Photochrome of a glacier, Grindelwald, Switzerland, c. 1890. © Rijksmuseum

Discovery

Volume X, Number 2 | spring 2017

Miscellany

In 1965 Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke discussed a film project, then called Journey Beyond the Stars. “Science-fiction films have always meant monsters or sex, so we have tried to find another term,” said Clarke. “The best we’ve been able to come up with is a space odyssey,” added Kubrick. “The far-flung islands Homer’s wonderful characters visited were no less remote to them than the planets our spacemen will soon be landing on are to us.”

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

—Anthony Trollope, 1859