Ahkenaten
19th December 2010, 21:01
As we are poised for the lunar eclipse on December 21, I am once again reminded of the late Arthur C. Clarke's magisterial work 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What did Arthur C. Clarke know, and when did he know it?
The story outline basically was that some prehuman lifeforms were digging amongst the roots and shrubs in an arid environment for food, embattled by the severe surroundings, other competing tribes, and dangerous large carnivores. One morning, the tribe is awakened by an alarm cry given by the first to awaken, who sees an large, alien rectangular object giving off a strange energy or sound sticking out of the dirt nearby. The alarmed group approaches, and gingerly begins to touch and examine the object. Overhead, a celestial alignment occurs sending a resonating sound out throughout the object and presumably, the other aligned celestial bodies. Later, the prehuman lifeforms discover alternative uses of body extensors, i.e. tools, in this case bones used as weapons. This changes eating and social patterns. Fast forward to a space station where a group is convening a meeting to discuss the top-secret discovery of a mysterious large rectangular object seemingly buried intentionally in the soil of the moon. When the study group approaches the object and gingerly begins to touch and examine it, a celestial alignment causes an ear-piercing high sound to emanate from the object. As it transpires the study group is able to determine that radio transmissions traced from the object in the direction of the planet Jupiter, and a secret mission is dispatched to investigate. During the secret mission, in which some of the scientists in the study group have been placed in hibernation, the computer HAL (computers being yet another example of human extensors?!) goes functionally insane, seemingly fearing that the success of the mission is endangered by the human inhabitants of the spaceship such that he must kill them, leading to his own decapitation by the remaining survivor of the crew, played by actor Keir Dullea. The surviving crew member brings the ship into the area around Jupiter and a pre-recorded message from Mission Control is broadcast revealing the nature of the secret mission and what prompted it. The crew member travels out of the ship in the one remaining travel pod towards a rectangular object that is rotating around the planet Jupiter. As he approaches the enigmatic object that resembles the one discovered by the pre-humans as well as the humans on the moon, the celestial bodies are seen to have come into alignment. At that point a vertical rift opens up in the fabric of reality sucking the crew member and his pod into what appears to be a wormhole or an inter-dimensional split within which he accelerates at warp speed across time and space
ending up in a strange and silent room. First the pod with the crewman is in the room. Then a slightly aged crewman is physically in the room, breathing, as he observes a man sitting eating at a table. The man turns from his meal to look around him, hearing breathing in the room - but sees nothing. The man at the table is an aged version of the crew member. Then the man at the table hears breathing and looks at the bed. There is a very old man in the bed who appears to be at the end of his life. Then there appears a vision in front of the man, and it is a human fetus in an amniotic sac, that human fetus is then suspended above a world much like our own, looking down on it. FINIS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w
What did Arthur C. Clarke know, and when did he know it?
The story outline basically was that some prehuman lifeforms were digging amongst the roots and shrubs in an arid environment for food, embattled by the severe surroundings, other competing tribes, and dangerous large carnivores. One morning, the tribe is awakened by an alarm cry given by the first to awaken, who sees an large, alien rectangular object giving off a strange energy or sound sticking out of the dirt nearby. The alarmed group approaches, and gingerly begins to touch and examine the object. Overhead, a celestial alignment occurs sending a resonating sound out throughout the object and presumably, the other aligned celestial bodies. Later, the prehuman lifeforms discover alternative uses of body extensors, i.e. tools, in this case bones used as weapons. This changes eating and social patterns. Fast forward to a space station where a group is convening a meeting to discuss the top-secret discovery of a mysterious large rectangular object seemingly buried intentionally in the soil of the moon. When the study group approaches the object and gingerly begins to touch and examine it, a celestial alignment causes an ear-piercing high sound to emanate from the object. As it transpires the study group is able to determine that radio transmissions traced from the object in the direction of the planet Jupiter, and a secret mission is dispatched to investigate. During the secret mission, in which some of the scientists in the study group have been placed in hibernation, the computer HAL (computers being yet another example of human extensors?!) goes functionally insane, seemingly fearing that the success of the mission is endangered by the human inhabitants of the spaceship such that he must kill them, leading to his own decapitation by the remaining survivor of the crew, played by actor Keir Dullea. The surviving crew member brings the ship into the area around Jupiter and a pre-recorded message from Mission Control is broadcast revealing the nature of the secret mission and what prompted it. The crew member travels out of the ship in the one remaining travel pod towards a rectangular object that is rotating around the planet Jupiter. As he approaches the enigmatic object that resembles the one discovered by the pre-humans as well as the humans on the moon, the celestial bodies are seen to have come into alignment. At that point a vertical rift opens up in the fabric of reality sucking the crew member and his pod into what appears to be a wormhole or an inter-dimensional split within which he accelerates at warp speed across time and space
ending up in a strange and silent room. First the pod with the crewman is in the room. Then a slightly aged crewman is physically in the room, breathing, as he observes a man sitting eating at a table. The man turns from his meal to look around him, hearing breathing in the room - but sees nothing. The man at the table is an aged version of the crew member. Then the man at the table hears breathing and looks at the bed. There is a very old man in the bed who appears to be at the end of his life. Then there appears a vision in front of the man, and it is a human fetus in an amniotic sac, that human fetus is then suspended above a world much like our own, looking down on it. FINIS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w