There wasn’t much in it, but both Voyager 1 (in November 1980) and Voyager 2 (in August 1981) had passed Saturn by the time the book was published in January 1982. I suspect that if he’d really wanted to stick to continuity with the earlier book, he’d merely have delayed starting writing the sequel.
All my Clarke stuff is boxed up, but I recall that he says in an afterword that he’d held out against writing the sequel until someone - who he names - gave him the basic idea. Since that’s fairly obviously making the centre of the novel lifeforms in a Europan ocean, that only really works with Jupiter. I get the impression that the earlier disagreement about the destination then gave him a simple excuse to easily force that switch in order to run with this plot. Explaining the switch in those terms up front may even be a deliberate bit of sleight of hand to misdirect the reader until the specific significance of the new destination is revealed.
Except for the fact that the movie has BLOODY SOUND IN SPACE. Argh, of all the things they fucked up, that takes the cake. That movie was a sorry excuse for a sequel.
/Sorry, but I have an irrationally rational hatred of that sequel.
Plus The Odyssey Files, consisting of Clarkes emails with Peter Hyams, the director of 2010, about making the movie.
Digression: 2010 was featured on some sort of Turner show where celebrities talk about movies they like. The sponsor was Larry King, who said he thought 2010 was a better movie than 2001. :rolleyes: :eek: I think it was because he still didn’t get 2001.
The only place I recall “Sound in Space” was during the atmospheric “braking” scene. But they weren’t in airless space – pretty much by definition they were in atmosphere, or they couldn’t brake. So I gave them a pass on that. There might not have been enough atmosphere to make as much sound as they depicted, but it had some rationalization behind it.
Okay, I’ll concede my memory might be faulty. I really don’t want to re-watch it to make sure, but damnit, now I’m curious. But I swear I remember it being much nosier outside the spaceship, in the non-atmosphere scenes.
Oh well, what I remember for sure is the ‘afraid of heights’ guy was a very corny addition, or at least the way it was presented.
Actually, there was sound when you had that “Jupiter event” at the end, and also when the Jupiter’s motors fired. Again, stuff was blowing by the spacesip, and the hull could conduct sound, so I wasn;t really upset with this. But I do think they would’ve done better to copy Kubrick’s “silent space”
But the contention was that accurate portrayal of Saturn’s rings would have been found “cartoonish” and unconvincing.
That makes no sense. Kubrick and his audience would have found accurately portrayed rings to be perfectly convincing and proper, and the visual effects audience would have found the rings cool. There is no subset that would have been disturbed by them.
The one mistake I caught in 2001 was that the liquid in the straw on the Pam Am shuttle dropped when the person stopping sucking on the straw. In real zero-G, the liquid would have stayed in place.
I loved Clarke’s books 2001 and 2010; loved the first movie but the second movie… not so much. The other novels in the series suck, I’m sorry to say.
The second movie does have a great line that’s not in the book, however. As the U.S. and Soviets are moving closer to nuclear war over a Central American confrontation, the NASA (or whatever the American space agency has been renamed) director sends a message to Dr. Floyd in which he says something to the effect of, “The President addressed a joint session of Congress yesterday. He said the Soviets aren’t going to push us around, and we’re going to stand firm. He evoked Lincoln… whenever a president evokes Lincoln, you know he’s gonna get us into trouble.”
You have to remember, 2001: A Space Odyssey was made before the Pioneer 10 & 11 and Voyager flybys of Saturn. The images we had of Saturn were pretty crude (by modern standards). Models were actually constructed of Saturn with rings, but their “perfect” appearance was unconvincing to the perfectionist Kubrick, despite the later imagery showing them to be, in fact, pretty pristine looking even up close. Hence, Kubrick’s movie used Jupiter as the destination for Discovery (which makes sense, given that it is significantly closer and has a more interesting constellation of moons). I guess this could be considered fortuitious in plot terms of subsequent books and novels, but honestly the movie 2001 stands on its own as a major cinematic and f/x achievement, against which no sequels or novels hold a candle.
Two plus two equal five.
Nope. Assuming the drinking bulb to be sealed (and in freefall, you’d definitely want it to be) it should create a negative relative pressure that would cause fluid not under suction to be drawn back into it. This is clearly an intentional design feature, and a smart one at that. The hostess’ Velcro-aided, on the other hand, was distinctly unconvincing. The scenes on board Discovery, however–particularly the jogging scene which utilized a rotating set–were effing amazing, as was Bowman’s explosive entry into the airlock.
Peter Hyames isn’t worthy to wash Stanley Kubrick’s socks. 2010 is an okay film for an adventure flick, but it completely lacks the thematic depth of the predecessor. It’s a more accessible film, certainly; he allows the characters to be people rather than automotons whose emotions and reactions aren’t drained by overwhelming technology and bureauocracy. But it loses Kubrick’s essential theme; that in order to ascend into space, mankind must be reborn as a “starchild”, just as it was engineered by the Monolith Builders into civilization. HAL is both a step toward that–a superior, rational intelligence–and a hindrance to that, in is imperfection in being able to resolve the conflict between his orders and programmed logic.
I think it was because he still didn’t get 2001.