The Perils of Prediction
Lester del Rey in Galaxy Magazine, 1968 (reprinted in Best SF: 1968 edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss): [ 2001: A Space Odysse y ] isn't a normal science-fiction movie at all, you see. It's the first of the New Wave-Thing movies, with the usual empty symbolism. The New Thing advocates were exulting all over it as a mind-blowing experience. It takes very little to blow some minds. But for the rest of us, it's a disaster. It will probably be a box-office disaster, too, and thus set major science-fiction movie making back another ten years. Peter Krämer, 2001: A Space Odyssey (BFI Film Classics, 2010): 2001's most far-reaching contribution to American -- and also to world -- culture arguably lies in the fact that it both inspired the making, and prepared the ground for the success, of two movies that in 1977 marked an important turning point in Hollywood's operations: George Lucas's Star Wars and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Th...
