h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I did read 2010 once, and even 2064 or something, whatever the book that came after was called. Anyway, maybe you're right.

we have true AI computers? we certainly don't have anything like the space capabilities (space stations, passenger shuttles, long range human transports) depicted in the movie. bizarrely, we actually have LESS ability to mount manned space exploration than we did when the movie was made.

the pen thing was 2010 wasn't it?

Last time I checked (a few years ago), the best true AI could offer was a handful of robots that had learned different colors and how to move back and forth on their own.

In 2001 there's a pen floating around in the passenger cabin when the shuttle is docking with the space station.

If someone could check what the name of the sequel to 2010 was, that would be a good useless fact.

I suppose the fact that there was a sequel to 2010 is in itself a pretty decent useless fact anyway.

When I mentioned the computers, I was thinking specifically about the way the computer screens were displayed in the film. Computers didn't have nice color screens at the time. All of those displays on the Discovery were actually rear projection screens with either slide projectors or film projectors behind them. You have to keep in mind the actual state of computer tech in the late 60's when that film was made to see how amazingly accurate some of those ideas were.

Also consider how prescient the typical sci-fi film of that era was... I don't see any atomic mutants or 40 foot ants wandering around our streets.

Sequels:
2061: Odyssey 3
3001: The Final Odyssey

When are they going to make the films of 2061 and 3001?

Rendezvous With Rama is slated to come out in 2009.

In American college football, beginning with the third overtime, a team that scores a touchdown must attempt a two-point try (rather than the normal one point kick).

i agree. no science fiction writer has been more prescient than clarke. but it needs to be said that even against the background of 60s cultural and technological optimism, the portrayal of a future only 30 years ahead was way off the chart in expectation. to go from flying tin cans to giant orbital stations with artificial gravity within a generation would have required budgetary and technological leaps of an order of magnitude more than was possible or actual. i would go so far as to say that most of the stuff in 2001 we won't see in our lifetimes and probably not for a century or more.

clarke's passionate and admirable advocacy of science leads to portrayals of a near future which is amazing and wonderful. but like all propaganda, and i use that term in a favourable sense, a comparison to the truth will inevitably disappoint. i think we do clarke an injustice to be ticking off which elements arrived in due time or not.

different matter for the scientists and industrialists involved in the creation of space tech, who must constrain themselves to the truth as a matter of scientific integrity, and who must also be accountable for the results of public spending.

on that score i am not inclined to be charitable.

ftr, the answer to the pen question asked earlier is wires.

on the subject of accurate presentations of future computers, i can't go past the star trek episode 'the menagerie'. i suspect this is either a result of dumb luck and coincidence, or, given the geek overlap between computer students and trekkies, and actual example of science consciously imitating art.

I don't see how wires could have allowed the pen to twist around to such a degree without getting all tangled up.

Ming Campbell once beat OJ Simpson in a 100 metres race. This was when he was on a scholarship to Stamford University in California.

He also ran for Britain in the Tokyo Olympics that year (1964).

'I don't see how wires could have allowed the pen to twist around to such a degree without getting all tangled up.'

i too am mystified by puppetry. *s*

The blue space suit on the Discovery (in both 2001 and 2010) was later used on two episodes of Babylon 5 in 1994.


(Arthur C. Clarke has commented on the futility of being a futurist. And then he'll usually go ahead and answer questions concerning where he thinks we'll be in the future anyway. He has consistently been overly optimistic. I recommend The View From Serendip (1977) for further reading.)

Lap dancers on the pill show no particular variation in their takings throughout the month, whereas those who are not on the pill show a 50% increase in takings in the middle of their monthly cycle, when they are most fertile.

The mass of the earth is about 6 x 10^24 metric tonnes.

Whoops! That should be 6 x 10^21 tonnes

(6 x 10^24 kg)

How much if everyone one in the world jumps up at the same moment?

What if everyone started running to the East?

you don't need to add 'metric' when you are typing 'tonnes', since the unit is metric by definition. people usually add 'metric' when speaking (in places that are post imperial measure) because 'tons' and 'tonnes' are (nearly) homonyms.

not trying to be pedantic; merely useless. *s*

10^21 tonnes is a zettatonne.