Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey well, such as a nervous breakdown—as Hal did in the film. Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of Hal's name immediately preceded those of IBM in the alphabet. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of "2001" and the latter in his sequel novel "2010". In computer science, a heuristic is a programmable procedure not necessarily based on fixed rules, producing informed guesses often using trial-and-error. The results can be false such
Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey a state of pure energy. The book explains the monolith much more specifically than the movie, depicting the first (on Earth) as a device capable of inducing a higher level of consciousness by directly interacting with the brain of pre-humans approaching it, the second (on the Moon) as an alarm signal designed to alert its creators that humanity had reached a sufficient technological level for space travel, and the third (near Jupiter in the movie but on a satellite of Saturn in the novel) as a gateway or portal to allow travel to other parts of the galaxy. It depicts