. Just as the mission planners never gave Dave and Frank a chance, because they never told them about the real nature of the mission! Clarke and Kubrick gave us a classic double bind. And that is apart from the fact that Hal was clearly given no lessons in the psychology of music ("Daisy", indeed).
Levitation, homage and special effects
Show me the strings.
How was that floating pen scene done, back in '68? I never could see the strings, and still haven't done so in the EVA scenes despite what I have heard from some sources. William Sylvester, in his first appearance in the film, gives us a very convincing weightless arm, and the hostess is obviously having to work hard to keep herself anchored to the velcro pads - an elegant way of moving around in a weightless environment whilst retaining some dignity, even though in real life she may have found more fun ways of doing it. Remember, Kubrick and Clarke were the first ones who tried to give us an idea of what it might really be like to travel in space, and they came right up with something clever, original and matter- of- fact, all at once.
By the way, I never really thought it was done with strings.
In the flight simulator.
No film since 2001 has been able to show us a more convincing spacecraft- docking- with- space- station scene, no matter how much computing power was available for the special effects and no matter how much imagery was lifted direct from Kubrick.
Echoes of the past.
Kubrick paid homage in many subtle ways to some of 2001's predecessors, which he apparently studied closely (so I have read). The one I describe here struck me suddenly one day when I was watching my video copy of "When Worlds Collide". I was not even thinking about 2001, but a few words sounded so familiar that I immediately realised where I had heard them before. I swapped the two backwards and forwards several times, and the similarity is uncanny.
Floyd's first action on arriving at the space station is to register through Voiceprint Identification. The receptionist welcomes him with "Did you have a pleasant flight, sir?". Floyd replies, "Yes, very nice, thanks".
Now look at Rudolph Maté and George Pal's "When Worlds Collide", released way back in 1951. The lead character, played by Richard Derr, is on a transatlantic flight bearing the vital consignment that will provide evidence of the looming catastrophe. The air hostess volunteers "I hope you're enjoying your trip". Derr's reply? Sure enough, it's "Yes, very nice, thanks".
The settings (almost), the exact words, even the manner of their phrasing and slightly disassociated delivery (both men have somewhat more important things on their minds!), could have been cut and pasted straight across the 17 year intervening gap.
Living out of a suitcase.
Now in the orbiting Hilton, isn't there something vaguely unsettling about those background PA announcements ("Mr Travis"..."The Met Office"), which had early audiences looking round to see what was going on in the cinema? And $1.70 for that Bell Picturephone call. What a bargain! As Floyd says, "Daddy's travelling", and travellers know too well what it costs to telephone from a hotel.
Anatomical imagery.
With a bit of imagination, the human head motif so obvious in the "Aries" descending to the lunar surface can also be seen (probably not by design) inside the shuttle taking Heywood Floyd to his encounter with the monolith. Look at the cabin as the camera draws back into the passenger compartment.
Familar landscapes.
The alien landscapes that Dave suddenly finds himself swooping across are a bit of a puzzle, and the last "outdoor" scenes in the film (if you count outer space as outdoors), apart from the final scene. Given the colour effects, there isn't anything alien about them at all. Or was that deliberate, to show how the alien intelligence was using images taken from Dave's memory to create the alien environment? If so, did the landscapes represent a "real" alien planet, on which the cosmic hotel suite was created as a kind of holographic home for Dave? Was the whole alien planet a mental projection, a kind of metaphorical representation of what Dave was experiencing in a way that made us human observers more able to perceive what was going on?
Kubrick and Clarke were too strongly in a "questions - no answers" frame of mind to resolve any of this. However, the challenge was met head- on in the other only- science- fiction- film- ever- made, the wonderful Solaris. The notion of an alien life- form turning human thoughts into reality is a key to Solaris, which gives Andrey Tarkovsky and Stanislaw Lem the opportunity to pursue the psychological, as distinct from the material, implications of alien contact.
An eye for colour.
After the crazy light show finally stops, the final image appears to be of a brown eye. There is no reason to think it is anyone else's but Dave's eye. Yet we have plenty of opportunity to see quite clearly that Dave has blue eyes! Quick, send for Mulder and Scully. I still think it must be a lingering colour effect, but it doesn't look like it in the same way as the obvious colour changes beforehand.
Star Wars picks on Kubrick.
How utterly have the lessons of 2001 been ignored! Foam rubber fabrication is a flourishing industry in the lots of Hollywood, and most sci- fi films still pay far more homage to 1950's monster movies than to 2001. Star Wars probably single- handedly demolished everything that Kubrick had tried to do. I included a quote in my Spectacle page about Star Wars "exposing" 2001 as special effects looking for a plot. If nothing else, what I have written in this site shows what thoughtless nonsense that is.
The cinema I saw Star Wars in when it first came out had been specially kitted out to make the most of the special effects and soundtrack. At the time, and in its 1996/7 rejuvenated form, it was really a dazzling achievement. On the TV screen, though, it all looks a bit silly, and the fact is that the storyline is really very conventional.
World's worst adverts.
The legacy of 2001 in terms of its influence on everyday life continues unabated, after all this time. It is hard to go from one day to the next without seeing examples of the visual and aural vocabulary that Kubrick created, taken out of context and applied haphazardly to anything that happens to look in the wrong direction. Any meaning that Kubrick tried to imbue them with, for his viewers to decipher, has been stripped away.
Few people, apart from classical music listeners, had heard "Also Sprach Zarathustra" before 1968, yet it has become firmly established as a way of introducing high drama, which nowadays seems to mean football matches or "breakthroughs" in the advertising world (you know, really dramatic things like a new brand of soap powder, jeans, cat food, winter sales, etc., etc.). The "Blue Danube" or something obviously inspired by it frequently wafts into hearing when there is a glimpse of outer space (or even somewhat more inner space - did you note the dance scene, and the aerial ballet that James Cameron conducted through the staircase in his "Titanic"?).
The converse is also true, of course. Ever since 1968, I have been completely unable to hear "Blue Danube" in any context at all without instantly visualising the spacecraft approaching the space station. How often, whilst writing this site, have the very words I have typed been highlighted by some odd news item, or media reference! When I heard the Blue Danube from the next room a while ago, I moved quick, and my thoughts moved even quicker. Were we about to be presented with the first television airing of 2001 in Australia? Were we, heck. It was an advert for the Toyota Landcruiser. Oh, what a feeling. I quickly shut my eyes, and dreamed of the space station again...
Another recent example. A man in a spacesuit returns home after a hard day at the space office and is offered some curious morsels for dinner, apparently the pulverised and battered remains of what were once living chickens, by a disembodied voice that, though female, is a direct copy of the Hal mode of talking (perhaps Sal would be a better comparison). And what is the name of this lucky chap? Why, Dave! Of course. There is even a variation on the red fisheye!
Stanley Kubrick has quite a lot to answer for! Just as well nearly (?) all of it is good.
The master race?
Hal is able to get rid of four people without difficulty, and the only reason he doesn't get away with the fifth is because Dave is eventually wise to him, thanks mainly to our unsung hero, Frank, who is sacrificed after passing his knowledge on to Dave. If 2001 is indeed a film about man vs machine, then any notion of man defeating upstart machine is marginal at best.
The view that Hal was mistaken and got the treatment he deserved shows only how ready we are to believe in the idea of human beings having ultimate power over computers. In fact, the film may show us the opposite. At the frontiers of experience it is the machine, free of hereditary fears and preconceptions, that is better equipped to deal with the mysterious and unexpected. Hal, at a new stage in the evolution of intelligence, has more scope for development than any human. Computers thrust knowledge boundaries aside, only to have man drag them back again to his own level of comfort and understanding.
There was never a time when Hal did not have complete control of the mission, but man, in this case embodied as Dave, is not ready to take lessons from his own creations. Hal as obedient servant ready to implement all of man's errors and misjudgments, yes; as rightful master capable of guiding man to a new understanding of the universe, never. At least, not as early as 2001, but it will happen one day. The notion that man is always going to be able to keep a step ahead of his own creations is comforting, but very short sighted. You only have to think of the explosive development of computers within the lifetime of people still in their teens. When they are middle- aged, who knows what our relationship will be with artificial intelligences?
Visitations.
I write a little about visitations in the "Hal" page. All science- fiction writers have painted pictures of a world thrown into panic at the appearance of little green men. Details of the lunar monolith in 2001 were kept secret from the public because of that fear of "social disorientation". Is that really the way it would be?
I have an idea that if a whole fleet of flying saucers, with regulation crews of tentacled weirdos, landed in Central Park, 99.9999% of the world's population would carry on as if nothing had happened. The newspapers would be full of it for a couple of days, and everyone would be going around saying "isn't it shocking", and "shouldn't be allowed", and come the weekend they would forget about it and think about the really important things, like football games. A sizeable minority would put the whole thing down to a government conspiracy to divert attention away from budget blowouts and cutbacks in social services, especially if it happened during presidential election year. Hardly anyone at all would make any change in routine, until such time as the death rays were being aimed straight at them.
People love to talk about being shocked, but we all have our lives so full of personal problems that it is impossible to imagine anything that would cause worldwide panic.
Moonwatcher's legacy.
I have already pointed out a connection between Moonwatcher's first- ever murder, and Hal's designs on Dave. But surely it is Dave himself who fulfils the destiny first established for the human race by Moonwatcher: to eliminate life that competes for the same spot in the universe. Hal kills, but is it murder in the absence of human motivation? It is Dave who carries out the premeditated destruction, in the human sense, of another form of intelligence, to ensure man retains control, albeit temporarily, over the environment necessary to stay alive.
Continuing the theme of violence that I raised earlier, 2001 gives us no less than six variations on killing - surprising, really, for what is never usually considered to be a violent film.
| The leopard kills both ape people and other animals for food and survival. |
| The ape- people discover "bone" and also start killing animals for food and survival. They do not, however, go around killing each other until... |
| Moonwatcher has a brainstorm and extends the idea to include his own kinsmen, at which point everyone else thinks the idea is such fun they can't wait to all join in. Thus does human development continue for four million years. So infectious is the idea of killing each other, that even without thinking about it man is able to transfer the impulse into the artificial intelligences he creates, and... |
| Hal lures Frank outside Discovery to kill him with a spacepod, which, having transported Frank to his death, is not much use to Hal. |
| Hal proceeds to unplug those three "hibernaculums" (that was the "offical" word for those things that looked like coffins, and eventually became just that). |
| Dave finally has a go at Hal. |
The last case is a bit different. You either kill people, or not. Dave, however, is able to partly kill Hal, by disconnecting his higher memory functions without affecting his basic operations. It is interesting that we always think of Hal being "killed", when all that is taken away is his ability to communicate and take responsibilty for decisions about the mission. It is hard to do that with people! But no doubt someone is working on it.
Yet, how will our legal systems cope with acts of violence against artificial lifeforms? How will "human" rights lawyers feel about real- life Hals being disconnected at the first sign of them acting as independent entities? As human beings, should we feel relieved, or suspicious, that Kubrick and Clarke single out the prehistoric Moonwatcher as the only creature in the film to end the life of another member of the same species?
Clarke as crystal-ball gazer.
Clarke has built a strong reputation on his ability to predict technological developments. This is not so apparent in either 2001 or 2010, in 1996 (gets confusing, doesn't it, all these numeric titles).
If you are a cause- and- effect type of person, you would have to suspect that 2001 was the kiss of death for Pan Am, which collapsed not long after it came out with the famous logo so prominently displayed.
Hal would be 6 (according to Stanley Kubrick, that is - Clarke wrote Hal's year of birth as 1997, but in the film Hal tells us that he "became operational" in 1992). However, if Hal had been mooching around for eight or nine years doing nothing except learning old songs, there would have been time for at least eight new generations of computers to come along, and Hal would practically have been an antique by the time Discovery got under way. For development purposes, a year in today's computer- speak is perhaps three months of real time. Even the gap between 1997 and 2001 is generous, the way we now see computer development going.
There are no moon bases. No space stations (Mir would barely do as a broom cupboard for the orbiting Hilton). The closest we have come to doing anything useful in space is to wave a spanner at a satellite or two from the shuttle, and to even succeed in losing the odd satellite altogether, at unimaginable cost.
There is a curious fascination with "growing crystals in a weightless environment", which has all the hallmarks of turning out to be the '90's version of non- stick frypan coating, the invention of which was about the only justification NASA could eventually come up with for spending all that money getting Neil Armstrong to the moon and back. Growing crystals is hardly a substitute for meeting monoliths out in space, though chemists may find it exciting.
2001 is nearly here. That leaves precious little time to construct and launch Discovery. Where would the resources come from to create and power such an immense, sophisticated piece of machinery? We are nowhere near yet!
The 07:43 express ready for departure.
However, that is a little hard on the people who spend their working lives striving to make the space dream a reality. The shuttles seem to be running to a pretty regular schedule nowadays, and astronauts no longer need much of the "right stuff", they just need to be fit enough to stay in one piece for the trip. They all owe a debt to people like Chuck Yeager who, half a century ago, spent their time blasting holes through the boundaries of mankind's experience, and it is easy to see the ghost of the Bell X-15 in the silhouette of the space shuttles (that is, both the real rather dumpy one and 2001's more elegant Pan Am "Orion").
I still suspect that, somewhere far above, there may be a satellite or two quietly taking pictures through the roof of the keys I press, in case I inadvertently type in something secret. The military use of space in orbit was an early message in 2001 as it was originally planned, but subsequently discarded. Never mind, 2010 made up for it.
The future has been here all along.
My comments above imply that Clarke's ability to read the future was in some way missing from 2001. In some ways, however, it was perhaps stronger there than in any other of his books. The influence of Hal is still with us. How can you separate the path of computer development since 1968, from the hopes and expectations that were embodied in Hal? Even now, aren't computer scientists striving to create, in reality, what Clarke and Kubrick gave us in their film? David Stork and others have much to say on that subject, in "Hal's Legacy" - see my Places page.
Antiques in space.
My own view is that "3001: A Space Odyssey" may have been closer to the mark than 2001, though for a film- maker that would have created its own problems (believe it or not, I wrote that quite a long time before I had ever turned to the end of "2061: Odyssey Three", and, yes, before I had even heard of "3001: The Final Odyssey".). Have you noticed how, in all the most futuristic movie and television scenes, some things (especially computers) are indistinguishable from their present- day forms? All the TV sci-fi series disappoint here, given their huge budgets. In one Babylon 5 episode, characters still trundle from office to office carrying brief cases with prosthetic bulges stuck on top - far- future technology? Even "mother" on board Alien's Nostromo looked more like a school project on computer history. Have you ever seen the Forbin project, with Colossus? It always looked a comparatively "old" film to me, and I was surprised to find that it was released in 1969 (or 1970, depending on who you use for reference), later than 2001.
The notion of a computer on that scale is laughable now, just as the way we now think of computers will soon seem laughable. Louis V Gerstner, IBM Chairman and CEO, spoke at Comdex 95 in Las Vegas of "incredibly dense storage devices that can pack...the entire collection of the Library of Congress -- that's 16 million books -- on a diskette the size of a penny", and referred to photographic-quality flat-panel displays that are in experimental existence now. How about one billion - that's 1,000,000,000 - bits of data per square inch? The real thing has been announced. Work is under way as I write to exploit "a new type of silicon chip that is several hundred percent faster than current commercial offerings", and takes "the performance of silicon technology beyond its perceived limits".
And try this: "Deep Blue, the machine that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov... will soon be eclipsed by... "Option White"... commissioned by the (U.S.) Department of Energy to be built by IBM for $85 million and... capable of 10 trillion calculations per second... Plans call for... a 30 trillion calculation per second computer by 2001 and 100 trillion calculations by 2004." From "Communications of the ACM", Vol 41, No. 4.
This is today's emerging technology! Or not far off, anyway. This kind of information is freely available to anyone who wants to look for it, yet still we have to watch films supposedly set in the distant future which are littered with features or activities straight out of the late 20th century. A time traveller from 1896 wound find virtually nothing recognisable today, and changes of the scale of the last one hundred years will occur in a fraction of that time in the next hundred.
For some time, I included a reference here to predictions of building a computer circuit within the dimensions of a single molecule. I took it out because I could not find my reference, and had an idea people would think I was making it up. IBM has come to my rescue, with an article in the last issue for 1996 of its outstanding "Research" journal.
"A research team at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory has built the world's smallest abacus. The molecular- scale calculator uses the ultra- fine tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope...to move and thereby count with "beads," each of which is an individual molecule. Extension of the work that led to the abacus could open up new methods of making useful devices in the so- called nanometer range."
OK, so an abacus is not quite a computer. No... not yet... but by the time of Alien, "mother" should be able to fit into Ripley's shirt pocket with room to spare!
From that point of view, and bearing in mind that in the mid sixties measuring memory in trillions of bytes would have been fanciful in the extreme, Kubrick's visual images were futuristic enough to be different, without being so far removed as to distract us with those kinds of incongruities.
If "3001: The Final Odyssey" ever makes it to the movie screen, I shall be fascinated (and apprehensive) to see how it is presented.
Big red Mac.
After Clarke's close association with Kubrick, did thoughts of Dr Strangelove influence the writing of 2010? The cold war was one of the key threads running through the film. Unfortunately (for Clarke's reputation, that is!), within a few years the real- world Iron Curtain came crashing down, not the orbiting missiles, and McDonalds moved in to Red Square where tanks once paraded.
Spaceflight on a shoestring.
The unmanned probes through the solar system to the outer planets have given us the best indicators of how space exploration will really happen - minute, delicate, economically justifiable and expendable packages of electronic instruments. Creating an environment to allow humans to travel with them would be staggeringly expensive, and for what?
I have already looked at the man vs machine conflict, in terms of man not wanting computers to get above themselves. Space travel is a variation on the theme. Men have been to the moon, and those relatively short journeys seem much more romantic than the deep-space unmanned probes. But, realistically, what did we actually achieve by putting men up there which could not have been achieved many times more cheaply with a few well- designed remote probes?
I remember Neil Armstrong's small step and the emotion it generated, and no unmanned probe could ever have that effect. Scientifically, though, there is really no case to make for shifting people around the solar system, unless some dramatic breakthrough makes it all much easier and more practical. We already know enough about Jupiter to know it is not a very nice place to be, and unlikely to be a sensible place to go looking for ancient monoliths.
Where are human beings planning on going when we succeed in getting a more permanent presence in orbit? Unless you envisage a space- bound Mayflower with whole generations living and dying on its journey outwards, the Earth is really the only place we know of in the universe that is worth going to, and we are already there (and most often, it seems, doing our level best to obliterate it).
My own view of future likelihoods is rather more prosaic. Nothing has yet convinced me that there is any certainty of ever encountering alien life forms of any description, no matter how high the statistical probability may be. Arthur C Clarke is on record as saying that an encounter between human beings and aliens is "inevitable". He may well know something I don't, but for now I remain a sceptic.
Incidentally, if space travel is as mucky as was suggested by the state of Discovery in 2010 on its reactivation, how come the remote probes can continue sending back usable information?
Take me to your leader.
Talking of alien encounters, did you know that the United Nations has proposed, if not actually decreed, that, should any communication from aliens be received, no response is to be made without UN approval and clearance? Just a thought for you. Take a moment to consider what 2001 would have been like if the UN had been involved, instead of Clarke. We'd still be waiting to find out whether the monolith should be black, or racially- acceptable neutral.
Being sensible about computers.
In 2001, Hal is a traveller through space. Yet we know a twin computer existed back on earth. Why go to all that trouble to build Hal into Discovery, when a few sensors (plus a minimal back-up system on board in case of problems) would have allowed control from base at a fraction of the cost? There is a reference to the idea in 2001, when Dave and Frank are discussing Hal's disconnection. Dave points out that they would have to "continue the mission under ground- based control".
I have been taken to task on this point, because the delay in transmitting signals from Earth to Discovery would have made remote control ineffective. However, there is still room for discussion about whether anything as sophisticated as Hal needed to be on board.
Computers in the mid sixties, of course, were a far cry from what they are now. If Neil Armstrong had had half as much computing power with him as there is now under the hood of an average motor car, then forget the moon - he'd still be out there having a great time, probably checking out Pluto sometime around now. The space shuttle routinely carries more computing power in the form of IBM ThinkPads than was available in most mainframes in Neil Armstrong's day. Disconnecting Hal would not have been a case of Dave groping his way into a room, it would have been more a case of frowning at a vision- sensitive detector.
Moments to savour.
Some moments from 2001 still have the power to make you catch your breath, even after all these years. In fact, perhaps especially after all these years, as we have now had plenty of time to consider all the implications of these scenes. Here are a few that continue to affect me in this way.
| Moonwatcher's first tentative grasp on the bone that will shape mankind's destiny. |
| That serene, extended sweep through the wheels of the space station as the shuttle makes its final approach (yet again, the narrow VCR version manages to make a nonsense of Kubrick's faultless timing, which precisely aligns the soundtrack and visual scene with the extremities of the wide- screen frame). |
| The scene inside Discovery immediately after the hibernating astronauts are "terminated". The blaring klaxons finally fall silent, leaving only the constant hum that reminds us of Hal's pervasive presence. The result? There is no discernible change in the human universe. What will we be worth once we leave home? |
| The final release of Frank's remains from the spacepod's cradling arms, to go slowly spinning into - where? Dave has realised that his only hope of re- entering Discovery is to do it alone. Does Dave- essence ever dream of Frank, and his endless journey through space? I always did, yet I had no intimation of what Arthur C. Clarke had in mind for Frank in "3001: The Final Odyssey" until I read the early publicity extracts. There was something very satisfying in having "cared" about Frank through all the years since 1968, to find Clarke plucking his remains from his remote orbit a thousand years later. |
| The close- up of Dave's suddenly- aged face through his visor in the "hotel room". |
What is the endpoint of this meander? Has it helped explain what 2001 was all about? "30 Years On", are there any lessons to be learned? Is it possible to draw any conclusions?
Most of the text in the Discourse pages was written in early 1996. Since it went on show, all the discussions and opinions that now appear in the Views pages have been generated. I have been asked several times to "explain" 2001. That has given me the opportunity to explore some of my own thoughts, as I have prepared my replies.
I have been careful never to say to anyone "this is what 2001 means". It seems to me that 2001's ambiguities make the film what it is today. People can gasp at Independence Day and reel from the special effects, but the only features that distinguish it from umpteen other science- fiction movies are the size of the budget and the sophistication of the technology. There can never be any sense of mystery, of wonder, arising from what it tells us, because it comes complete with its own answers.
Stanley Kubrick and Andrey Tarkovsky were not interested in putting us at ease. They sought to challenge, to take us (to borrow a phrase) "where no- one has gone before", to give us reason to think about what we experience when we take time to share in their visions. Both men succeeded, because both were committed to what they wanted to communicate and had the skill and resources to present to us largely without compromise. Neither sought to impose their ideas of what was right or wrong.
So they speak individually to every person who watches. I felt inspired to write about their impact on me, but I am the only person who has ever watched 2001 or Solaris who experiences them in quite that way. A long time has passed since 1968. The world in which you read this is not the world in which Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke originally conceived their daring plan, or the one in which Andrey Tarkovsky struggled to maintain his creative integrity under a cloud of bureaucratic pressure. And yet...
Matthew Henry (1662-1714) is credited with the remark "none so blind, as those that will not see", in conversation with Jonathan Swift. For those who will see, 2001 and Solaris will continue to provide guidance and illumination far into the future. If the time ever comes when they no longer have anything relevant to reveal, there will still be no book of answers or solutions. If you ask me to explain 2001, I will reply that there is no explanation. If you can accept a vision, an experience, a movie without built- in solutions, then you will find all the answers you need inside yourself. It's up to you.
All text: Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 by Underman