about 1 month ago
Recommended to
Owlseyes
by:
c larke
Before the book or the movie, since they are looks into the future, allow me to recall Clarke's wishes when he turned 90 (yes,"90 orbits" completed round the sun): (1) evidence of extraterrestrial life to be found, (2) humanity to kick its addiction on oil, rather than clean energies, (3) a lasting peace to be reached in "his" divided Sri Lanka--his abode for 50 years.
How would he like to be remembered? [though he had many trades, I would say]
---as a writer, like Kipling.
I've watched a lot of times the movie by Stanley Kubrick. Oh The Monolyth! such a mysterious, portentous piece..."watching" the hominids playing with tools... and fighting each other.
The music by R. Strauss is just unforgettable.
To my recall, it's been some years, the dialogues between Dave and supercomputer Hal are exquisite, the best ever. So's the shutdown of Hal.
In 1995, in Sri Lanka, Clarke gave an interview to Tod Mesirow. Referring the movie 2001 he spoke of another book The Lost Worlds of 2001 in which he included "other alternative story lines" that "might have developed". Clarke had to attend three premieres of the film (Washington, N.York and LA) in three consecutive nights, just because Stanley was a shy man...
Clarke also had a lot of fun moments showing the interviewer how his own (Clarke's) computer would voice “My mind is going, I can feel it” while shutting it down; and when turning it on again it would sound: “I’m a HAL 9000 computer, fully operational and ready to serve.” Ah! Ah!
He affirmed in that interview he was disappointed that "we've not gone back to the moon or even onto Mars" (maybe "by about 2020").
Maybe one day I'll read the whole book. For now, the wise words of Clarke in the Foreword and Epilogue may suffice.
Foreword
"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star."
Epilogue: After 2001
"Except for communication with alien intelligences: that is something that can never be planned only anticipated. No one knows whether it will happen tomorrow or a thousand years hence.
But it will happen someday."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Colombo, Sri Lanka
November, 1982
How would he like to be remembered? [though he had many trades, I would say]
---as a writer, like Kipling.
I've watched a lot of times the movie by Stanley Kubrick. Oh The Monolyth! such a mysterious, portentous piece..."watching" the hominids playing with tools... and fighting each other.
The music by R. Strauss is just unforgettable.
To my recall, it's been some years, the dialogues between Dave and supercomputer Hal are exquisite, the best ever. So's the shutdown of Hal.
In 1995, in Sri Lanka, Clarke gave an interview to Tod Mesirow. Referring the movie 2001 he spoke of another book The Lost Worlds of 2001 in which he included "other alternative story lines" that "might have developed". Clarke had to attend three premieres of the film (Washington, N.York and LA) in three consecutive nights, just because Stanley was a shy man...
Clarke also had a lot of fun moments showing the interviewer how his own (Clarke's) computer would voice “My mind is going, I can feel it” while shutting it down; and when turning it on again it would sound: “I’m a HAL 9000 computer, fully operational and ready to serve.” Ah! Ah!
He affirmed in that interview he was disappointed that "we've not gone back to the moon or even onto Mars" (maybe "by about 2020").
Maybe one day I'll read the whole book. For now, the wise words of Clarke in the Foreword and Epilogue may suffice.
Foreword
"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star."
Epilogue: After 2001
"Except for communication with alien intelligences: that is something that can never be planned only anticipated. No one knows whether it will happen tomorrow or a thousand years hence.
But it will happen someday."
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Colombo, Sri Lanka
November, 1982
