2001: A Space Odyssey

I have a confession to make. I've never been able to watch Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the book. Mitch, my biological father, was really into the 2001 series and the movie. He tried to get me to watch it a few times.

I can make it through the apes and the stewardess walking with Velcro shoes. I think I even made it to the big monolith on the moon once or at least I have an imagine in my mind of men in space suits trying to hold their ears when it emitted a loud noise. But I always find my mind wandering when the satellites are doing their German waltz and then I go find something better to do. Actually, it is possible I even made it to the Discovery since a picture of someone running in a centrifuge looks familiar.

Of course, I have seen numerous spoofs of Hal on TV shows like The Simpsons and Futurama where a computer or spaceship develops human emotions that lead the computer/spaceship to threaten physical harm or death to humans/aliens/robots. Generally, the computer/robot is shown to be malevolent, desiring to possess something and willing to destroy anything that gets in its way. Now that I think about it, the iRobot film follows this plot in that a supercomputer determines that humans are not fit to take care of themselves and must more or less enslave humans for their well being.

The movie and the book were written to go together with the book being published just after the release of the film. If you have both seen the movie and read the book, I think you will agree with me that the order is wrong. The movie is largely a visualization without a complete narrative to nicely link all the images together. It is also vague, or enigmatic if you want a more positive sounding word.


For example, a bunch of apes see this big black slab and go, well, bananas and start smashing things with bones. You can somewhat deduce that this is the discovery of tools and weapons but what did that have to do with the monolith? The book treats this part of the tale seriously. A group of hominids, not yet human but nearing, wake up one morning to discover the monolith. Each evening, the monolith captures the attention of the group to run tests. The hominids are hungry, near starvation and extinction. The monolith manipulates the bodies and minds of the creatures to suggest to them new ways of doing things and to inspire within them the concept of being sated. Over time, many months, some of them begin to use tools such as bones as weapons to take down meat. This is not only the discovery of weaponry and tools but also a discovery of meat as part of the hominid diet. Later, nearly by accident, the hominids discover that these weapons can also be used for defense (against a leopard) and offense (against a rival group with whom they compete for food). Once the hominids reach this state in their development, the monolith disappears. But now the hominids have the concept of tools, which will lead them through 3 million years of development until mankind, the heir of the hominids, is ready to explore space.

The monolith is evidence of an alien life that, yearning for intelligent company, encourages and develops the mental faculties of other species. It rescues the hominid species from extinction in the hope that eventually, the species would grow. A beautiful idea of benevolent alien interaction. You can watch Star Trek TNG episode The Chase (6:20) which has a similar plot. As does Clarke's Childhoods End. So far I have made references to three works, none of which I have written about, all of which I enjoyed very much.

Is this even implied in the movie? Why is it that everyone remembers the music and HAL but not the hypothetical alien life and possible human evolution to something greater than what we are? We tend to think that evolution stops here, that life as we know it is the best this planet can do. Clark seems to think that we are capable of becoming more, even at the precipice of nuclear war.

HAL is also a more interesting problem. An intelligent computer capable of completing the entire mission on his own, HAL has been programmed with a single moral: to tell the truth. This mission requires that he violate that one moral. The difficulty HAL faces in concealing and deceiving causes him to develop a neurosis. The very bad things that he does (killing 4 people, for example) are a result of his attempt to rectify his cognitive dissonance. It is implied that HAL, being a computer of extraordinary capabilities, such as the power to solve problems through heuristics, also is capable of emotions. HAL shows both concern and fear in the novel (probably in the movie, too), as well as anxiety over his deceit. HAL also has a very real fear of death. While Bowman wants to shut off portions of HAL's system to fix errors and reboot (how very like modern computers, eh?), HAL understands this as death since he is unfamiliar with sleep and does not understand that he can come back after being shut down. I suppose that in HAL's mind, he was defending his life when he killed the others.

I do have something positive to say about the movie, it was beautifully scientifically accurate as far as space travel was concerned - as was the book. The artificial gravity created by centrifuge, the food and toilet issues, walking in zero gravity, the design of the Discovery, the lack of sound in space, time delay in communications (which I think were rather optimistic but so was getting to the Moon in a matter of hours), the look of the hominids was based on works by anthropologist and all-around-awesomist Leakey. There are some problems in the film, most of which could not be avoided (like the way liquids and small solids would move in zero gravity). But overall, I think they did their homework.

Rendezvous with Rama

Against expectations, the aliens do not appear. Rather, Rama is a passing world, briefly coming to life in a shocking display of evolution and animation only to recycle itself as it sling-shots around the sun in disregard for the animal life it has confounded in its brief journey through the solar system. Any and all things understood about Rama must come from human reason and imagination. There is no host population to translate and explain.

Rama, a world in an enormous pill. It is a medicinal dose of discovery. Stories of conquistadors, missions, colonization, etc, that make us all slightly ill with guilt - or at least they make me feel that way. Why? Certainly not because I would conduct negotiations at the end of a gun. I have the privilege of living in 2010 in a fairly egalitarian society (at least politically on paper) and in the great wide world known as the internet*. The exotic has become psychologically domesticated and I have little fear of run ins with the unknown (and even less opportunity to have such run ins). Rendezvous with Rama offers a fairy-tale type of exploration. Hostility is denied, fears are faced, and extraordinary astronauts repress their biological reactions in the name of diplomacy. It is with great sadness and relief that these star sailors flee without having met one of the true Ramans. There is no culture clash, no war culture coming across a peace culture (you can decide for yourself which culture either of the teams would be on).

I did not draw a connection to the Age of Exploration on my own. The spaceship is named the Endeavor after one of Captain Cook's ships. The captain often ponders Cook and compares his successes and failure to Cook, not only as an explorer and captain but also as a human and a husband.

There are indeed some forms of life, the biots, biological robots. They are simple, utilitarian, undeniably organic but not alive as we understand the word. In high school, on the first day of biology, we were asked to define life. What an extraordinary complicated task. What lept to my mind was the inevitability of death, which is no more easy to explain in a satisfying way. I could say the inability to move, permanent lack of consciousness, etc. But these are merely negations of life. So what does alive mean? We agreed that reproduction, conversion of material into energy (metabolism), and growth were necessary. Sufficient? Not quite. A robot-building robot might fit that description. Self-sustaining seemed important, although like many other elements is suggests that certain humans in certain conditions are not truly alive. Cells! now there is an element I can get behind. Some organization of a cell or cells-microscopic bacterium, enormous ostrich egg, and the beautiful gestalt of multi-celled organisms. Dr. Kephart kindly added some of the remaining elements which had been either too uncertain or too unclear in my mind (and probably others'): evolution, the possibility to change from generation to generation; stimulus response, which can be part of growth but also exhibited in movement. So, there you have it, life itself. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

How do the biots rank? Reproduction-check. The biots had available blueprints for their makeup and were either spawned or built as Rama neared Sol. Metabolism- null. Biots lacked a means of ingesting food or a digestive system. I don't think the shifting of electrons through a power chord count as metabolism since the energy is already converted. Growth - null. Self-sufficient - null. Cells-check. Their skeletal system was built in a honeycomb pattern of cells, which reminded me a great deal of that awesome cat with the million-dollar-man style hind legs. But the biot's cells were organic. Evolution-difficult to tell but I would imagine null. Stimulus response, check. I found this an inconclusive and dissatisfying analysis. But at least these biots are only science fiction (at the moment) so the ethical ramifications of their possible life can be delayed, probably through my lifetime and yours.

These biots, while possessing mobility and some intelligence, ignore the astronauts. Since the Ramans fail to appear, the humans have only Rama itself and themselves to explore. While this may seem dull and uneventful, I can feel a lingering tidal tug that will cause me to return again and again to some detail from the story. Each character is well developed and believable. Those in charge have attributes we wish to ascribe to ourselves, even humility. And because I can relate, I find myself questioning what I would think, how I would act, what I would do. Rama is much like the early Myst series computer games. They provided a world to explore without the threat of inhabitants.

In case you are wondering, and like any good human you are always wondering, Rama is one of Vishnu's avatars. He is known as the Lord of Self Control and the Lord of Virtue. His life is a struggle to maintain perfect dharma, by doing what is appropriate and right even in difficult trials.

*Spellcheck insists that the internet must be capitalized but I disagree.