Tag Archives: 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Superhero Odyssey

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A couple weeks back I wrote a piece at the Atlantic where I talked about the way that big budget sci-fi isn’t interested in talking about the future. Instead, it seems to have blurred with super-hero films, in which progress is always already a current dream of power. Rather than a better society somewhere to come, we imagine an atemporal, ongoing empowerment. The future isn’t so much a possibility as a superpower itself; a technology which fundamentally changes nothing except our sense of our own awesomeness.

The best example of this probably isn’t actually current Hollywood, but Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The novel covers vast swathes of time, not to rethink society, but to reinscribe that society from the dimmest past to the furthest reaches of time. Man-apes are led (like the name says) by men; the biggest, manliest man-apes are also the smartest man-apes, and the Cold War starts in the infinite past and never ends. Ursula K. Le Guin was writing about a world of single-gendered hermaphrodites, but for Clarke the women of the future are still mostly stewardesses, and the men are mostly bland bureaucrats; everyman David Bowman has the intense inner life of a stereotyped actuary. Space is a vivid, enormous landscape bestrode by tepid functionaries. The scene where Bowman finds a typical hotel room on the far side of the galaxy is meant to be trippy and unnerving, but it also, unintentionally, sums up the novel’s fundamental mundanity.

The energy of 2001 has nothing to do with reimagining the future or for that matter the present. Instead, it’s a superhero comic; the exciting bit, the wonder and the imagination, is all about turning that pallid Peter Parker into a superdude. And the superpower on offer, the transformative oomph, is literally progress, in the form of evolution. At the beginning of the novel, Moon-Walker the man-ape is pushed into being human by an alien obelisk; at the end of the novel, David Bowman is pushed into being more than human by yet another one of the same. The novel itself is essentially an origin story for man, man-ape and David Bowman. Aliens — some outside, wiser, smarter, something — reaches through the veil of space and time to shape past, present, and future into a superpowered unity of progress. Humanity is affected by, and is effectively itself, a New Age deity. There is no new fate or new possibility; just the current, satisfying knowledge of ongoing genetic potential. Nothing changes except apotheosis. Humankind will meet itself in the future, newborn and with space baby powers.

H.G. Wells in The Time Machine saw evolution as a blind, frightening master; time, in his story, does not care about humans, who it twists into dumb, hunted forms, and breaks meaninglessly upon eternity. Clarke, though, gives evolution a purpose; rather than Darwin’s blind watchmaker, you get a watchmaker with a cheery grin, ensuring that Mind prospers and Man, ultimately, triumphs over the millenia. There couldn’t be a much clearer demonstration that the purpose of the superhero is to defy time. Yes Superman never ages ‚ but more importantly Superman, on that rocketship, drags the future back to the present. The star baby plants tomorrow in today, by imagining perfection as timeless truth, unfolding now. We’re already superior, always have been, and always will be; mutants evolving before our own eyes. 2001 saw a future in which progress is neverending — and when progress is neverending, there can be no change.

Arthur C. Clarke: Predictions of a Sci-Fi Psychic

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Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008) was one of the most prolific science-fiction authors of the 20th century. His body of work includes more than a dozen novels, more than 100 short stories and even a few non-fiction books. His magnum opus was perhaps the screenplay for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, written jointly by Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick as an adaptation of one of Arthur’s short stories. 2001 has been viewed by millions and has become an iconic cultural touchstone.

Now that several decades have passed from the time Clarke started writing, it has become clear that he was not just an imaginative and talented author, but also a prescient prognosticator of the future. Many of the technologies that Clarke envisioned have become commonplace realities. This may be a case of life imitating art because many young scientists and engineers were avid fans of his, so his writings themselves may have influenced the development of the modern technological landscape.

In 1945, Clarke wrote a paper entitled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays – Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage,” describing satellites using geosynchronous equatorial orbits to facilitate worldwide communications. Clarke’s article initiated an interest in the subject – in the 1960’s, together with Howard Hughes, NASA began work on the Telstar project (which would ultimately culminate in satellite television broadcasts and the HughesNet data satellite networks as they exist today). The first satellite using the principles outlined by Clarke was launched in 1964, and they are now extensively employed in meteorology, mobile phone communications and radio and television broadcasting.  His contributions to the field are reflected in the fact that these geosynchronous orbits are also called “Clarke orbits.”

Even more striking are Clarke’s frequent pronouncements on devices that ordinary people would use in their homes. In a 1964 documentary broadcast by the BBC, he noted that “trying to predict the future is a discouraging, hazardous occupation,” but he nevertheless continued on to give his predictions for the coming decades. Clarke foresaw what he called a “replicator” to reproduce physical items along the same lines that documents and photographs can be copied. 3D printers are now turning this vision into reality. In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, astronauts aboard a spaceship used “newspads,” which bear a remarkable similarity to today’s tablet computers, to watch a TV interview. In 1974, Clarke stated that people in the future would have small computers in their own homes in contrast to the bulky, business-oriented machines then in use.

Rather than just imagining the physical devices that would be built, Clarke focused on the changes they would bring to human society. He believed that people would be able to get in touch with their friends all around the world easily as well as look up their bank records and theater reservations right from their computers. He thought that these small, household computers would become ubiquitous and would enable people to work far away from their offices. He even predicted the rise of telemedicine, and the future of robotic surgeries. All of these seemingly farfetched shifts in lifestyle have become largely true, at least in many wealthier countries.

Of course, not all of Arthur’s conjectures turned out to be accurate. His idea of people using monkeys as personal servants still seems as unlikely today as it did when he pronounced it. Likewise his suggestion that people would dwell inside giant domed communities on the north and south polar ice caps. Nevertheless, wild guesses of what’s to come in future years are typically left to psychics and dreamers – whose predictions aren’t often accurate. Arthur C. Clarke’s unique genius enabled him not only to see into the future, but nudge his futuristic visions towards reality.