2001: A Space Odyssey

http://www.avclub.com/articles/2001-a-space-odyssey,43912/

Scenic Routes
2001: A Space Odyssey
Mike D'Angelo
August 9, 2010

As some of you have observed from time to time, this column has tended thus far to avoid the most notable scenes in cinema history—those iconic, oft-excerpted moments that even folks who haven’t seen the movie in question generally know well. For one thing, like most critics, I’m always eager to pimp lesser-known favorites, and it’s hard to imagine a better opportunity for persuasion than sitting readers down with a representative hunk of awesomeness. More than that, though, I’ve been concerned that there wouldn’t be a whole lot to say about scenes so familiar that most of you could play them in your head from memory. Is there any point to close analysis of something everybody’s seen a dozen times or more? Still, I continually find that even sequences I thought I knew backward hold some surprises when carefully examined, so I walked over to my DVD collection and grabbed the first all-time masterpiece I saw, which happened to be Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its most iconic moment? Surely Keir Dullea demanding that Hal open the pod bay doors. So I watched it again. So should you.

Quick context for the handful of folks who don’t know precisely what’s going on here: HAL 9000, the ship’s computer—which demonstrates a level of artificial intelligence well beyond anything we’re likely to see for decades to come, much less the state of the art from nine years ago—has gone quietly bonkers, for reasons never made explicit in the movie. (Arthur C. Clarke lays it all out in the novel, written concurrently with the screenplay. A mistake, in my opinion.) Having already killed four of the five crew members, three of whom were in hibernation, he’s now denying re-entry to the ship’s last surviving human, Dullea, who went out in an auxiliary pod to retrieve his colleague’s body. HAL isn’t lying, incidentally—he did “hear” (via lip-reading) Dullea and the colleague planning to disconnect him and take manual control of the spacecraft. So it’s fair to interpret HAL’s behavior as an act of self-preservation.

Now what exactly has burned this particular scene into our collective cultural memory? It isn’t just the admittedly arresting notion of a crazy murderous computer, or we’d be seeing clips from 1977’s Demon Seed on TV every few months. (If you happen to see Demon Seed as an impressionable child, however, it’ll stay with you for the rest of your life. Trust me on this.) No, what makes this standoff so chilling is the maddeningly soothing tone of Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL. “I won’t argue with you any more,” Dullea snaps at one point, but the statement is redundant—there’s no arguing with an entity that’s so conversationally implacable. What’s more, HAL sounds exactly the same in this scene as he does in previous scenes in which he and the crew engage in meaningless chitchat. There’s no indication whatsoever, tonally, that by refusing to open the doors, he’s effectively pronouncing a death sentence, and when he decides there’s no further point in communication, he simply says “goodbye” and does the equivalent of hanging up on Dullea, without even the tiny satisfaction of an audible click.

However, that description contradicts one of the most common observations about 2001, which is that HAL seems more human than any of the human characters. I’ve always thought so myself, in fact, but had never really pondered why before. Prior to rewatching the film, which I hadn’t seen since the mid-’90s, I think I would have largely attributed this effect to the relative (and very likely deliberate, on Kubrick’s part) weakness of the film’s onscreen cast; if you look up reviews, you’ll find that Dullea and Gary Lockwood are frequently described with adjectives like “flat” and “wooden.” And it’s true that nobody’s ever gonna mistake them for James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, charisma-wise. But even in this brief scene, Dullea gives a totally credible performance—his frustration and mounting concern are evident in his facial expression and in the way his throat constricts as he realizes the gravity of his predicament. Meanwhile, HAL remains, well, robotic, in the sense that there’s no variability (at this point, anyway) in his carefully measured responses.

So I watched the scene again, a couple more times, trying to work out where this overwhelming impression was coming from, and it finally hit me. It’s the silence. Not the silence after HAL “hangs up,” but the initial silence, before he first responds. What makes the human beings in 2001 seem a bit less than fully human isn’t just the nature of the performances—it’s that every interaction among them is completely functional. We’re seeing people say and do whatever is required to achieve their objective at that particular moment, and nothing more. HAL, by contrast, demonstrates what we all recognize as neurosis. And while it’s mostly implied by his behavior, it does have one explicit manifestation: that refusal to answer Dullea’s summons for 43 seconds, followed by capitulation when it becomes clear that Dullea isn’t gonna shut up. That’s so human, it almost hurts. We’ve all been there, most likely on both sides. In fact, if a computer ever manages to pass the Turing test, it’ll surely be by replicating this sort of semi-rational evasion, rather than by saying something expressly intelligent or creative. It’s hard to conceive of a machine thinking “I don’t even want to deal with you right now. Oh, all right.”

Of course, when I say “silence,” I only mean that HAL isn’t yet speaking. Kubrick and his sound editor, Winston Ryder, achieve a magnificent atmosphere of unearthly estrangement in the sequence of shots that accompanies Dullea’s repeated efforts to get HAL’s attention, cutting from the ambient hum of the ship (which changes slightly in different areas) to the vague static and subtle whirring heard inside Dullea’s pod to the complete aural void of space, with each wall of sound, or lack thereof, punctuated by increasingly urgent cries of “Do you read me?” More than the groundbreaking special effects involving apparent weightlessness, or the previously unimagined depictions of the cosmos, it’s Kubrick’s clinical precision, perhaps best realized in this eerie montage, that inspires a sense of awe in me whenever I watch this movie. Which is true even though the phrase “clinical precision” sort of connotes “anti-human.” 2001 isn’t warm and fuzzy. But neither is infinity, and no movie has taken a greater swing at the infinite. And yet in the end, it’s still that placid twinge of irrationality that lingers most of all.

Also, the Discovery looks a giant Toblerone bar. Just thought I’d mention that.

The 5 Most Scientifically Plausible Sci-Fi Movies

http://www.newsarama.com/film/081116-top-5-plausible-sci-fi.html

The 5 Most Scientifically Plausible Sci-Fi Movies
By Benjamin Radford, Special to Newsarama
06 November 2008

Great science fiction isn't just about gooey aliens and gee-whiz technologies like teleporters. Unlike, say, the ever-popular fantasy genre, sci-fi is often grounded in the human condition and based on plausible—if speculative—science. Of course, some science fiction films are more plausible than others: Would the Galactic Empire really have enough manpower to build (and then rebuild) the Death Star in the Star Wars films? While legions of sci-fi nerds debate that question, here’s are flicks that stand out:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

It's no accident that the classic sci-fi film 2001 was rooted in good science, having sprung from the mind of the late, great Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke's background in science informed and inspired the setting in 2001, describing geosynchronous satellites, artificial intelligence, and commercial space travel. Clarke lived long enough to see the satellites he envisioned actually put into orbit, and in the deserts of New Mexico, a "spaceport" is planned that will allow paying passengers to see our pale blue dot from near space.

2. The Truman Show (1998)

It's hard for many young people to remember, but there was a time before the 24-hour news feed and the reality TV craze. The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey as the unwitting star of a voyeuristic television show watched by billions around the planet, foretold the coming of America's weekly entertainment. Not only was close, continuous surveillance plausible, it already exists in current hits like Big Brother and Survivor.

3. Gattaca (1997)

In the not-too-distant future world of Gattaca, children's genes are pre-selected by their upper-class parents for the best traits; those babies whose genes are imperfect are treated as second-class citizens. Today DNA analysis is common, and several companies offer genetic testing for as little as a few hundred dollars. Genetic profiling? Health insurance companies potentially denying claims based on genetic predisposition to a disease? For many, this fear is not science fiction but science fact.

4. Iron Man (2008)

Marvel Comics hero Tony Stark is a genius inventor whose suit of armor—basically a souped-up mechanical exoskeleton run by computers—is probably more scientifically plausible than most superheroes. Though Iron Man's nifty gadgets, including his handy laser repulsors and jet boots, remain science fiction, in many cases the underlying scientific principles are sound. Practical problems, such as the suit's cost and weight, would make a real Iron Man unlikely.

5. Jurassic Park (1993)

Part of what made Michael Crichton an enormously popular writer was his ability to extrapolate current science technology. Science fiction has always been about "What if?", and few modern authors blended science fact with science fiction so successfully. Though scientists are a long way off from cloning dinosaurs—they haven't gone much past Dolly the cloned sheep—the scientific fundamentals are there. By the end of the century, real cloned dinos might just be chasing down tourists!

Benjamin Radford is a writer, columnist for LiveScience, and film critic. He has written and directed two short films, one of which will be released in 2009.

For Clarke, Issues of Faith Tackled Scientifically

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/books/20clar.html

March 20, 2008
An Appraisal
For Clarke, Issues of Faith, but Tackled Scientifically
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

“Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral” were the instructions left by Arthur C. Clarke, who died on Wednesday at the age of 90. This may not have surprised anyone who knew that this science-fiction writer, fabulist, fantasist and deep-sea diver had long seen religion as a symptom of humanity’s “infancy,” something to be outgrown and overcome.

But his fervor is still jarring because when it comes to the scriptural texts of modern science fiction, and the astonishing generation of prophetic innovators who were his contemporaries — Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury — Mr. Clarke’s writings were the most biblical, the most prepared to amplify reason with mystical conviction, the most religious in the largest sense of religion: speculating about beginnings and endings, and how we get from one to the other.

Stanley Kubrick’s film of Mr. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” for example — a project developed with the author — is haunting not for its sci-fi imaginings of artificial intelligence and space-station engineering but for its evocation of humanity’s origins and its vision of a transcendent future embodied in a human fetus poised in space.

Even the titles of some of Mr. Clarke’s stories invoke scriptural language. “If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth ...” tells of a boy on a lunar colony who is taken out by his father to see their mother planet rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war, an experience that inspires a dream of future return to be passed from generation to generation. In “The Nine Billion Names of God” monks of a Tibetan-like retreat believe that the very purpose of humanity is to write down the nine billion permutations of letters that spell God’s secret name, a project assisted by representatives of an I.B.M.-style company who indulgently supply the equipment so the project can come to its long-awaited close. As the computer experts fly home, “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

Religious symbolism is not always beneficent of course. In what may be Mr. Clarke’s most suggestive and disturbing novel, “Childhood’s End,” an alien race of Overlords, with apparent generosity, establish a utopia on Earth, eliminating human warfare and ushering in an era of plenty. But it is no accident that when the Overlords are finally described they have the appearance of Satanic creatures, complete with “the leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail.”

Whatever attitude comes through — and it is almost always fraught with ambiguity — religion suffuses Mr. Clarke’s realm. He demands the canvas of Genesis and upon it he enacts experiments in thought. All science fiction does this to a certain extent, trying to imagine alternative universes in which one factor or another is slightly different. What if carbon were not the fundamental element in life forms? What if a society existed that never experienced nighttime?

Mr. Clarke’s enterprise, though, is at the edges of the frame: trying to examine the moments when things come to be and when they come to an end. In the short story “Rescue Party” aliens come to save Earth from an imminent solar explosion. They find that humans, a primitive species that had known how to use radio signals for barely 200 years, had already saved themselves, launching a fleet of ships into the stars, knowing their journey would take hundreds of years.

The rescuers are shocked by humanity’s daring and determination. “This is the youngest civilization in the Universe,” one notes. “Four hundred thousand years ago it did not even exist. What will it be a million years from now?” The story foretells the dominance of this species even though it is outnumbered by the creatures of the heavens — a dominance that, as Mr. Clarke makes sure we feel, will not always be welcome.

Such apocalypse is the bread and butter of science fiction, but sometimes with Mr. Clarke it is also the communion, the sharing of a moment of transcendence in which some destiny is fulfilled, some possibility opened up. Hence the fetus of “2001.” That transformation may also not be something to be desired by current standards. The prospects are just too alien, like the ineffable Overmind in “Childhood’s End” that propels humanity to a new evolutionary stage, inspiring as much horror as awe.

This side of Mr. Clarke’s work may be the most eerie, particularly because his mystical speculations accompany an uncanny ability to envision worlds that are eminently plausible. It is Mr. Clarke who first conceived of the communication satellites that orbit directly over a single spot on Earth and allow the planet to be blanketed in a network of signals. There are many other examples as well.

But acts of reason and scientific speculation are just the beginning of his imaginings. Reason alone is insufficient. Something else is required. For anyone who read Mr. Clarke in the 1960s and ’70s, when space exploration and scientific research had an extraordinary sheen, his science fiction made that enterprise even more thrilling by taking the longest and broadest view, in which the achievements of a few decades fit into a vision of epic proportions reaching millenniums into the future. It is no wonder that two generations of scientists were affected by his work.

For all his acclaimed forecasting ability, though, it is unclear whether Mr. Clarke knew precisely what he saw in that future. There is something cold in his vision, particularly when he imagines the evolutionary transformation of humanity. He leaves behind all the things that we recognize and know, and he doesn’t provide much guidance for how to live within the world we recognize and know. In that sense his work has little to do with religion.

But overall religion is unavoidable. Mr. Clarke famously — and accurately — said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Perhaps any sufficiently sophisticated science fiction, at least in his case, is nearly indistinguishable from religion.

Writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/ap_on_en_ot/obit_clarke

Writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
3-18-8

Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, died Wednesday in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s and sometimes used a wheelchair, died at 1:30 a.m. after suffering breathing problems, aide Rohan De Silva said.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.

He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.

Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

But it was his writing that shot him to his greatest fame and that gave him the greatest fulfillment.

"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."

From 1950, he began a prolific output of both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes publishing three books in a year. He published his best-selling "3001: The Final Odyssey" when he was 79.

Some of his best-known books are "Childhood's End," 1953; "The City and The Stars," 1956, "The Nine Billion Names of God," 1967; "Rendezvous with Rama," 1973; "Imperial Earth," 1975; and "The Songs of Distant Earth," 1986.

When Clarke and Kubrick got together to develop a movie about space, they used as basic ideas several of Clarke's shorter pieces, including "The Sentinel," written in 1948, and "Encounter in the Dawn." As work progressed on the screenplay, Clarke also wrote a novel of the story. He followed it up with "2010," "2061," and "3001: The Final Odyssey."

In 1989, two decades after the Apollo 11 moon landings, Clarke wrote: "2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined."

Clarke won the Nebula Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1972, 1974 and 1979; the Hugo Award of the World Science Fiction Convention in 1974 and 1980, and in 1986 became Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was awarded the CBE in 1989.

Born in Minehead, western England, on Dec. 16, 1917, the son of a farmer, Arthur Charles Clark became addicted to science fiction after buying his first copies of the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" at Woolworth's. He read English writers H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon and began writing for his school magazine in his teens.

Clarke went to work as a clerk in Her Majesty's Exchequer and Audit Department in London, where he joined the British Interplanetary Society and wrote his first short stories and scientific articles on space travel.

It was not until after the World War II that Clarke received a bachelor of science degree in physics and mathematics from King's College in London.

In the wartime Royal Air Force, he was put in charge of a new radar blind-landing system.

But it was an RAF memo he wrote in 1945 about the future of communications that led him to fame. It was about the possibility of using satellites to revolutionize communications — an idea whose time had decidedly not come.

Clarke later sent it to a publication called Wireless World, which almost rejected it as too far-fetched.

Clarke married in 1953, and was divorced in 1964. He had no children.

He moved to the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka in 1956 after embarking on a study of the Great Barrier Reef. He discovered that scuba-diving approximated the feeling of weightlessness that astronauts experience in space, and he remained a diving enthusiast, running his own scuba venture into old age.

"I'm perfectly operational underwater," he once said.

Clarke was linked by his computer with friends and fans around the world, spending each morning answering e-mails and browsing the Internet.

At a 90th birthday party thrown for Clarke in December, the author said he had three wishes: for Sri Lanka's raging civil war to end, for the world to embrace cleaner sources of energy and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings to be discovered.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clarke once said he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit.

"One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."
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On the Net:

The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation: http://www.clarkefoundation.org