Few movies antagonized pre-Microsoft paranoia about man and machine quite the way 2001: A Space Odyssey did when it was released in 1968. Though Neil Armstrong’s walk in space was imminent, the movie’s sparse dialogue and chilling cinematography addressed far more than space technology: artificial intelligence and human evolution were the more critical topics that sparked people’s fearful imaginations.
Though it was met with mixed reviews when it was released, the movie has been retrospectively called one of the greats of all time, particularly in the science fiction genre. And its theme song, Also Sprach Zarathustra, though composed as a tone poem in 1896 by Richard Strauss, is as well-known to the masses today as the theme from Rocky or the Star Spangled Banner.
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