2001: A Space Travesty

Sir Arthur Clark died a few weeks ago. He is, or was, the writer of what used to be my all time favorite science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. When 2001 was brought to life in the late sixties, it was truly a remarkable feat of movie making magic. Up to this point science fiction about space travel was limited to such campy notables with names like Flash Gordon in the Fifth Dimension and War of the Lost Planets. These films featured such futuristic props as laser guns with tail fins that looked like they belonged on a sixties era Cadillac Sedan de Ville and robots with glass bubbles filled with flashing Christmas lights for heads. Spacecrafts zoom through space with the sound effects of jet planes on the verge of breaking the sound barrier. But the film 2001 eschewed such stereotypical props and special effects for things a little more realistic and down to Earth, so to speak.

When I first saw the movie I was much too young to fully understand or appreciate the story. But all the eye candy of the future world revealed in the story was more than enough to compensate. Super sized wagon wheels as space stations, mining operations on the dark side of the moon, space flights to the moon on a basis more regular than airline flights from Florida to Cuba. The future looked promising for mankind.

But one thing that was not apparent to my young mind was the fact that this version of future vision was void of any race other than the white one. In Mr. Clark’s imagination only white people made it to 2001. No people of African descent, no people of Asian descent, no people of Hispanic descent, and nobody of any other descent but the European. As a social commentary, the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was a sad reflection of the racial sentiment of America at the time of its development. Black people in America were still fighting for civil rights. Civil rights icons Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X had been assassinated. America was drowning in the Vietnam War, a war in a country that was in no way, shape, or form a threat to America. But nevertheless, America felt justified to drop bombs like megaton rain on the heads of people commonly referred to as gooks. The relationship between the races was depressing. The future solution for the racial strife was a world with nothing but white people. With all of its attention to detail regarding technology, 2001 was seriously lacking in its attention to social relations.

The world of science fiction depicted in Star Trek realized the significance of having a variety of races working together in the future. The USS Enterprise, with its props secured from the local Woolworth’s or the five and dime, zoomed across the galaxy at warp speed with a racially diverse crew. Lieutenant Uhura was doing her impression of Lilly Tomlin at a twenty fourth century switchboard. “Thank you for calling the Enterprise. How may I direct your call?” There was the Asian Lieutenant Sulu, the greatest helmsman in the universe. There was the Russian Pavel Chekov as the navigator. Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott from Scotland was chief engineer. Doctor McCoy was from Georgia. Captain Kirk was from Iowa. And Mr. Spock hailed from the planet Vulcan. There weren’t just interracial, they were interplanetary.

In many respects the year 2001 falls short of the world depicted in the movie 2001. Despite computer scientists best efforts an artificially intelligent computer system along the lines of a HAL 9000 is still science fiction, there are no Hilton hotel wagon wheel satellites orbiting the Earth, the space shuttle that promised to make space travel a weekly event fell woefully short of the mark, and the chances that the United States could put together a spaceship along the lines of the dumbbell shaped Discovery to hightail it to the moons of Jupiter is downright laughable. Our country doesn’t have the collective will to send a manned flight to the moon, a feat that was accomplished forty years ago with NASA’s Apollo space program using computers that didn’t have the computing power of a twenty first century Casio digital quartz watch costing about two dollars.

But one thing that the real 2001 got right that its fictional counterpart didn’t is the actual inclusion of some kind racial diversity of people who make the choice to venture into space. African Americans in space have been well represented with astronauts like Doctor Mae Jemison whose career reached its pinnacle when she made her guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation in an episode directed by Levar Burton. Asian astronauts have made it into space. The Hispanic community is represented by astronauts like mission specialist Fernando “Frank” Caldeiro and Ellen Ochoa. Japan has its own aerospace industry with astronauts such as Doctor Koichi Wakata. The European Space Agency has developed astronauts from Germany, France, England, and other countries. Saudi Arabia is represented by the astronaut payload specialist Sultan Salman Abdel-aziz Al-Saud. And Russia has about as many cosmonauts as there are astronauts.

For all of the wonderful imagination that went into the authorship and development of the story the lack of racial diversity in the story is woeful. This oversight actually gives people the impression that there is no future for racial diversity, or more accurately there is no future for racial minorities. Indeed, there is virtually no science fiction stories made into movies about the future of black people. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Adventures of Pluto Nash. And although future stories that focus on black characters or consist predominantly of black characters are rare, they do exist. One needs only to supplement their personal library with the works of the late great Octavia Butler.

What difference would it make? It probably makes no difference to most people who are part of the dominant community that is so accustomed to overlooking blacks and other racial minorities. But it would give young people outside of the dominant social construct the role models to inspire them to become the astronauts and scientist and authors and dreamers and engineers that will become an integral part of the future instead of just an afterthought. Mae Jemison said that watching Nichelle Nichols play Uhura on Star Trek inspired her to become an astronaut. Thank god for Star Trek. It may not have had the technological polish of the space odyssey 2001. But in at least one way, the idea that there will be a racially diverse future, it was light years and a couple of Borg generated wormholes ahead.