The vision that produced HAL was clearly that "bigger is better." In fact, one of the major trends that the filmmakers did not foresee was that there was "room at the bottom"; that is, that computers would become smaller and smaller and evolve into doorknobs and pocket pagers. There are no personal computers or personal digital assistants in 2001; Frank and Dave take notes with pen on paper tablets on clipboards. The role of networks is not explored, although it is unclear how they would have been incorporated into the story even if the creators had been fantastically prescient enough to predict them.

Yet another, and final theme to consider is the influence of science fantasy on budding scientists. In an earlier era, Buck Rogers films -- as crude as they were -- fired the imaginations of future employees of NASA and aerospace corporations. Implicit, and occasionally explicit, throughout this book is the fact that nearly all the contributors were deeply influenced by 2001 when it was released in 1968. I was myself introduced to the notion that a computer might someday be able to lipread by that famous scene in the pod, and I have spent years trying to devise computer lipreading systems. In that sense, many scientists are themselves a part of HAL's legacy.

When 2001 was released, one perceptive film reviewer called it "the best informed dream" of the future. In the following chapters, we look at that dream to see just how well-informed and how prescient it was and to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of this truly remarkable film.