what's that coming over the hill, is it a monster?...No, it's a Geek, helped by his equally geeky friend
Being a boy, I have a natural inclination towards Science Fiction. Which i developed as a child who wanted to see the world from the outside in, or at least from a position that involved leaving orbit. It also piqued my interest even further when I was introduced into the world of I think the two greatest Science Fiction authors; Arthur C Clark and Isaac Asimov, Asimov wrote the incredible 'Foundation' series, which, originally a trilogy, became the father of 7 novels in total, based around the fall of the GALACTIC EMPIRE and the character of Hari Seldon. As a teenage boy I remember devouring these books and wondering if I could ever write a story as imaginative or as thought provoking.
The other writer with whom I grew up with, was, Sir Arthur C Clark, a total geek genius, who died a few years ago at the ripe old age of 90 but who, in his career, has written some of the great cannon of Sci Fiction writing. Indeed, he is seen as part of the science Fiction triumvirate, including Himself with asimov and Heinlein.
His finest series is the space odyssey series, beginning with space odyssey 2001. Which can act as a stand alone book, or read with the continuing sequels of 2010, 2061 and 3001. 2001 has been made into a film and that was space odyssey 2001, which won stanley kubrick and Clark an oscar in 1968. Amazing to just realise that the film is now 40 years old but is a as fresh as ever! And well worth watching if you have a spare few hours and enjoy a film to think too and attempt to disentangle the meaning of the end, which is a little easier in book form, which as always is the better version of the story. But briefly it involves an onboard computer, the HAL 9000 going haywire and becoming a menacing computer psychopath which attemtpts to disable the functioning two man crew on a mission to discover the origin point detected from a monolith found on the moon.
The greatness of HAL, even from the point of view of the Geeky name, just put together the next three consecutive letters of the alphabet to form three letters and you get IBM! and a geek will know how cool that coincidence is, or is it? a coincidence, not that it isnt cool. It is. But it's also the presentation of the Movie HAL as a red light and a voice.
Thanks to my fellow geeky friend, what I now possess is an application that sits nicely onto my vista sidebar, designed like HAL and when you press him then it produces clips of Hal from the film. My wife was sadly, so unimpressed, but me, I think it is better than sliced bread!
The other writer with whom I grew up with, was, Sir Arthur C Clark, a total geek genius, who died a few years ago at the ripe old age of 90 but who, in his career, has written some of the great cannon of Sci Fiction writing. Indeed, he is seen as part of the science Fiction triumvirate, including Himself with asimov and Heinlein.
His finest series is the space odyssey series, beginning with space odyssey 2001. Which can act as a stand alone book, or read with the continuing sequels of 2010, 2061 and 3001. 2001 has been made into a film and that was space odyssey 2001, which won stanley kubrick and Clark an oscar in 1968. Amazing to just realise that the film is now 40 years old but is a as fresh as ever! And well worth watching if you have a spare few hours and enjoy a film to think too and attempt to disentangle the meaning of the end, which is a little easier in book form, which as always is the better version of the story. But briefly it involves an onboard computer, the HAL 9000 going haywire and becoming a menacing computer psychopath which attemtpts to disable the functioning two man crew on a mission to discover the origin point detected from a monolith found on the moon.
The greatness of HAL, even from the point of view of the Geeky name, just put together the next three consecutive letters of the alphabet to form three letters and you get IBM! and a geek will know how cool that coincidence is, or is it? a coincidence, not that it isnt cool. It is. But it's also the presentation of the Movie HAL as a red light and a voice.
Thanks to my fellow geeky friend, what I now possess is an application that sits nicely onto my vista sidebar, designed like HAL and when you press him then it produces clips of Hal from the film. My wife was sadly, so unimpressed, but me, I think it is better than sliced bread!
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