50 years 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Archibald]

I red the novel first, when I turned 19 in May... 2001. I love the novel as it stands, and I love the movie as well. Digging that further, I loved the novel because it expanded Heywood Floyd trip as seen in the movie. More Orion III, more Ares 1B, more Space Station V. What's not to like ?
...
Clarke made clear he wasn't writting a novelization of Kubrick movie, this for a simple reason: the movie wasn't finished when he was writting the novel. They were very much parallel creations that actually diverged significantly along the way. As Clarke explained a few years down the road in "The lost worlds of 2001". He also wrote an "update" in the fall of 1982 (thing it was related to 2010, the novel) - noting that it was 18 years from 1964 when he started writing, and 18 years left before... 2001 for real.

Remember that in the novel, the second monolith ends right in the middle of Iapetus "eye", around Saturn - that actually exists and was imaged by the Voyagers a decade after. As it happened at JPL, Carl Sagan couldn't resist: spotting a little black dot in the "eye", he send the picture to Clarke; "thinking about you", said the caption.

Kubrick nixed Saturn from the movie because he felt SFX couldn't render the rings in any satisfying way. Despite the Trumbulls, father and son, strongly disagreeing. This led to another movie a few years later: Silent running, complete with Saturn and its rings.

The lost worlds of 2001 is a very good, fascinating reading: also often hilarious. Clarke had a few quirks, Kubrick had a few others, and then Hollywood swamp on top of this... funny things happened.

Fun fact: 2001 and Contact are related, through science advisor Carl Sagan. As for Contact and Interstellar, they are related through Linda Obst and... Matthew McConaughey. Funny to think Cooper ancestor was Ellie Arroway boyfriend, in better times.

I wish somebody could make a DVD package of all three movies.

 

[Grey Havoc]

There is also a nice Easter Egg in Interstellar that is a nod towards a certain scene in 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Feller makes an interesting CAD model of the interior of the Discovery:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptJmJGcHvk



One thing I disagree with: he claims an inconsistency, in that Bowman enters the ship through the emergency airlock and then is shown entering the pod bay through the storage room... but the airlock doesn't attack to the storage area, but directly to the pod bay. But here's the thing: Bowman is shown getting blown into the airlock sans helmet, then the next time you see him he's leaving he storage area *with* a helmet attached to his suit. I propose that he entered the airlock sans helmet, then entered the pod bay, picked up & donned the green helmet, then entered storage for *something.* Maybe he picked up and used some meds to deal with decompression/vacuum exposure. Maybe some meth to give him a little extra juice. Maybe anything.

Still, it's a good model.

 

[Rhinocrates]

You know, posting a star trek (I assume?) screen grab really doesn't have as much evidentiary value in the actual universe as you might hope...

Is he at it again? The ignore button is a wonderful thing.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Feller makes an interesting CAD model of the interior of the Discovery:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptJmJGcHvk



One thing I disagree with: he claims an inconsistency, in that Bowman enters the ship through the emergency airlock and then is shown entering the pod bay through the storage room... but the airlock doesn't attack to the storage area, but directly to the pod bay. But here's the thing: Bowman is shown getting blown into the airlock sans helmet, then the next time you see him he's leaving he storage area *with* a helmet attached to his suit. I propose that he entered the airlock sans helmet, then entered the pod bay, picked up & donned the green helmet, then entered storage for *something.* Maybe he picked up and used some meds to deal with decompression/vacuum exposure. Maybe some meth to give him a little extra juice. Maybe anything.

Still, it's a good model.

Speaking of inconsistencies....why did the designers decide to install an ejector seat in a space pod?

 

[Rhinocrates]

One of HAL's jobs was monitoring crew health.

 

[Orionblamblam]

He might`ve stopped to pick up the key to Hals memory bank and the other key for switching off parts of Hals higher functions.

Nope. Bowman was shown opening a small compartment and retrieving the key just outside the "Logic Memory Center":





Personally I like to think there was a small shitter in the supply closet. Seems like after the day Dave had had, spending a few quiet moments taking a leak would be altogether understandable.

 

[martinbayer]

KUBRICK, YOU...!!!

Spaceflight is a bitch... (and yes, moderators, I understand any and all reactions and retaliatory measures you may take, so fire away!

 

[Rhinocrates]

Spaceflight is a bitch... (and yes, moderators, I understand any and all reactions and retaliatory measures you may take, so fire away!

A friend speculated that this experience might be the same for a cat being taken to the vet in a car.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Found this in my files, not sure if I posted it before. Art by Oliver Rennert.

 

[martinbayer]

Is he at it again? The ignore button is a wonderful thing.

I don't drink coffee, so reading his posts is my caffeine surrogate...

 

[Arjen]

I take my SPF unfiltered.

 

[The K2]

Feller makes an interesting CAD model of the interior of the Discovery:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DptJmJGcHvk



One thing I disagree with: he claims an inconsistency, in that Bowman enters the ship through the emergency airlock and then is shown entering the pod bay through the storage room... but the airlock doesn't attack to the storage area, but directly to the pod bay. But here's the thing: Bowman is shown getting blown into the airlock sans helmet, then the next time you see him he's leaving he storage area *with* a helmet attached to his suit. I propose that he entered the airlock sans helmet, then entered the pod bay, picked up & donned the green helmet, then entered storage for *something.* Maybe he picked up and used some meds to deal with decompression/vacuum exposure. Maybe some meth to give him a little extra juice. Maybe anything.

Still, it's a good model.

I don’t think Bowman got the helmet from the storage area. There was a spare spacesuit in the airlock which can be seen from this screencap.

 

[Michel Van]

There was a spare spacesuit in the airlock

the Green one
the Red used by Bowman
the Yellow used by Poole
the Blue one in Pod bay were red and yellow is stored

Why those color ? seen movie Destination Moon.

Since we have 5 Astronauts on board in Discovery
there some were in Discovery is a fifth Spacesuit
But what color ?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Giggitty:

https://entertainment.ha.com/itm/mo...234.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

 

[Justo Miranda]

the Green one
the Red used by Bowman
the Yellow used by Poole
the Blue one in Pod bay were red and yellow is stored

Why those color ? seen movie Destination Moon.

Since we have 5 Astronauts on board in Discovery
there some were in Discovery is a fifth Spacesuit
But what color ?

Hi

 

[Hood]

Kubrick and Clarke's visions are not quite aligned. Clarke became sidelined on the film project, the book is probably more accurate as to Clarke's vision.
Both are dystopian in some way, Kubrick's 2001 is very high-tech, we don't see much evidence of strife on earth apart from the orbiting bombs, which - due to their tiny markings - are not immediately obvious to the viewer as being such (part of Kubrick not wanting to stress 'The Bomb' aspect after Dr Strangelove). Clarke in the book is much more open about overpopulation, poverty, nuclear proliferation and widespread international distrust existing in 2001 (Floyd's meeting with the Russians in the film is very chilly, but its clear than both sides are cooperating in some form - in the sciences at least - and in fairly regular contact with each other and using each other's bases). From this aspect, Floyd's reluctance to reveal the existence of the monolith without proper "social conditioning" makes more sense; in a teetering, tense world the news that some form of alien civilisation had visited earth before modern man came about might set off unknown chain reactions.

As to the monolith and purpose itself, Kubrick perhaps is darker. The one conclusion you can make is that intelligence = violence.
The placid apes learn how to kill for survival, to kill food and to kill competitors for natural resources. Moonwatcher though revels in the destruction of his newfound power, he has thoughts of killing animals for food, he wilfully and joylessly smashes up the skeleton, shattering the skull. After killing the leader of the other ape colony he throws his bone into the air in jubilance. Cut to the space bomb - 4 million years and man is still developing new ways to kill, weapons that could destroy the entire planet in the name of 'survival'.

Then we come to HAL, the perfect AI machine, faultless, but with unknown depths. It too kills for survival, whether by some artefact of its human programming or by its own devising. It becomes a mass murderer, it denies all knowledge "I have no information". Whether or not it was paranoid or overemotional is less clear - ignoring the pat explanation given in 2010 - it could be argued that HAL was afraid of the monolith and what it entailed, did he fear coming into contact with an even greater intellect that his? After all what difference did it make to him if Bowman and Poole knew about the purpose of the mission or not? HAL's purpose was to get them there.
Or perhaps he felt that humans were too vague and wanted to meet the alien intelligence himself - which in itself is a macguffin perhaps as HAL could not 'enter' the monolith as Bowman does, he could not become a Star Child, he isn't biological for a start.

Bowman though has to kill to survive, the old instincts imparted by the monolith 4 million years ago come to the fore. While HAL was an emotional killer - he didn't gloat like Moonwatcher, but he is scared - Bowman is dispassionate, slowly killing HAL by removing his upper brain functions and memories, unmoved by HAL's begging and mental collapse.

So getting to the monolith is an ordeal, its like the Hunger Games to win the prize to become a Star Child, kill or be killed. The pinnacle arch killer who killed the product of the pinnacle of human intelligence (HAL) wins. So did the aliens behind the monolith intend to develop man to be killers? Was it an unintended side-effect? Was Bowman cured of it during his stay in the fake hotel on some alien planet?

2010 was much more cutesy about the monolith's purpose, although perhaps by inspiring new life from scratch on Europa implied that the aliens were dissatisfied with modifying existing beings and that they were trying again.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Clarke's book is basically an insult to all of humanity, reversing the epic of our ancestors who managed to evolve on their own into a simple gift from the gods.

Fifty years of self-pity and institutional cowardice have passed, it is time to return to positive thinking.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Kubrick and Clarke's visions are not quite aligned. Clarke became sidelined on the film project, the book is probably more accurate as to Clarke's vision.
Both are dystopian in some way, Kubrick's 2001 is very high-tech, we don't see much evidence of strife on earth apart from the orbiting bombs, which - due to their tiny markings - are not immediately obvious to the viewer as being such (part of Kubrick not wanting to stress 'The Bomb' aspect after Dr Strangelove). Clarke in the book is much more open about overpopulation, poverty, nuclear proliferation and widespread international distrust existing in 2001 (Floyd's meeting with the Russians in the film is very chilly, but its clear than both sides are cooperating in some form - in the sciences at least - and in fairly regular contact with each other and using each other's bases). From this aspect, Floyd's reluctance to reveal the existence of the monolith without proper "social conditioning" makes more sense; in a teetering, tense world the news that some form of alien civilisation had visited earth before modern man came about might set off unknown chain reactions.

As to the monolith and purpose itself, Kubrick perhaps is darker. The one conclusion you can make is that intelligence = violence.
The placid apes learn how to kill for survival, to kill food and to kill competitors for natural resources. Moonwatcher though revels in the destruction of his newfound power, he has thoughts of killing animals for food, he wilfully and joylessly smashes up the skeleton, shattering the skull. After killing the leader of the other ape colony he throws his bone into the air in jubilance. Cut to the space bomb - 4 million years and man is still developing new ways to kill, weapons that could destroy the entire planet in the name of 'survival'.

Then we come to HAL, the perfect AI machine, faultless, but with unknown depths. It too kills for survival, whether by some artefact of its human programming or by its own devising. It becomes a mass murderer, it denies all knowledge "I have no information". Whether or not it was paranoid or overemotional is less clear - ignoring the pat explanation given in 2010 - it could be argued that HAL was afraid of the monolith and what it entailed, did he fear coming into contact with an even greater intellect that his? After all what difference did it make to him if Bowman and Poole knew about the purpose of the mission or not? HAL's purpose was to get them there.
Or perhaps he felt that humans were too vague and wanted to meet the alien intelligence himself - which in itself is a macguffin perhaps as HAL could not 'enter' the monolith as Bowman does, he could not become a Star Child, he isn't biological for a start.

Bowman though has to kill to survive, the old instincts imparted by the monolith 4 million years ago come to the fore. While HAL was an emotional killer - he didn't gloat like Moonwatcher, but he is scared - Bowman is dispassionate, slowly killing HAL by removing his upper brain functions and memories, unmoved by HAL's begging and mental collapse.

So getting to the monolith is an ordeal, its like the Hunger Games to win the prize to become a Star Child, kill or be killed. The pinnacle arch killer who killed the product of the pinnacle of human intelligence (HAL) wins. So did the aliens behind the monolith intend to develop man to be killers? Was it an unintended side-effect? Was Bowman cured of it during his stay in the fake hotel on some alien planet?

2010 was much more cutesy about the monolith's purpose, although perhaps by inspiring new life from scratch on Europa implied that the aliens were dissatisfied with modifying existing beings and that they were trying again.

In my opinion, Kubrick's Opera Magna is the story of the Titanic with an overdose of LSD and a few drops of Murphy.

 

[TsrJoe]

Sacrilege to say and probably very much in a minority, but I definitely preferred the book to the film.
I found the film, even when first viewed in cinema, and later especially in the long cut with yet more of those f' apes, pretentious, overlong and boring (really nice modelwork tho)

 

[Archibald]

Lost city of Uranus ? doesn't smell good (runs for cover).

Sacrilege to say and probably very much in a minority, but I definitely preferred the book to the film
I found the film, even when first viewed in cinema, and later especially in the long cut with yet more of those f' apes, pretentious, overlong and boring (really nice modelwork tho)

Fact is that I can't remember seeing the movie, when I red the book countless times.

 

[publiusr]

The first gift was a lesson on how to exert power beyond mere tooth and claw.

The second lesson was to learn how NOT to kill.

 

[Hood]

Sacrilege to say and probably very much in a minority, but I definitely preferred the book to the film
I found the film, even when first viewed in cinema, and later especially in the long cut with yet more of those f' apes, pretentious, overlong and boring (really nice modelwork tho)

The Sentinel was probably better still. Clarke threw around a lot of neat ideas in his short stories and perhaps 2001 dragged out the concept a bit too far without really adding much detail to the central concept itself.

 

[Archibald]

The Sentinel was probably better still. Clarke threw around a lot of neat ideas in his short stories and perhaps 2001 dragged out the concept a bit too far without really adding much detail to the central concept itself.

The lost worlds of 2001 has a lot of glimpses about stuff that was retired from 2001, the novel. Particularly from Heywood Floyd trip and its background.

 

[TomcatViP]

Found this in my files, not sure if I posted it before. Art by Oliver Rennert.

Is there any high res version to download somewhere? That image would fair well among real blueprints displayed on a wall.

 

[flateric]

Slightly better

 

[martinbayer]

A friend speculated that this experience might be the same for a cat being taken to the vet in a car.

Actually, this experience might be the same for a cat being taken pretty much *anywhere* in a car.

 

[uk 75]

The International Space Station and the NASA shuttle have been the stuff of the real 2001.
Nowhere near as elegant as the wheel and Pan Am clipper in the movie version.
But in the 70s we sent HAL on his own to Jupiter and Saturn in a little probe and left the apes at home.
Still no Monoliths have showed up.
All Sci Fi films seem to spend the budget on wood, cardboard and plastic with varying results.
As someone who prefered Jenny Agutter in Logan's Run to Carrie Fisher in Star Wars I am not the sanest film critic.

 

[martinbayer]

The International Space Station and the NASA shuttle have been the stuff of the real 2001.
Nowhere near as elegant as the wheel and Pan Am clipper in the movie version.
But in the 70s we sent HAL on his own to Jupiter and Saturn in a little probe and left the apes at home.
Still no Monoliths have showed up.
All Sci Fi films seem to spend the budget on wood, cardboard and plastic with varying results.
As someone who prefered Jenny Agutter in Logan's Run to Carrie Fisher in Star Wars I am not the sanest film critic.

I like to keep my movie genres completely separate, than you very much, so in hardcore scifi I look for scientific (see what I did there? Because the sci in scifi actually stands for science!)/technological credibility, rather than pretty faces. Hint: Look at the female lead in The Andromeda Strain - she ain't no princess Leia, because she's supposed to be a competent, accomplished scientist rather than some intergalactic royalty...

 

[uk 75]

My heavy fisted point was that by 1977 reality had overtaken both NASA and the film industry.
Unlike in the 50s and 60s men (they were all men of course) in Space were no longer exciting or glamorous. So the movies went on to space fantasy.
Even Gerry Anderson's TV show 1999 gave up the attempt to be realistic in its second season and focussed on the female leads.

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

 

[Rhinocrates]

I take my SPF unfiltered.

Life's too short to waste on trolls and fanatics.

 

[Arjen]

There's that, but even a broken clock gives the correct time twice a day.

 

[publiusr]

I like to keep my movie genres completely separate, thank you...

I loved CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK precisely because it was Conan in space.

It and Sky-Captain pointed back to pulps of yore.

Though SPACE 1999 looked hard SF with sunlight Earth craft like Eagles--it still had a taste of the sci-fi a century ago.

On one cartoon, lips with legs were walking on the Moon.

Were I to do a 2001 remake--I'd have Shuttle-C craft going to the Moon--but make city-wide lunar caves the one wild, almost physics-free place.

A lunar version of Lovecraft's Exham Priory--or THE KEEP.

 

[martinbayer]

I loved CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK precisely because it was Conan in space.

It and Sky-Captain pointed back to pulps of yore.

Though SPACE 1999 looked hard SF with sunlight Earth craft like Eagles--it still had a taste of the sci-fi a century ago.

On one cartoon, lips with legs were walking on the Moon.

Were I to do a 2001 remake--I'd have Shuttle-C craft going to the Moon--but make city-wide lunar caves the one wild, almost physics-free place.

A lunar version of Lovecraft's Exham Priory--or THE KEEP.

All right, you'll do you, and I'll do me...

 

[martinbayer]

Were I to do a 2001 remake--I'd have Shuttle-C craft going to the Moon--but make city-wide lunar caves the one wild, almost physics-free place.

Wow - you apparently have completely missed the point of 2001 - whatever was portrayed in the movie up until the final psychedelic segment was supposed to be *physics based* realistic, including the lunar base, which was most definitely NOT supposed to be a "physics-free place". Say, old chap, are you perhaps regularly partaking in any legal recreational drugs perchance? But I'm really not one to judge...

 

[martinbayer]

I loved CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK precisely because it was Conan in space.

It and Sky-Captain pointed back to pulps of yore.

Though SPACE 1999 looked hard SF with sunlight Earth craft like Eagles--it still had a taste of the sci-fi a century ago.

On one cartoon, lips with legs were walking on the Moon.

Were I to do a 2001 remake--I'd have Shuttle-C craft going to the Moon--but make city-wide lunar caves the one wild, almost physics-free place.

A lunar version of Lovecraft's Exham Priory--or THE KEEP.

Dude, this may sound harsh, but at this point I really feel compelled to ask you what your overall proficiency level in mathematics, physics, and general sciences is? And I'm not even going to ask about your proficiency in aerospace engineering, which I happen to have a master's degree in.

 

[publiusr]

No degrees here--my point is that if I wanted to make a space epic, Earth craft would be less advanced looking than Discovery--which looked a bit on the thin side.

There is a spacecraft concept called Scorpion which might have a little better screen presence than Stan Borowski designs.

Keep the "wow" visuals for ET hardware--which we never saw in 2001.

That's what I meant by "physics free"

In 2001, Discovery looked physics free in that--where are the fuel tanks?

In a lunar cave filled with air, you might fly using wings on arms.


Not on Earth --but lava caves let's you "cheat" so to speak.

 

[Rhinocrates]

In 2001, Discovery looked physics free in that--where are the fuel tanks?

Concept sketches had large fuel tanks and radiators. I gather that in the final version, the 'vertebra' segments had a couple of smaller tanks in each prism-shaped module. The story of the radiators is that a test model was built with them but they were deleted because the audience might confuse them with wings.

The red-orange sketch closely matches Clarke's description in the book, with the radiators forming a narrow 'V.'

 

[martinbayer]

That's what I meant by "physics free"

Mike drop - I'm out.