Gallery: The Amazingly Accurate Futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Dmitri Kessel/Getty Images01Getty-2001Space
A new book, *The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’* chronicles the creation of the epic sci-fi movie. Here, actor Keir Dullea poses in the equipment storage corridor to one side of Discovery’s pod bay.
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The central design challenge for *2001* was creating a set and props that could outpace 1960s technology. While they filmed, NASA was trying to put a man on the moon. If *2001* looked too much like what NASA had created, its futuristic setting wouldn't be believable.
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The book's author Piers Bizony points out that here and there, the movie forecasts our technology today. “The executive briefcase with its phone handset and dial? Look closely, and all the elements of the laptop or smartphone are there, half a century ahead of time,” he says.
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Kubrick hired a skunkworks team of aeronautics engineers and astronomy illustrators to help create the set. This drawings shows a cross section of the Discovery.
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Kubrick and his team shooting the final scenes of 2001 in the faux-luxurious bedroom.
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Actor Gary Lockwood in the main command deck of *2001: A Space Odyssey*'s interplanetary spacecraft. Even though the design of the movie needed to outpace what NASA was creating, the designers took some cues from the industry and based spacesuits on actual NASA designs.
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Kubrick and author and co-creator Arthur C. Clarke pose for publicity photographs inside the passenger deck set of the Aries lunar ferry.
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Stanley Kubrick gives instructions through a hatch at the “bottom” of the centrifuge, as actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood prepare for a scene.
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Most of the movie was filmed in England. Here, Kubrick directs the lunar monolith scenes over the Christmas of 1965 at Shepperton, on Europe’s second-largest shooting stage.
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Book cover designer Roy Carnon helped created a visual scheme for how lighting might look in outer space. This is a rendering of the docking area at the hub of the space station, with a winged shuttle parked after arrival.
