Episode: 4500
Title: HPR4500: Arthur C. Clarke: 2001 and Sequels
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4500/hpr4500.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-11-22 15:06:50

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4500 for Friday 31 October 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Arthur C. Clark, 2001 and Seacals.
It is part of a series science fiction and fantasy.
It is hosted by Ahouka and is about 19 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a look at Arthur C.
Clark's most famous series.
Hello, this is Ahouka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio
and another exciting episode in our ongoing series on science fiction and fantasy.
And we have been discussing the works of Arthur C. Clark
and it is time to get to probably the best known of all the things.
He ever did.
And it's 2001 a space Odyssey.
Because I think it is fair to say that if you only know Arthur C. Clark for one work,
it would be 2001 a space Odyssey.
And it deserves to be famous for a number of reasons.
Now this started with a short story called The Sentinel.
I've put a link in the show notes.
If you want more information about that,
which Arthur C. Clark wrote in 1948 and later published in 1951,
making it a pretty early work of his.
But parts of the film also drew a story called Encounter in the Dawn,
which he published in 1953.
But the completed work of 2001 started actually as a film
and was novelized by Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick.
More or less in parallel alongside the screenplay,
though Clark was the only listed author.
And the screenplay for the film was also a collaboration between Clark and Kubrick.
They didn't quite agree on everything.
And in 1972, Clark published a book called The Lost Worlds of 2001,
which contains additional material,
such as the original text of that short story The Sentinel,
some early versions of the screenplay,
and material about how Clark and Kubrick developed the project.
Now the story begins in Africa three million years ago,
and this draws upon the story Encounter in the Dawn.
A monolith stands there amidst a group of hominids.
The hominids develop tool using, which enables them to kill animals for food.
The novel is more explicit, but the film strongly hints that this development was
brought about by the monolith.
Then the hominids use the bone tools to kill a leopard that threatened them.
Finally, one hominid used the bone club to kill a rival.
Then the scene shifts to the near future,
at the time this was done, of AD 1999.
And a Dr. Haywood Floyd is traveling to the moon,
where another monolith has been discovered.
So, you know, at the time that they were doing this,
they knew there was a space race on,
and it never occurred to them that we would go to all the trouble of going to the moon and then
saying, all right, well, that's done. Let's forget about it.
Although that's in fact pretty much what happened.
So, they're thinking by 1999, there will be permanent installations on the moon and
exploration and scientific stuff.
We're starting to move towards doing that now, if we look at the plans, which
not just NASA, but also the Chinese and other countries are looking at.
So, you know, they were a little more optimistic.
Anyway, there is the permanent settlements on the moon, and at one point they are
in an excavation where they discover this monolith.
And it has the precise dimensions of one to four to nine.
And those represent the squares of the first three integers.
So, it is believed to be of intelligent origin.
And when the sun falls upon this monolith for the first time since it was uncovered,
and you have to remember, on the moon, the night is two weeks long,
and followed by two weeks of day.
So, you could uncover something for three, four, five days, or even a week,
so, and not have any sunfall on it.
Well, once the sun falls on this monolith, it emits a piercing radio transmission.
And this is a good place to discuss that the novel and the movie differ in some details.
Now, in the novel, the transmission is directed at a moon of Saturn, called Iapetus.
But in the movie, it is directed at Jupiter, not the huge difference.
Now, these minor differences do not affect the overall plot, a 10-degree degree.
In either case, it is now clear that some alien intelligence created this monolith
and that it has some kind of base in the outer solar system.
Well, the next step is to mount a mission that go out and see what it is.
There are two astronauts, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole.
And then several scientists who are in hibernation, and they are all the crew of a ship called
the Discovery that is sent out to investigate.
Now, along the way, Frank Poole is killed, and Dave Bowman starts to suspect that the computer,
a Hal 9000, is the cause of the problem.
Now, many people have noted that Hal, H-A-L, is just IBM shifted down by one space.
You know, I down to H, B down to A, M down to L.
Anyway, Dave shuts down Hal, then goes on to investigate,
and he is transported through some kind of stargate.
It is not really explicit in the movie, a little more explicit in the novel.
And that takes him to another location, and something happens, and he becomes the star child.
A number of these details are different between the film and the novel,
but I wouldn't worry about that. The differences are not, in my view, important.
Now, the film itself has been considered one of the great science fiction films of all time.
The film delivers a look at what we thought was a very plausible future.
The space clipper that took Dr. Floyd to the moon was operated by Pan Am, which was an airline
at the time of the film. It has ceased to exist as of 1991.
The spinning space station from which Dr. Floyd leaves for the moon is exactly what scientists
have projected, because the spinning creates artificial gravity, which is easier for most
people to tolerate than the microgravity we have right now on the International Space Station.
This approach to artificial gravity is replicated on the ship to Jupiter,
but due to the smaller size, it results in a very obvious curvature inside the ship.
Now, everything is exactly what a scientist or an engineer would expect.
I think this takes us back to the thing that we talked about that Clark has developed a reputation
for doing hard science fiction, and this film has a lot to do with it.
It was not pure fantasy. Instead, it was really very much what science and engineering were telling
us was possible at that time. Now, as it happens, Clark was not happy with some of the changes
Kubrick made in the film, which is why he released Lost Worlds of 2001 in 1972.
Nonetheless, I think Kubrick's film is a masterpiece that every fan of science fiction should watch and enjoy.
Then, in 1982, Clark came back to do a sequel called 2010 Odyssey 2.
Now, in this sequel, Clark made a few changes to what he had said in the novel of 2001
to bring it into alignment with the film. So, forget about Saturn's moon Iapetus,
it's now canon in this that it was Jupiter all along.
Now, the next available ship is actually a Soviet ship, called the Alexei Leonov,
named of course for the Soviet cosmonaut, who is the first person to conduct a spacewalk.
This ship carries a mixed crew of Americans and Russians and includes the sciences to
program the Hal 9000 on the discovery. Now, they set off for Jupiter, but then a Chinese craft races
ahead. So, it's interesting that even back in the 70s, 80s at this point, Clark was already
saying that China is going to be racing ahead. Right now, China is making great strides. They've
got their own space station, they're landing things on the moon, they're doing a lot of stuff.
So, in this story, he's got them sending their own ship to Jupiter,
but then they notice something, it is going really fast. Going really fast uses up a lot of fuel.
Generally, what you do is you do a slower and you start using things like gravity assist
maneuvers to minimize the need for fuel, but it'll take longer. Looking at the Chinese craft,
it's like they can't have enough fuel for the return. Well, what does that mean? Well,
they suspect what's going to happen is that they're going to land on Europa and try and refuel
there with the water ice that's available, that they could somehow use for fusion reactions
and things like that. It does attempt to land on Europa and then they're wiped out by a life
form that is native there. Dave Bowman reappears when the monolith around Jupiter opens briefly into
being the stargate. He's now a being of pure energy with nobody and he's being used by the alien
monolith builders to study Earth. So, he goes to Earth and has some interactions with people there.
Then he returns to the Jupiter system and tells Dr. Floyd, who is on the Alexei Lanov,
that you guys have to leave the Jupiter system within 15 days.
Then the monolith orbiting Jupiter disappears and that's enough to convince people that okay,
maybe Dave Bowman whatever he is now knows what he's talking about so they make ready to depart.
They have to use the discovery, which was Bowman's original ship to help it break orbit and leave.
Bowman then goes to the discovery. He has them take the the Hal 9000
computer system and has the monoliths take all the programming out of that, sort of like a brain dump.
Then Bowman has the discovery broadcast a message to the humans and it says the rest of the
solar system is theirs but they must leave Europa alone. Now apparently the monolith builders have
decided that the creatures on Europa have evolutionary promise. Then they night fusion on Jupiter,
turning it into a mini-son. Now this novel was filmed in 1984, under the name 2010, the year we
make contact. It's a nice enough film. I don't regard it as anything remarkable. It's not a ground-shaking
milestone in science fiction filmmaking the way 2001 definitely was.
Now the next one in the series is called 2061 Odyssey 3, which Clark wrote in 1987.
So it's 50 years since the previous novel now at this point, 60 years since 2001.
So things have changed. The new son that Jupiter became is now called Lucifer
and it has made the moon IO a volcanic helhole but Ganymede is now a temperate body that humans have
colonized. There's also a new spaceship drive involving muon-catalized fusion that is opening up
the possibility of interstellar voyages and Europa and its inhabitants are thriving.
On Earth the Americans the Soviets and the Chinese are in relative peace but a revolution in South
Africa has caused all the white africaners to leave but the black population has used the
revenue from the diamond mines to help rebuild their country. Then a mountain appears on Europa and
it looks like it is a huge diamond created when Jupiter ignited. Some of the africaners want to
get their hands on it as revenge since it would destroy the market for diamonds and their ship
crashes on Europa. A very old Dr. Floyd, yeah he's still around and somehow gets involved in this
situation. A small monolith appears to him and we learn it as copy Dr. Floyd's mind into another
pure energy being as a companion to Dave Bowman. Bowman then explains to Dr. Floyd that Lucifer,
the former Jupiter, will stop burning in about a thousand years and when that happens the
monolith builders will have a decision to make. Do they see more potential in the Europa or in the
humans and it's not certain which way this will go. And then the last book in the series was called
3,001, the final Odyssey published in 1997. This starts with a prologue about the monolith builders.
They were a race, an alien race that considered mind to be the most precious thing in the universe
and built the monoliths to encourage the development of mines wherever they were.
It's implied that the race that build the monoliths has moved on and no longer is particularly
involved with them but there is a master monolith which appears to be located in a star system
450 light years away. Meanwhile the freestride body of Frank Poole from the first discovery mission
is discovered and he is revived with the superior technology of the 31st century.
He is sent to visit Europa where he visits the monolith there and converses with Dave Bowman.
Now Bowman has now merged with the Hal 9000
mines that was rescued before Jupiter ignited and now has become a being that is called
Halman. Lucifer is indeed starting to dim and this is a problem. The monolith monitor what is
going on and you know they send reports back to the monolith HQ and that takes 450 years to get
there then it has to be considered and a reply takes another 450 years to come back and you know
it's about time for the reply to come back. Bowman thinks it may be bad because what they
witnessed at the time of the report was the wars of the 20th century.
And sure enough the reply comes back that says essentially humans have failed wipe them out.
Now humanity needs a way to fight back and they decide to use a computer virus to disrupt the
monolith. The monoliths are really just computerized mechanisms, advanced ones but they're able to
put in a virus and the monoliths are brought down but the human race and the aeropens do develop
relations. Now at one time Ridley Scott was going to develop a series based on his novel
for the sci-fi channel but like so many in development projects it seems so have disappeared
entirely. You know and that's the thing about films and Hollywood is that for for every one film
that actually gets made there's probably 20 properties or 30 properties that have been
optioned and gone into at least initial development and then nothing ever happens.
So it's a pretty common kind of thing. So that is the whole series of 2001 and all of its
sequels. So this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off and is always encouraging you
to support free software. Bye bye!
On the Sadois stages, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
Attribution 4.0 International License.
