The Death of HAL

Here’s Arthur C. Clarke on the inspiration for the final moments, in 2001, of HAL 9000:

In the early 1960s at Bell Laboratories I had heard a recording of an Illiac computer singing “Bicycle Built for Two.” I thought it would be good for the death scene especially the slowing down of the words at the end. Imagine my surprise, then, when I recently came upon a 1918 poem, “In the Theater,” about brain surgeon Lambert Rogers operating to remove a brain tumor. Near the end of the poem the patient on the operating table speaks to the surgeon:

“Then, suddenly, the cracked record in the brain, a ventriloquist voice that cried, ‘You sod, leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone,’ — the patient’s dummy lips moving to that refrain, the patient’s eyes too wide. And, shocked, Lambert Rogers drawing out the probe with nurses, students, sister, petrified.

“‘Leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone,’ that voice so arctic and that cry so odd had nowhere else to go – till the antique gramophone wound down and the words began to blur and slow, ‘ … leave … my … soul … alone …’ to cease at last when something other died. And silence matched the silence under snow.” — Dannie Abse

And the audio — still incredibly touching — from the death of Clarke’s most famous creation:

R.I.P.

See also:

• Arthur C. Clarke: The Wired Words

• Arthur C. Clarke on Life

• Letter From Sri Lanka

• 2001 Double Take: I Was a Teenage Centenarian

• Clarke’s Odyssey to 2036