2001: A Race Odyssey

My very favorite movie of all time was the amazing 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.  In it, two protean geniuses, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, offered a glimpse of what contact with an alien species might look and feel like.  No movie has ever blown my mind like ODYSSEY, or probably ever will.   But all stories have to begin with the Backstory, the way things were before some pivotal change.   And 2001 began with the pastoral, bare-survival world of Moonwatcher and the Australopithicines, befo...