Femalessness SF: "Needle" by Hal Clement

Clement’s later novels included females because people had pointed out to him that his novels had no females in them. To be fair, his work is not ardently sexist; it was just often focused on a group of scientists going to an alien planet to study the aliens ... and at the time Clement was writing, "group of scientists" largely meant "group of male scientists". There are female characters in “Iceworld”, and also in “Needle”, but those are set on Earth (with the aliens visiting us), where a complete absence of female characters would be a bit glaring. I think 'Needle' would be an interesting book to make a film from ... and (spoiler alert) given that the aliens are just amorphous blobs that live inside the body of a human host, it wouldn't be that expensive to make. If it had been the point of the book, a space-mission with fewer than 40% female crew would have been a different story and, concomitantly, much longer if added to the voyage to Mesklin. The humans are there as a backdrop for the Mesklinites and have to be as schematic as they are to fit the word-count. A space-mission with a few women would have been a good premise for a story (see the cover-story for that first issue of 'Universe' I mentioned in a post a while back) but akin to something like a woman accompanying Shackleton to the Pole. Who knows how many stories like that were spiked because of John W. Campbell's notoriously prissy secretary?

On the other hand, "Through the Eye of the Needle" is, if anything, more filmic than the first book. Well, the hero of “Needle” had a mother, though she only got a bit part.

But this wasn't unique to Clement. Eric Frank Russell was much the same, though in racial matters he was quite advanced. In Arthur C. Clarke's “Earthlight” the hero's wife is mentioned a few times, but never appears on stage. It was much the same with Verne and Wells, where Weena in “The Time Machine” is the only female character I can think of.

NB: I always enjoyed the SF of Hal Clement. Then someone pointed out to me - after I had read a few of his novels without noticing it - that his novels contained no female characters at all. Untrue. 'Noise' and 'Still River' off the top of my head. And the male pronouns applied to Barlennon and 'his' crew by Lackland/the narrator might not apply. I wonder why “Mission of Gravity” hasn't been optioned by Pixar. Admittedly Barlennon's a bit like Mr. Krabs from 'Spongebob' but maybe a character who communicates with farts is a bit advanced for Disney's shareholders.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

A Real Sense of Otherness: "Exit West" by Mohsin Hamid

I wonder if I might share some personal thoughts and experiences about SF in order to shed light on the way I read "Exit West"?

I must have been about 6 or 7 when I was in big trouble at school for refusing to read the books we were given, and disrupting lessons as a diversion. Janet and John's escapades were incredibly dull, I thought. My grandmother, and my mother must have got talking, because I shall never forget that first Wednesday evening when The Eagle landed on the mat at the front door. There was Dan Dare blasting off in the Anastasia to who knows where, with Digby and co, and I just had to know what they were saying in those speech bubbles. So I taught myself to read through SF, and interest in the genre, to varying degrees, stayed with me all my life. (As a matter of interest, I went from bottom of the class to top in reading, in less than a year!).

I read my first SF novel, Wells' "War of The Worlds", hiding in my bedroom in Lisbon, aged 14. Much of the SF I grew up on was about adventures in outer space, alien invasion, fear of the unknown, coming mainly through radio, TV, and comics. In the 80's, we had “Journey into Space” on the radio, and “Twilight Zone” on TV. The movies gave us “Them,” “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, ”Earth vs The Flying Saucers”, “Things To Come”, all about thrills and excitement. During the 90's and 2000's, more novels and short story collections began to appear, together with a number of blockbuster movies. But for most people in Portugal, SF meant “Space 1999”, and “Star Trek”.

When I once again started attending The British Council, in the 1980's, many of the pupils were interested in SF, mainly because of the huge success of Hitchhiker's. You see, all through the twentieth century, the general message that ordinary folk got was that SF was light entertainment. Some of the bright "cool dudes" started talking enthusiastically about Asimov, Fred Pohl, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and the amusingly named Philip K. Dick. The lunchtime chats soon indicated to me I was way out of my depth, and so I realised if I was going to be of any use to them, I needed to get into some serious reading, and get beyond Hitchhiker's and Red Dwarf! Within a couple of years I had read the key authors, and was able to bring Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Joe Haldeman, and Christopher Priest to the table. Naturally there was a strong tie-in with some of my main subjects, and so we also got to see SF illustration work by the likes of Michael Whelan, H. R. Giger, Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Frank Frazetta, Rodney Matthews, Tim White, Patrick Woodroffe, and many more, and some of us also learned how to use the air brush.

It was like being into computers back in the day you were a geek or nerd. Now everyone is into it because you can shop and date. Everyone's into SF now because it's become mainstream Hollywood culture. But really most are not into it. It's sane to think about the universe and question it and wonder about it. Those who don't are dull. I think Arthur C. Clarke said those people haven't any soul. That's why I keep looking up at the stars. Is it possible to feel a real sense of otherness by books that tell of lies we have not told, fights we would not have, monsters we won’t face, murders we would not commit and accidents we probably won’t have? To admire universes that exist solely in our minds? Dangerous novels give us that frightening feeling of being so close to the Other; in SF like this it's not so ease to attach labels. That's the best kind of SF there is. “Exit West” makes me believe there's still hope for SF.

NB: Some people will never be able to enjoy SF on the same level as, say, D. H. Lawrence, because they are unable to suspend belief and enter a fantasy world. Strangely, I can take that genre on trust, but not so sword and sorcery. I love the artwork, but not the literature (with some exceptions).

SF = Speculative Fiction.

RIP Brian Aldiss, 1925 - 1917: "The Brightfount Diaries" by Brian Aldiss

It has been a while since I read his “Trillion Year Spree”, but I would respectfully submit that Aldiss may very well have made his case for the essential nature of science fiction in making and moving on the modern world.

It is difficult to think of another genre so relevant, and at the same time (in its various forms) so popular and influential. I think he did much to point out the debt we owe the revolutionary authors like Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), and the hot-housing role of science-fiction short stories in incubating new (or reheated) ideas.

Brian Aldiss championed SF to the world outside, and occasionally gave those of us who were a little bit . . . insular . . . the ticking-off we deserved. He was part of the community in a good way, attending sf conventions, always approachable, and being the life and soul of the party but always producing books and criticism which challenged us. You could never quite predict what the next Aldiss novel would be, but you always knew there would be something to think about. He was a remarkable man. Even though he received an OBE and an honorary doctorate for "services to literature", I suspect he would have been much more successful in "critical" terms if he had jettisoned science fiction, and he would have been more successful in the sf world if he had buckled down to churn out identikit trilogies. "His work is still [in a sense] to be discovered." Yes, that's correct. It was wide, various, and deep. But those of us who discovered even a part of it are grateful to have done so. 

Thank you, Brian.

Between Brian's own stories and his edited anthologies, (among others, e.g. Harlan Ellison, Phil Dick, Alfred Bester) new ways of processing the world were welcomed by me when I first discovered him back in the early '70s. The ground was also prepared for more left-field SF such as Iain M. Banks. Not that there are any second hand bookshops left around here anymore, (when they used to be a reliable way to browse and discover on a wet afternoon almost anywhere. Charity shops with a half-hearted shelf of TV related titles seem to have supplanted them), but I was able to get a Kindle copy of “The Brightfount Diaries”. I imagine that back when I first read it, such a thing might have seemed like science fiction. Having said that an ability to suspend critical judgement is key to the enjoyment of reading, I will also say that the books that remain with you are the ones that have greater psychological reality.

Ray Bradbury has faded, but James Blish grows stronger; Harlan Ellison was a flash-bang, and all we smell is stale cordite; The work of Phil Dick lingers like a bad dream; Philip Jose Farmer ages like H. G. Wells, but Asimov is unreadable now; David Brin is a low profile Arthur C. Clarke; Larry Niven wears bell bottoms, but may come into fashion again; Iain M. Banks big thinking feels as if it wasn't thought through, a half vision undone by plotting, half glimpsed.

And so it goes...

RIP Brian, your works made your mark on me and many others, and will continue to do so. Always an engaging writer. I notice I only seem to have “Last Orders” and “The Brightfount Diaries” on my shelf now. I think I must have liberated the other dozen or so. And good for them, they're meant to be read, not collect dust and tobacco film.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Coruscating Beams of Force: "Exploring Science Through Science Fiction" by Barry B. Luokkala

Ah, E.E. "Doc" Smith's coruscating beams of force ... he introduced these early on, and then every couple of chapters would want to up the ante, so would have to try and outdo his earlier description, and they would become ravening beams of unimaginable pure power…

But "science-fiction" is just a catch-all phrase for speculative fiction, not an enforceable limitation. I used to read tons of SF, all the way from junk/pulp through to the serious hard-science stuff and the only complaint I ever have about any individual book is if it's badly written. Some of the more glaring errors and redundant theories raise an eye-brow (I love H. P. Lovecraft despite plate tectonics being fifty years in his future and all his mentions of aluminiferous ether...) but what the hell, if it's a good book it's a good book.

A lot of very readable and entertaining SF is grounded in Clarke's observation that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A character who pops what looks like an aspirin tablet into what looks like a microwave and then retrieves and eats a vindaloo is behaving as realistically as I am when I order a pizza. If she then steps into a time machine, she needn't know any more about how it works than I need to know what really happens when I turn on the lights. In fact, I'd worry about the success of a book that said "Gwen's knowledge of farming and baking enabled her to eat a pizza, and since she understood the principles of electrical transmission, she was able to eat it with the lights on." If anything, I think that too many SF books try to explain made up science that their characters, if real, would probably just take for granted.

Sometimes we fail to recognise that some of the best SF writing is not very technical at all. I'm thinking here of the likes of Philip K. Dick, or Walter M. Miller, who tried to make philosophical points about humanity and our past and future without alienating readers with scientific mumbo jumbo. The technocratic side of SF is all well and good, but it isn't the whole story either.

I think there is something ridiculous about people who try to make links between popular science fiction and real science. Much science fiction is really magical fantasy dressed up with scientific language to make it palatable to a modern audience (Doctor Who with his magic wand, sorry sonic screwdriver, Star Trek with its cosmic vibrations that everything from psychically gifted therapists to starship engines can tune into). They are entertainment written by people with an arts background who have no understanding of science and no interest in it, except as a source of impressive special effects. A lot of science fiction is actually pseudo-science that has more in common with Californian new age mysticism, like Star Wars. I can only think of a handful of works of SF that are genuinely scientific. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey descended into religious mysticism. And when Hollywood starts dabbling in time travel any pretense of scientific rationality goes out of the window. The science is SF is like the science in adverts for magical bracelets that cure rheumatism and often uses the same technique, borrowing half-understood concepts like quantum physics to justify any ludicrous claim a snake oil salesman (or Hollywood scriptwriter) has dreamed up. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy SF. One of my favourite films is “Blade Runner”, but the science in it is laughable.

On the other hand, we have films like “The Matrix” wherein some of the science is top-notch: The holographic principal, Mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH) and Artificial intelligence (AI) for a start.

When it comes to Star Trek, and as far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out. Were there no sliding doors before Star Trek? That would be fascinating if so, but it seems unlikely. I hope I'm wrong!

Oh yes. I almost forgot. If a whole bunch of equations can’t faze you, you should definitely read Luokkala’s book. What a blast to watch some of the Star Trek episodes coming back to life through physics. That was one of the reasons I went into engineering…

NB: I’m still fuming from the latest Abrams incursion into Star Trek territory…Watching hours of constant, confusing and predictable action scenes with an incoherent plot, cliches and "unamusing" one liners is not my idea of enjoyment. Or value for money. I really struggle to find any redeeming features. I'm a Trekkie, taking great enjoyment from trek films. The last two were just symptomatic of Hollywood’s money maximizing strategy and I mourn the betrayal of gene Roddenberry’s original vision. It was HORRIBLE!!! Simon Pegg you need to have you Star Trek Fan Card revoked. The plot made no sense at all and come on the Beasty Boys saved the day, and, of course, we have to be PC with the token gay couple!! RIP Star Trek I will miss you and what a present (NOT) for the 50th anniversary. Well I will go to Netflix and watch some real Trek now.

NB2: For those you not mathematically challenged, read the Alcubierre’s article mentioned in the book about Star Trek’s warp drive.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

Reality-Transforming SF: "The Gradual" by Christopher Priest

Published September 2016.

“’There’s a problem with time and I don’t know how to explain it to you.’” (*repeated several times*)

In “The Gradual” by Christopher Priest

I just put down the book. Blew my mind. I'm kind of seeing things at the moment…

When Phil Dick died only Christopher Priest remained to explore similar themes. Despite exploring similar literary veins, Priest was always less concerned with the trappings of the SF genre than Dick was. Anyone seriously interested in SF for grown-ups should read him in his own right. I’ve said elsewhere that if I’m a fan of any genre, it’d have to be SF. It’s my first love, and it’ll always remain so. When I was a young SF-neophyte and I discovered Phil Dick, I felt that my kind of soul had made contact with his work. It was a very defining experience, and it felt like it was innate. It’s hard to explain my feelings at the time. For me, that experience was absolutely bound up in finding these books that were dealing with the nature of reality and of what makes us authentic humans. Phil Dick always maintained that the bombardment of the so-called pseudo-realities began to produce make-believe and spurious humans very quickly — as fake as Lady Gaga. I was used to the Asimovs, Heinleins, and Clarkes, which were more run-of-the-mill SF. When I came across the Phil Dick oeuvre it almost seemed they were a sort of fictional artifacts. I couldn't believe there was such a writer working in the field of SF. I still remember thinking his name seemed weird or that his titles seemed nonsensical to me. It was like a secret reality unraveling in my life. As you can imagine my poor brain had to cope those strange things coming out of Phil Dick’s pen. Priest’s books have a similar effect on me. But because I’m “more mature and wiser”, the impact is not in the same order of magnitude when compared to Phil’s books. Nevertheless, in Priest’s take on the nature of reality, there‘s also something about the essence of his writing that creates that feeling. I still think there‘s something innately self-deprecating about the writing. His run-of-the-mill sentences make you feel like I‘m the only one who understands what he’s writing, and he‘s also the only one who understands me. It‘s like a cognitive version of a love affair. I’m making this cozy connection with this other mind. He’s able to project that into his work (see my review of "The Adjacent"). I think that Priest sees the inner workings of our own reality we experience so profoundly. And this speaks to the different layers of reality in his work — the way time moves according to the calendar, but other ways in terms of ship time (mental time, psychological time, social time):

“Time fled from me – I suffered gradual detriment. Youth attached to me – I gained gradual increment. Balance remained.

Absolute time, ship time: the difference became personal time lost.

Absolute age, travel through the gradual: the difference led to personal rejuvenation gained.”

Looking closely at the above quote, I can see the way Priest conveys the experience of the mind-altering or the reality-transforming better than nearly any writer who ever lived, with the possible exception of Phil Dick. Priest’s prose is so plain that by that same plainness he’s able to turn things into a sort of a hidden reality. His characters — his surrogates within the space of his own fictional world — are totally incorporated in it. There‘s no mastery exhibited. It’s all so very plain as to be awkward, but we can sense the way the character’s experience it. They‘re not objective tour guides. His characters are sufferers who move through these worlds/realities.

For many years, while I was reading Phil Dick by the bucket load, I was also thinking about what made Dick so compelling and personal, i.e., what made me each time take him so personally when I discovered his work. And the same happens now with Christopher Priest. That’s the magic of the great writers. They make us believe in their unique creations.

This is not the best Priest has ever written, but if you want to see what literary SF looks like, look no further.

SF = Speculative Fiction.

"Perder a Alma/Losing the Soul" by Rui Chafes (1998)

As anyone knows from reading my perambulations on this and other venus, my love in Literature is deeply rooted in SF (the good kind). I've probably read everything worth reading in the field (in the last 10 years or so not so much, because the quality has been dwindling...).

As soon as I got my eyes on Rui Chafes' “Losing the Soul/Perder a Alma”, my SFional side resurfaced. Lots of novels and authors went through my mind: James Blish's Okie cities (spindizzy devices come to the rescue...), Gibson's Japanese landscapes, Poul Anderson's Arvanneth,  Arthur C. Clarke's Diaspar, Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Miéville's New Crobuzon, Sprague de Camp's Twelve Cities, Walter M. Miller's Texarkana, and so on. I've always been fascinated by cities in SF. It's always been one of my ways to tell good SF from the bad. The cities of SF are often characterized by its ability to explore the future of those same cities in narrative terms. This gives SF a fascinating and potentially useful resonance. Urban spatiality, i.e., the relationship between urban space and narrative in SF is sometimes the decisive factor when I'm in bashing mode... As with almost everything I see and do, Novalis emerges: "Hätten wir eine Phantastik, wie eine Logik, so wäre die Erfindungskunst - erfunden. Zur Phantastik gehört auch die Ästhetik gewissermassen, wie die Vernunftlehre zur Logik." (My loose translation: "If we had a Fantastic, like we do have in terms of Logic, the art of invention would be like this - invented. To the Fantastic belongs as well, in a certain way, the Aesthetic, like the Theory of Reason belongs to Logic"). What Novalis is really saying is that Reason, Aesthetic, SF, Math/Physics are all closely connected. SF for me has always been the summit when it comes to my ability to think in a wholesomely/holistic way. SF, like any kind of good art, makes me think like no other form of art, and in several novels I’ve really been on the brink of losing my soul...

SF = Speculative Fiction.

NB: This art piece was not really a part of Berardo's exhibition. Oddly it's also strangely fitting for these pieces to be on show right in front of Berardo's pieces (they're really his. He bought them after all...). Chafes is one of my favourite sculptors. These art pieces showed me he's still one of the masters.

"Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea" by Adam Roberts, Mahendra Sing

12:07 pm 28 February 2014

  

2014 is going to be the year to read lots of new authors. Robert Adams was on my TBR pile since I can remember. Now was the time. Finally.

Having not read his previous work, I was just plain flabbergasted by this novel’s technical expertise.

The brain surely works in mysterious ways. While reading it, I kept thinking about Arthur C. Clarke. The same kind of narrative wonder is on display here. Unfortunately some problems make the novel less than totally enjoyable (see “Things that I did not like” below).

I sense that for Adam Roberts a lot of the appeal of science fiction isn't exactly in the science. It's in something that makes a leap. Like Asimov he seems to be fascinated by whodunits; in the SF field there are not many writers who have tried this approach, ie, to be able to devise clever whodunits set in a SF world. This novel is a clear signal of that. And it’s a quite clever whodunit.

Readers of a more traditional type of SF must look elsewhere. Adam likes to play with words and metaphors, which is something that’s not present in everyday-SF. Like Christopher Priest, Adam Roberts also tries to make a kind of rupture. To achieve that via conceptual jumps out of what we're familiar with is quite difficult. For me good SF must have the ability to estrange, and to make new. That’s what distinguished good from bad SF.

Also a very strong plus are the numerous interior illustrations by Mahendra Singh. It’s not easy to convey, at the same time, a sense of being both vintage and futuristic.

Drawing another parallel with “The Adjacent”, which can be clearly identified as SF, “Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea” is not like anything you’ve ever read. It also seems to be traditional SF, but underneath it’s something else.

The things that I really liked: (1) the way the classical works of SF are used as a basis for the narrative; (2) the literary techniques

Things that I did not like: (1) some decisions seemed to lack internal justification, eg, why did the submarine on its maiden voyage took a 500-feet dive? (2) The crew seemed to be ill-prepared for the problems that arose.

If you put a five people in a room and they all read this book there would more than likely be five different interpretations of events. Adam Roberts manages to touch upon everything from politics and religion to the quest for ultimate knowledge and multi-verse theory. This is my type of story, when different readers will each take something different away from it.

Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL: “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke

(My own copy in English bought in 1994)

“I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.”

In "The Sentinel” by “Arthur C. Clarke"

“The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.”

In “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke 

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL"

In the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick

As a 15 year old I was about to start watching a Saturday matinee film (it may have been Thunderbird) when a future presentation advert came on. It looked like a fantastic space adventure so a week later I went to see it. I was amazed - incredible looking spaceships - computers which weren't just rows of flashing lights - shots which looked like they could have been taken on the moon and a fantastic space station. I just couldn't work out how they'd made it in the same way I couldn't work out the ending (nor could many others as I recall because there was a collective 'Ay' when Bowman turned into the Starchild). I saw it again about 2 years later - after I'd read the book - with a slight air of smugness knowing that I probably had an edge on many others. It's a great film that raised so many bars but of course at the time I was far too young to be able to 'trip' out on it unless you include sherbet dabs. I had never imagined SF could be anything like this. After all this time, I still find the special effects impressive, (although it was all done with models and CGI was unheard of). Even the soundtrack was extraordinary: Johann and Richard Strauss, (not to mention Ligeti's eerie choral music). I rushed out to buy the album, as well as an LP of 'Also Sprach Zarathustra', and drove my parents to distraction playing them over and over and over again!

I was trained as a Physicist and a Computer Scientist, and have a literal turn of mind, but this is the only film (along with “Blade Runner” ‘82). I can immerse myself in and experience on a totally emotional level - and relish the lack of dialogue. The film just draws you in, takes you on a roller-coaster ride, and leaves you awe struck with its final scene as the camera pans back from the star-child, and one see the Earth behind him. Absolutely bloody amazing. This is the film that explodes the dreary 'must have characters you care about' axiom. Wonder how 2001 would look when checked against the rules propounded by those guys who run weekend courses in screenwriting, for people who want to write films you watch when it's 3.00 am and you can't sleep, and you're pissed.

It is always interesting reading the first reviews of what go on to major literary or film classics. It can tell you not just about the critics, how right or wrong they were, but about the time itself.

Reading some of the reviews at the time, you get the sense the reviewer knows that there is something about 2001 but neither has the language or courage to say how he truly feels. Makes me wonder what films that are coming out today will people still be talking in 50 years time? Always keep an open mind and recognise greatness sometimes exists in that which makes you feel uncomfortable, or causes a visceral reaction, on first viewing, I say.

Some things that stayed with me:

- the appearance of the monolith does not produce some 'ill-defined effect' on the hominids as some said at the time; rather, it inspires them with the idea of using tools to kill other animals, and then themselves. Hardly an 'ill-defined effect', when you consider the consequences of tool-making on mankind, from the enlargement of our brains with the additional protein from the meat, and the increase in both co-operation and conflict -- co-operation that was necessary in hunting, and conflict over scarce resources. The scene in which the two hominid groups fight over the water-hole neatly summarises all these concepts;

- I still recall the whole film vividly helped by all the facets Kubrick brought to bear on my mind, my senses and my imagination and leaving many questions that I still cannot answer. For what it is worth I still find a strong 'religious' (there is something more powerful than we could ever comprehend going on here) theme throughout the film's length. Music, sound and visual imagery can all be seen as religions;

- I once read an interview with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. The band did some wonderful film score work in the late 60s and early 70s, for Antonioni's badly underrated 'Zabriskie Point', for example, or Barbet Schroeder's heroin film 'More' (search for their fantastic 'The Nile Song' and play it as loudly as possible). Supposedly Kubrick asked them if they'd be interested in contributing towards the 'A Clockwork Orange' musical score in some way, but Pink Floyd said no. Years later, post-Pink Floyd's bifurcation, when Roger Waters was still grinding his axe towards Dave Gilmour, Waters - evidently a rather ornery bloke but still rather amusing with it - asked Kubrick for permission to use a sample from HAL's death: "....Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?......Dave?.....I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question....Dave?.....Stop.....Stop, will you?......Stop, Dave......Will you stop, Dave?.....Stop, Dave....." and Kubrick reciprocated by saying no. Equalled perhaps only by HAL's silent murder of the three sleeping astronauts, which gave me nightmares for weeks;

- 2001 is not narrative cinema in the traditional sense. It's the kind of thing that you just have to let wash over you, the way you would a symphony. As such I can see why it's not for everybody;

- And silence, too: no "whooshing" in space! HAL's killing of Frank Poole is still one of the most chilling film deaths, all the more for the lack of dramatic music. (Hint: look up the planned Alex North score for 2001 on Youtube; North only discovered that Kubrick decided not to use his pieces when he attended the premiere! But they would also have killed the film (IMHO), playing to the action, instead of setting a mood.);

- One of the most telling scene is Dr. Haywood Floyd's moon base briefing. The admission of the use of a cover story, and the preparation and conditioning of the populous that is required. It sounds like a throwaway line, but Kubrick is saying a lot here about power and authority of the 'council'. We are back at the waterhole again, the most powerful apes using not clubs now but public relations techniques to maintain hegemony. Like all his movies it is a damning critique of humanity. But accurate. And ultimately hopeful. And beautiful. It also is responsible for making poor Hal lie,making him malfunction thus causing the deaths of all the astronauts . The technology may have changed, but the essence of what’s between humans and their primate ancestors hasn’t at all. The bone to spaceship scene showed the ascendancy of humans. This is a foil showing its degeneration;

- Some people here have criticized 2001 for being dull. Clearly they’re missing a lot. It’s a film that not just answers what we were and what we are, but what we might become. Say what you want but the film transcends space, time, religion and even death itself. Obviously the film is cryptic but that only means it requires multiple viewings. As Kubrick once said “I spend 10 years making these things, the audience spends two hours. Obviously they’re going to be confused.”;

- Only fault was the elongated kaleidoscope of colours near the end. Yeah, the psychedelic sequence falls flat. I wonder if Kubrick would've done that passage differently a couple of years later. Still, a masterpiece flaws and all. I read the book much later and was as stunned by Clarke's descriptive visualisation of the same passage;

(My own Space Odyssey tetralogy, all of them bought in 1994 at the British Bookshop in Lisbon)

- It’s been one of my favourite film for years; I must have seen it 100 times; I got the big Taschen book box about the making of the film; all those computer screens in the movie? Not computers at all; they did not exist in that form yet, they are tiny projection screens,each with their own little projector, playing little animated films of what they thought computers would show in the future. They even had to figure out how to make the projectors play upside down as the set turned around. Yeah, it’s my favourite film, watching it is what I imagine a religious experience would be like, it’s so awe inspiring and beautiful. This attention to detail hadn’t been seen before, and took a very long time to be seen again. Most youngsters won’t appreciate that these amazing glass cockpits weren’t even on the drawing boards in the 1960s, and TVs were lumbering monochrome CRTs with actual valves/tubes inside (and some transistors, if you had a newer model);

- It really is stunning to see Kubrick’s vision of the future from the 60s. Even iPad Pros on the breakfast table;

- Contains one of my favourite shot in cinema: when Keir Dullea is in the bathroom at the end and hears the sounds of a scraping knife. The camera - his POV - tracks to the door to observe the back of an older man who turns arthritically and reveals himself to be... ...Dullea. The older Dullea rises and shuffles towards us but finds nothing and no-one. The genius of this one deceptively simple sequence is that it changes from POV to a simple framing shot without a cut. 2001 is crammed with these cinematic sleights of hand and even fifty years later remains the benchmark for serious SF cinema. Truly a masterpiece. and as I understand it, in that simple series of shots at the end, Kubrick articulates Einstein's theory of relativity. Bowman lands on Jupiter(?), already aged by the journey through the Stargate, then sees himself as two much older men, co-existing simultaneously, before being returned to orbit planet earth, waiting to be reborn. Time is relative;

- The most interesting element is also the reverse robotization of the human astronauts and the humanisation of HAL. The former, with their very ordinary names of Dave and Frank, are completely devoid of character, emotion and - beyond the dispassionate video calls with family - personal life or sexual identity. HAL is the only true character in the film. As extraordinary events unfold, the journey of the human characters retains a prosaic quality and their behaviour remains coldly functional. Bowman seems totally unaffected by the murder of his crew members. Even his transcendent transformation into the Starchild finds him in a hotel suite. I could never work out if this conceit was supposed to be an almost quasi-Brechtian joke, or signalling a deeper philosophical point;

- What's most extraordinary to me is how a film from 1968 still looks, 50 years later, as modern as it does (with a few exceptions). The technological effort Kubrick went into to get the space hardware 'correct', with so much expert input, means that (skipping over the punched card being printed out for Bowman, BBC 12's jazz intro, and the buttons-instead-of-touch-sensors) you can look at the Discovery scenes now without cringing;

- Flat monitor displays and tablets as well, at a time when TVs were a tad on the rounded side; "Computer" graphics: ALL of which were hand animated! (There were (essentially) no graphics in the mid-60s, bar a few experimental pieces.);

- It's interesting to think that had Kubrick included ANY of the 'normal' scenes of life in 2001 (and he did shoot some highly dodgy Clavius base shots that were thankfully not included), we'd see those now as looking incredibly dated;

Bottom-Line: It is still one of the best SF films, and shows up the paucity of imagination and writing in contemporary SF films. 2001 still stands as beautifully and enigmatically as the black stone monoliths shown throughout it: touchable, watchable but still unknowable giving away little but raising question after question after question...Maybe the best cinematic murder ever, when Dave deactivates HAL 9000.

SF = Speculative Fiction.