2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey, #2)

by Arthur C. Clarke

It was a sign of the times that a Russian could joke, however wryly, about his country’s treatment of its greatest scientist. Floyd was again reminded of Sakharov’s eloquent speech to the Academy, when he was belatedly made Hero of the Soviet Union. Prison and banishment, he had told his listeners, were splendid aids to creativity; not a few masterpieces had been born within the walls of cells, beyond the reach of the world’s distractions. For that matter, the greatest single achievement of the human intellect, the Principia itself, was a product of Newton’s self-imposed exile from plague-ridden London. The comparison was not immodest; from those years in Gorky had come not only new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe, but the plasma-controlling concepts that had led to practical thermonuclear power. The drive itself, though the best-known and most publicized outcome of that work, was merely one by-product of that astonishing intellectual outburst. The tragedy was that such advances had been triggered by injustice; one day, perhaps, humanity would find more civilized ways of managing its affairs.

This situation conflicted with the purpose for which Hal had been designed—the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. As a result, Hal developed what would be called, in human terms, a psychosis—specifically, schizophrenia. Dr. C. informs me that, in technical terminology, Hal became trapped in a Hofstadter—Moebius loop, a situation apparently not uncommon among advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs. He suggests that for further information you contact Professor Hofstadter himself.

This book was written on an Archives III microcomputer with WordStar software and sent from Colombo to New York on one five-inch diskette. Last-minute corrections were transmitted through the Padukka Earth Station and the Indian Ocean Intelsat V.