There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist, floated the planet Earth with all its peoples.

He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies--and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close.

A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the sleeping globe.

Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.

But he would think of something.

(The brief last chapter of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke)

I have asked several people if they were excited about the Year 2001 finally coming upon us, and their answers left me disappointed. A high school junior said that the year meant she was only one year away from graduating. Other people complained about the media recycling their millennium stories, with explanations that this year is the true beginning of the next thousand years. Still more had no reaction at all to the number and see the new year as just another year.

The correct response (which no one got right) is "Yeah, 2001! Arthur C. Clarke! Stanley Kubrick! The monolith! Apes! Hal! Into the Infinite! We made it! Right on!"

This is the first significant literary and cinematically referenced year of my cognizant life. I was ten years old in 1984 and still several years away from reading George Orwell's masterpiece. Van Halen had an album called 1984, but I didn't understand the meaning at the time. So I might as well Jump!

Jump!

Many people I've met have not seen Stanley Kubrick's revolutionary movie, and even more have not read Arthur C. Clarke's novel (which has been debated to be the finest science fiction book ever). The amazing aspect is that the movie and the book were done in tandem as one project. Without the book, there would be no movie, and visa versa (even if the movie destination is Jupiter and the book destination is Saturn). Due to these two men, we now have at are disposal an incredible (and easy-to-read) novel and a magical movie that still could not be duplicated in present day. Not surprisingly, the 2001 world they described in 1968 is far different and less advanced than reality, but humans evolve slower than we want. While neither man lived long enough to see their distant future become the present, their creations live on.

But like the pampered idiots that many Americans are, people are mostly concerned about where they are going to party the New Year's night away, and they will complain after the fact that "the celebration didn't live up to my expectations." Don't get me wrong, I will be dropping in on a couple parties, and I will raise my glass just as high as the next person. But more than anything else, I will be toasting the Year 2001, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.

I don't know what 2001 will hold for me, or what I'm going to do for most of the year. But I will think of something.

Chris Jungle is still searching for the monolith.