You may call me Hal

Stacey’s copies of 2001, 2010, and 2061.

Winston’s copy of 3001.

On this day in fictional history, twenty-four years ago, January 12, 1997*, HAL 9000 went online in 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke, the first novel in his Space Odyssey series. To this day, HAL seriously creeps us right out.

To make things extra fun in the bonkers year that was 2020, unexplained monoliths began popping up and disappearing around the globe. We found this to be simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, but what a great distraction! Check out this article from Insider.com to see some pictures of the monoliths and read about the weirdness to celebrate this important date in fictional history.

– Stacey and Winston

* In the film this date was 1992, but was changed to 1997 in the novelization, according to Wikipedia and other websites we cross referenced. We could have watched the movie and re-read the book to verify, but that would have taken a very long time for such a very short blog post.