2001: A Space Odyssey (film) as a pessimistic account of human nature and humanity's future. The most extreme of these interpretations state that the fetus floating above the Earth will destroy it." Many of the cataclysmic interpretations of the film appeared inspired by Kubrick's direction of the Cold War film "Dr. Strangelove" just before "2001", which resulted in dark speculation about the use of nuclear weapons orbiting the Earth in "2001". These interpretations were challenged by Clarke, who said: "Many readers have interpreted the last paragraph of the book to mean that he (the fetus) destroyed Earth, perhaps for the purpose of creating a new
Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator. Also implausible is the sun reaching its zenith so soon after a lunar sunrise, and the appearance of a crescent Earth near the sun is in complete discontinuity with all previous appearances of Earth, whose position from any spot on the Moon varies only slightly due to libration. Geophysicist Dr. David Stephenson in the Canadian TV documentary "2001 and Beyond" notes that "Every engineer that saw it [the space station] had a fit. You do not spin on a wheel that is not fully built. You have to finish it before you