Personally, I refuse to drive a car - I won't have anything to do with any kind of transportation in which I can't read. - Arthur C. Clarke

Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias — boredom.

One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. Two-thirds of 2001 is realistic — hardware and technology — to establish background for the metaphysical, philosophical, and religious meanings later.

2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.