"Open the pod bay doors please, HAL"

Arthur Clarke is no longer around to guide us into the future. But the 40th anniversary of the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey brought one of the film's stars, Keir Dullea, right here to Boston (the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, to be precise) last night for an evening's talk about his career and the filming of 2001, co-written by Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick. Dullea played astronaut/starman David Bowman, the sole survivor of the Hal 9000's murder spree. A fun evening of interviewing and audience questions was had by all. A screening of 2001 followed. The movie was released in April 1968.

POSTSCRIPT: Dullea's co-star Gary Lockwood, who played astronaut Frank Poole, one of Hal's victims, has his own web site. Hard-core Star Trek fan's will remember that he also starred in that series' second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before.