It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compa… - Arthur C. Clarke

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.

My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.

[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]

Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.