It’s here. The most famous year in science fiction — 2001 — has arrived. Out with “Auld Lang Syne.” Nothing less than the first five notes of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” seemed appropriate when the clock struck midnight.
Director Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a film which opens with those memorable notes from Richard Strauss’ tone poem, probably will be difficult to find this New Year’s Day in video rental stores. Nostalgia buffs will compete with curious, first-time viewers to grab up copies of the timely, 139-minute piece of entertainment based on science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s work.
This is Day One of the year used as the movie’s setting and, for most people who saw the flick soon after its 1968 premiere, the date represents a destination that seemed too far away then to comprehend. The journey’s speed through subsequent decades to the present has to seem like one’s own personal rocket trip through time.
No one knows for sure what life will be like in 3001, but the lesson of “2001: A Space Odyssey” is that nothing is implausible.
Kubrick’s film showed computer-controlled rocket travel in outer space a year before NASA succeeded in its first landing on the moon. Personal computers and cordless telephones — all standard equipment now — still were years away from practical use when the film came out, but there they were on the big screen making us marvel over their use. Bill Gates was 12 at the time.
Though “2001: A Space Odyssey” enjoys a special status in our culture, the film met with a mixed response when it debuted. Its subtlety, lack of narrative and slow pacing were turnoffs for many and added up to a lone Academy Award for special effects.
The film’s real star, HAL 9000, was a computer, after all, and he neither acted as well as Cliff Robertson in “Charly” or sang as well as Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl,” who were that year’s box-office attractions.
But almost everyone who saw Kubrick’s work, which was greatly informed by the visionary Clarke’s imagination, was mesmerized by one feature in particular: the futuristic, technological environment used to give the audience a realistic feel for what daily life might be like 33 years in the future, which, of course, is now.
Scientific consultants were used by the Kubrick-Clarke team to develop the then-wondrous concepts, which weren’t even on most moviegoer’s minds, let alone part of everyday routines. Their predictions were so remarkably accurate, in fact, that “2001: A Space Odyssey” arrives at this title year in nearly seamless fashion, eliminating much of the film’s original impact for those seeing it for the first time.
In 1968 viewers marveled at Dr. Heywood Floyd, played by actor William Sylvester, using a plastic telephone card to place a video call to his home — videophoning being a technology still on the drawing boards then but now generally available, if not widely used. They were impressed at the sight of Floyd using a voice-activated security system, and it brought smiles when he drank liquid vegetables through a straw. Not everything was on target, of course. We remain a long way from landing on Jupiter or its moons, a capability the movie presupposes, and the use of Pan Am as the space shuttle airline of choice no longer works, thanks to the company having gone out of business. And you can forget those Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union that were alluded to in the movie, tensions at the core of NASA’s interest in exploring outer space during those years. Glasnost and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union has resulted in a general thawing of relations.
It is HAL 9000’s ability to read the lips of the crew onboard the Discovery that sets off the film’s dramatic chain of events, and, while computerized robots today can do everything from sweep floors to perform surgery, the lip reading function has yet to be developed.
“You can call this a work in progress,” said Thomas Huang, a professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — HAL 9000’s fictional birthplace. “There are certain aspects of this that can now be done, but not as completely as what is shown in the film.”
Kubrick’s inspiration for “2001: A Space Odyssey” came from a short story called “The Sentinel” by Clarke, who, in turn, wrote the screenplay for the movie and followed with a novel based on the film. The writer went on to do other projects related to the movie, the last of which was the best-selling sequel “3001: The Final Odyssey” published in 1997.
While a re-release of “2001: A Space Odyssey” is in the offing for later this year, there’s been little talk thus far of Clarke’s sequel hitting the big screen. It, too, is full of predictions about what everyday life will be like for Earthlings a thousand years from now.
For example, computers will be everywhere, Clarke writes, but it will be our thoughts that control them, not the turning of a switch or a voice command. Virtual reality will mean, among other things, huge nature parks in outer space.
Four towers, 3 miles in diameter, will project more than 20,000 miles into space from the earth’s surface. They will be called Asia, Africa, America, and Pacifica. Humans will be able to slap on mechanical devices and fly. Knowledge will be implanted in our brains via the use of information tablets relayed through brain caps.
This may seem like science fiction, but 33 years ago much in “2001: A Space Odyssey” appeared to be exactly that for many viewers. Now that we’re here, it doesn’t seem like fiction at all.
Except for that lipreading HAL.
2001
A SCORECARD
Travel to the moon:
(Check mark) Yes, but it’s been a while
Travel to Jupiter:
(Blank space) We’ve yet to land there, but our robots have done Mars.
Contact with extraterrestrials
(Blank space) Nothing’s officially confirmed, but lot of people think they’ve had some.
Space stations
(Check mark) Yes, and already they’ve had to be repaired.
Lip-reading computers
(Blank space) A work in progress (at the University of Illinois).
Telephone calling cards
(Check mark) No self-respecting teenager today is without one.
Voice ID systems
(Check mark) We even use them to start our vehicles.
Zero-gravity toilets
(Check mark) A NAASA official assures us ZGTs are used on manned spacecraft.
Pan-Am spacecraft shuttles
(Check mark) We’ve got the shuttles, but Pan-Am is no longer with us.
Video telephones
(Check mark) They’re no common, but they’re definitely available.
3001
ARTHUR C. CLARKE’S TIP SHEET
(Blank space) Laser scalp treatment eliminates the need for haircuts.
(Blank space) Anglish is the universal language, though Russian, French and Mandarin are used on a limited basis.
(Blank space) Smithsonian has branches on Mars, the Moon.
(Blank space) People will wear special skull caps, which will relay knowledge into our brains from “information tablets” slipped into a remote brain box.
(Blank space) Every person has a five-figure ID number.
(Blank space) Two religions: Deists, who believe there is one god and Theists who believe there is more than one god.
(Blank space) Dinosaurs, notably raptors, will be domesticated and perform menial tasks.
(Blank space) All food will be synthetic.
