In 1964 film director Stanley Kubrick approached science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke seeking a plot for "the proverbial good science fiction movie." They worked together to craft a story inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," in which an astronaut discovers a mysterious pyramid on the moon. As Clarke wrote a novel derived from their script, Kubrick created a unique movie which continues to amaze and frustrate viewers, the 1968 MGM film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A scene from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film presents an abbreviated and speculative version of human evolution. The story opens at "The Dawn of Man" as pre-human man-apes discover a large, upright black slab. The apes are drawn to the monolith as it sings to them. After this, one ape, Moon-Watcher (Daniel Richter), discovers that a bone can be used as a club and learns how to use...