Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 146 2001: A Space Odyssey

Luo Jinnian returned to her rented room, put her schoolbag at the door, and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.

Instead of sitting at his desk, he stood by the window for a while, holding a water glass, watching the streetlights cast long, thin shadows among the bare branches, swaying slightly in the early winter wind, like a wine glass being shaken at the end.

The newly written text has been revised multiple times for every single word, but the overall tone is still not accurate enough.

His phone lit up; it was a message from Chu Qingning, asking what he wanted for breakfast tomorrow, as her dad would make it. Luo Jinnian replied with "Whatever," and Chu Qingning sent a sighing emoji. He put down his phone, stood in the dark for a while, and then returned to his desk to sit down.

Trains with long stops should prepare to depart before the signal lights change.

He flipped to the line marked "Next, subject to be determined" in his memo, paused for a few seconds, and did not type anything new.

He was waiting for a name to surface on its own.

What should I write next? I'm having writer's block.

The next morning, Luo Jinnian arrived at school. Morning self-study hadn't started yet, and there were only a few scattered students in the classroom. Gu Yanxi was even earlier than him, engrossed in a novel, its cover facing down on the table. As he walked over and put down his bag, Gu Yanxi looked up at him: "You left quite early yesterday." Luo Jinnian said, "I went back and wrote something for a while." Gu Yanxi didn't press further, continuing to read her novel, turning page after page, as if she had already confirmed through other channels that she didn't need to ask, waiting for him to bring it up himself.

Chu Qingning arrived a little late, carrying a thermal bag. She walked to Luo Jinnian's desk and placed the bag on the corner of his desk: "My dad made scallion pancakes, they're still warm, eat them while you can." Luo Jinnian opened the bag; the scallion pancakes inside were stacked in two layers, with parchment paper underneath, so they must have been made fresh that morning. He took a bite; they were crispy and still warm. Chu Qingning had already returned to her seat and started tidying her desk, discussing the answers to a page of homework with her classmates. The aroma of the scallion pancakes slowly permeated the slightly chilly early winter classroom, like a morning being unfolded.

The first lesson was a history class, where the teacher talked about tax reforms between several dynasties.

For a while, Luo Jinnian's gaze did not fall on the blackboard—he noticed that the leaves at the top of the old banyan tree outside the window changed color later than the other leaves, and a cluster of dark green leaves was still hanging there, swaying slightly in the wind.

His gaze followed the leaves for a moment, and then, in an instant, an idea appeared in his mind without any warning—

How was 2001: A Space Odyssey?

It is excellent as a form of soft science fiction that inspires readers to look up at the stars.

Luo Jinnian did not start writing immediately.

The history teacher was still lecturing on tax reform. Luo Jinnian turned his gaze from the window to the line of text next to his notebook—he had written down two numbers: 1968.

That was the year 2001: A Space Odyssey was published and the movie was released in the previous world. A story written before humans landed on the moon, yet it accurately predicted many details of space exploration in the decades to come. He drew a line under that year.

In this day and age, his work may not be as groundbreaking or prophetic, but that doesn't mean the story is meaningless.

Arthur C. Clarke, a British author with first-class degrees in mathematics and physics, is considered one of the three giants of science fiction, along with Heinlein and Asimov. When he wrote *2001: A Space Odyssey*, humanity's understanding of Jupiter was limited to blurry images from telescopes. Clarke described a spaceship traveling to Saturn, and data from the Voyager probes later confirmed many of his descriptions of Iapetus. Luo Jinnian, calculating the time difference, noted that when the book was published, that probe hadn't even been launched yet. However, the things described in the book were later confirmed.

The bell rang, signaling the end of get out of class. Luo Jinnian closed her notebook and went to process her thoughts.

Back in his rented room that evening, he sat down at his desk and opened a document. He typed a line in the header: *2001: A Space Odyssey*. Then he paused, not immediately starting to type the main text. He was thinking about how to introduce the work to readers—not just a simple retelling of the plot, but something that would make those who hadn't read it understand what kind of work it was.

Although this work became popular because of the movie in its previous life, the story itself is very interesting even if it is only in written form.

Luo Jinnian typed the first paragraph of the story: "This is a work about how humans became humans, and where humans are going. It spans three million years—from a group of ape-men on the African savanna, to a lonely spaceship in orbit around Jupiter, and then to an infant reborn after passing through a stargate. It uses a black stone tablet to connect the entire timeline. The first time that stone tablet appeared, it taught the ape-men how to use tools. The second time it appeared, on the moon, it sent a signal to humans. The third time it appeared, near Jupiter, it opened a door."

"No one has ever been to the place that door leads to. The only person who ever went through that door returned no longer human."

He stopped and read it once, finding the tone correct but the content dull. Then he revised it, unfolding the entire story.

"The story begins in Africa three million years ago. A group of primitive humans struggled to survive, facing food shortages, water scarcity, and threats from other wild beasts. One night, a transparent, luminous stone slab fell from the sky. It somehow touched the consciousness of these ape-men, teaching them to use tools and to hunt."

This dreamlike scene features a montage that has been cited by countless people: an ape throws a bone into the air, and when the bone falls back down, it transforms into a spaceship.

Three million years of evolution have been compressed into a single frame. Of course, now it's in words.

"The second stone tablet appeared on the moon. Humans had already established a base on the moon, and during the excavation, they discovered a black stone tablet that had been buried underground for millions of years, which was named TMA-1. When it was illuminated by the sun, it emitted a strong signal toward Jupiter. Humans did not know where the signal was going, but they decided to send someone to investigate."

Thus, the Space Shuttle Discovery was born, bound for Jupiter. On board were a team of hibernating astronauts, two conscious pilots, and a supercomputer named HAL 9000. HAL was the most advanced artificial intelligence of its time, capable of controlling all the spacecraft's functions, speaking, and thinking. During the long voyage, HAL's programming malfunctioned—

It received an order to conceal the true purpose of the mission from the crew. To carry out that order, it killed the hibernating crew members and then attempted to kill the two conscious pilots.

"The last survivor was David Bowman. He shut down HAL and piloted his ship alone to Jupiter—no, Saturn in the original story. There he discovered the third slab, a larger one than the first two, floating in orbit. He approached the slab in a small boat and then passed through it."

"After passing through the stone slab, he entered a space he couldn't comprehend. Time no longer flowed linearly there. He saw himself as a child, as an old man, and as a dying man. Then he transformed into an infant, floating in the universe, looking down upon Earth. That infant was called the Star Child"—a being beyond human form.

Luo Jinnian paused here. He was thinking about how to describe the ending, the ending that had puzzled countless people for half a century.

That baby is not the future of humanity. He is something that comes after humanity.

As for what that was, Clark didn't say. Kubrick didn't say either. They left it to the audience to imagine.

Regarding the impact of "2001: A Space Odyssey," it serves as a textbook template for science fiction.

The description of the space environment is extremely realistic—the movements of astronauts in weightlessness, the artificial gravity generated by the rotation of the spacecraft, and the absolute silence in space.

Although those details are commonplace in today's information age, there were no precedents to follow at the time, and they have been imitated by countless science fiction works since.

Unlike most science fiction films of the time that relied on wild imagination and visual stimulation to attract audiences, 2001 took a completely different path for its time, building the entire story on a foundation of scientific rigor.

However, things are different now; the story has become undeniably less hardcore.

"It's also the least hard science fiction." Because the core of the story isn't science, it's philosophy. The black stone tablet is never explained. What is it? Who put it there? Why? Clarke, the original author, didn't answer. He simply left the tablet there, like a silent coordinate, marking the boundaries of human understanding.

"Nietzsche's *Thus Spoke Zarathustra* runs throughout the entire film. At the opening, the moment the ape throws the bone, and the birth of the Star Child, Richard Strauss's symphonic poem of the same name plays three times. Zarathustra speaks of the birth of the 'Superman'—humanity needs to transcend itself and become some higher being. *2001: A New World* tells the same story. The ape transcended ape-man and became human. And human needs to transcend human, to become the Star Child."

"This work answers one question, but raises many more that cannot be answered. It doesn't tell us what aliens look like, where the boundaries of the universe are, or what that stone slab is trying to do. It simply lets us stand in front of that door, look at it, and then decide for ourselves whether to push it open."

I continued to write and think simultaneously.

Luo Jinnian didn't stop writing until the early hours of the morning. He read the document from beginning to end, made a few minor changes to the wording, but didn't make any major alterations.

Then I saved the document and closed the computer. The night outside was deep. The streetlights cast a thin strip of light across the desk through the gaps in the curtains, like a signpost leading to some unknown direction.

He sat in the dark for a while, then got up to wash up.

—If 2001 is a work about how humanity got to where it is today, then when Clarke wrote it, he stood at the furthest point that humanity could reach, looking back.

At this moment, Luo Jinnian is doing the same thing: standing in front of a story that has already been written, and retelling it.

The difference is that Clark was looking at an unnamed star field, while he was looking at a route that had already been marked.

But that star field and that flight path point in the same direction, starting from humanity's origin and arriving at a place that humanity cannot yet imagine.