Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY has a brief run coming up at 
 the Michigan Theatre.  I *think* the dates are April 1 & 2, Tuesday and 
 Wednesday, but check before you go.  (The Michigan Theatre is in downtown
 Ann Arbor.)
 
 If you're younger than 30, I am particularly curious:
 Have you seen 2001 before?  Have you seen it in a theatre?
 What do you think of it?
  
 I cannot be objective about this movie. I first saw it in Cinerama
 on my 12th birthday in 1969; since then I have seen it at least 20 more 
 times in theatres.
 
 The Michigan is advertising the 70mm print.  If you go, note how 
 HAL's voice, when heard inside the Discovery, is "floated" in
 the theatre, while the human voices are pinned to the front.
  
 Also: has anyone read Clarke's new novel 3001?

((cloned from M-net))

26 responses total.

This is linked, by request, to the cinema conference..type "join movies" at
any prompt"

... though I don't know why we bothered linking it, really.
 
There's a profile of 2001's author Arthur C. Clarke in today's 
New York Times.  I'm glad to see what my childhood favorite author
is up to.

I've seen it often, and I am 26.  Obviously I didn't see it when it first came
out.  

I really like it, and 2010.  I have not read 2061, though.

I read 3001. For some reason, it didn't strike me as all that entertaining.

Wasnt there a book called 20,001 that came before 3001?

Never heard of a "20,001" book, certainly not by Clarke.

        There's a book called 20,000 Leagues Uner the Sea, but that was by
Jules Vernes, the first sf writer.

That's funny, Richard, because your response rings a little bell in 
my head.  I wonder if Clarke at one point talked about writing a 
"20,001" book?

        Ummm... 2001 is a book.

If I remember right, the last page of 2061 was titled 20,001

        Might have beeen. Caqn someone look it up?

I did, and it is.

This is as good a place as any to mention that Arthur C. Clarke was 
knighted by the Queen in the Christmas honors list.  
Clarke is confined to a wheelchair in his home of Sri Lanka; there was 
speculation that Prince Charles may deliver the knighthood to him 
when he's in the neighborhood observing the anniversary of Sri Lankan 
independence later this year.

        Just hope Clarke will be around in 2001 to say: "See, I told
you".

 Just to drift a little bit...I was waiting in the Jacksonville intl. airport
waiting to fly up to Maryland to see my parents. At the time, I had only read
the first two of Clarke's Rama books, _Rendevous With Rama_ and _Rama II_ (the
second was co-written with Gentry Lee). I've always loved both books and have
read them both a few times since the second book came out in the 80's. For
some reason, the third and fourth (and final) have both eluded me. Well, I
walked over to the airport bookstore, and the 3rd and 4th were there. I
immeadiately sat down and launched into the further adventures of Nicole
DeJardins, Father Micheal O'Toole, Richard Wakefield, the trio's various
offspring, the octospiders, and the avians. I went to purchase them both after
realizing that my flight was about to leave. It was Christmas Eve. The man
behind the counter said they didn't accept checks after I had explained how
important these books were to me and had pulled out my checkbook (the only
form of 'currancy I had). He looked at me for a second, and then told me he
was a Clarke fan and had just read _Cradle_. He then proceeded to give me both
books as a X-mas present. What a wonderful way to start a vacation. Both books
were, of course, excellent, although the very ending seemed....well, I'll
discuss it if you like, but there might be people out there who are about to
read the last book (or 2 or 3).

  Hey, free books!

  It's a very odd businessman who won't take a check but will give you
  the merchandise.. 

Blecch - I hate to disagree with you, Dave, but I got really annoyed with
the 2nd and 3rd Rama books.  Maybe it's because I went on a Clarke binge a
while back, and when I got to Rama II it was clear to me that he hadn't
written any of it - it was all Gentry Lee.  That annoyed me enough, but
then in Rama III Lee pulled the old "convicts in space" routine which
really turned my stomach.  I wish I had just read Rendezvous with Rama (a
*great* book) and stopped there.  (So far I have resisted all urges to
read the 4th book, though the completeness bug occasionally gnaws at me. 
I know I'll hate myself if I do.) 

I'm afraid I agree with Mark.  The first book was fine.  The rest of the
series wasn't worth reading.

I agree.

Hmm, that's interesting.  I'd had only read Rendevous but this item inspired
mt to go out and buy the last three books.  I thought that to some extent they
got *better* as they went along.  My impression, though, was that Lee was
probably a lot more involved in the last three than Clarke was and that making
it a "trilogy" was probably a marketing decision rather than an artistic one.
The story clearly had meterial for at least two more books -- some parts of
the last couple of books read more like a synopsis tha anovel.  I wished that
the author(s) had taken the space to complete the story.

The story was depressing in a way -- but unfortunately it was all too
realistic.  (And I think I have a new hero in Nicole Des Jardin.  She's flawed
-- but what a strong character!!

I have seen 2001 at least 5 times, including the 1997 70mm screening at teh
Michigan Theater. It's still amazing to see how Kubrick managed to accomplish
so much with 1965 technology.

Sentiments seconded.  Amazing film, much better -- even in its 
supposedly primitive sfx -- than a Star Wars film.  Any of the Star 
Wars films.  (I finally just saw Phantom Menace and am amazed that 
nobody told me how intensely boring it is.  Boring, yes, but not that 
it was _that_ boring.)

In preparation for the imminent arrival of the year 2001, I have 
watched the Kubrick film with the aid of my new DVD player.  Still 
totally cool, still the greatest sf film ever made.  But this time I 
was less interested in how the film held up than in how the predictions 
held up.  (And for this I also checked the novel, which has more detail 
on many matters than the film does.)

I doubt there was a single science fiction writer, even as late as 
1968, who would have predicted that not a single human being would have 
gone out further than earth orbit after 1972 for the rest of the 
century, with no prospects of any in the future.  And yet it was 
already clear that the Apollo project was the end of its line.

One reason human space travel has been unnecessary has been the vast 
improvement of computers and robots that can do it for us and don't 
need life support systems, while our ability to receive and view data 
at home, and to control the robots, has improved even more greatly.  
(Remember that nifty Mars lander, the one that actually worked?)

Of course the film had HAL, but he's a very different kind of computer. 
Artificial intelligence is still being worked on, but it's still 
stagnated in the research phase.  According to the book, HAL was 
created as an almost self-designing neural net, mimicking the brain.  A 
favorite conceit of sf writers, but we're nowhere near there yet.  
Where computers have improved has been in the speed, storage, and 
transmission of data, which is what makes our space photos today of 
such high quality: you no longer need to send out some guy with a 
Hasselblad to take good photos from space.

It's hard to remember, in the scene where the astronauts are testing 
the circuit board from their antenna, that ICs were still lab objects 
in 1968.

One bit about computers that the book - this isn't really touched on in 
the film - gets exactly right.  While flying to the moon, Dr. Floyd 
catches up on the news by doing what differs only in minor details (no 
mouse) from what we now call web surfing.

2001 has a video phone.  You know, there are still people today who 
claim that video phones are in our imminent future.  But I don't 
believe it any more than I did in 1968.  Videophone technology has 
actually been around since about 1960, and if you can't figure out why 
it never caught on, go watch Albert Brooks's film "Mother".

For all the changes it postulates, 2001 does assume that one thing 
hasn't changed.  The Cold War is still on.  Oops.  But really, you have 
to forgive Kubrick and Clarke.  A talking, thinking computer in only 33 
years might have been acceptable, but if they'd postulated that the 
Cold War would end the way it really did, nobody would have believed it.

        I want my PanAm ticket to the Hilton in the sky.  (However, if
we held an sf con at it, it would probably soon be de-Hiltonized.)

There is a space station under construction. It doesn't spin - I gather that
would rather compromise the purpose of having stuff in orbit. I wonder if it
will be big enough to host a Con?

        Maybe the space station someone wants to build out of the 
discarded Shuttle fuel tanks would be.  That's a big tube that 
would be in space.

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