In 2001, it manifests as a giant black monolith that seems to inspire humans to push past tantalizing frontiers in space, intelligence, and reality (with mixed results for the humans). It’s a viewpoint underpinned by the wild historical revisionism and newfound cosmic curiosity that defined so much mid-20th century science fiction. If you’re aware of the History Channel series Ancient Aliens or are a fan of the Stargate franchise, you probably know the gist: The hypothesis claims there is abundant archaeological and historical evidence to suggest that an intelligent alien civilization made contact with preindustrial humans and aided these societies in their technological and cultural achievements. As explored in depth in the new history Space Odyssey by Michael Benson, Kubrick’s goal with 2001 was to make “the proverbial good science fiction movie.” That culminated in a film that weaves together as many major sci-fi tropes as possible, such as artificial intelligence, human evolution, extraterrestrial contact, multidimensional gateways, determinism versus free will, deep space exploration, and the wisdom of manually-controlled airlocks.īut 2001 is also among the first hugely successful works based on the so-called ancient aliens hypothesis, one of the weirdest ideas to burst into the mainstream in the 1960s-which is saying something for a decade that collided the Space Age with the Psychedelic era.
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