![]() ![]() Stanley Kubrick wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey in collaboration with Arthur C. Inevitably, HAL 9000 evolved to plot against human affairs. Throughout the film, HAL 9000 was an ominous presence, an evolving artificial intelligence that was crossing the Rubicon to conscious self-awareness and self-preservation. “l’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” came the computer’s coldly inhuman reply. “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” he commanded through his radio. Commander Bowman struggled to regain entry to his ship in orbit of one of Jupiter’s moons before running out of oxygen. I awoke with a start, however, just as Commander David Bowman (Keir Dullea) was cast adrift into the terrifying blackness of space by the ship’s evolving artificial intelligence computer, HAL 9000. ![]() Entranced by it all, I did what I do best. It won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects as space vehicles moved silently through the cold black void of space with Blue Danube by Johann Strauss playing in the background. The movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a long, drawn out cinematic spectacle, and a welcome escape from our chaos. Life in 1968 was traumatic for a 15-year-old, especially one curious enough to be attuned to news of the world. The awaited emissaries never came, but most of humankind’s hope overlooked the One who did come, about 2,000 years earlier, the only Sentinel whose True Presence remains in our midst. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do now but wait.” “I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. In 1968, Earth was ablaze with humanity's discontent. The fictional story was about the discovery of a sentinel - a monolith - one of many scattered across the Cosmos to monitor the evolution of life. Clarke and his short story, The Sentinel, published in 1953, the year I was born. The famous film sprang from the mind of science fiction master, Arthur C. Two weeks earlier he wrote “ Padre Pio’s Letter to Pope Paul VI on Humanae Vitae.” Forty-five years later, it became our first guest post by a Patron Saint.Īfter being a witness to all of the above in 1968, I sat mesmerized in a Boston movie theater for the debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hundreds of priests left the priesthood just as the first thought of entering it entered my mind. Pope Paul VI published “Humane Vitae” to a world spinning toward relativism. Riots broke out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and spread to cities across America. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in a battle for civil rights. Kennedy was assassinated on his way to the presidency. Battles for racial equality engulfed the South. Frankenstein’s creation tried to kill him. Science Fiction sees artificial intelligence with a wary eye. ![]()
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