In 1995, just as the Internet began entering the public consciousness with a fury, Tod Mesirow interviewed Arthur C. Clarke. Part of that discussion has now been posted at the Los Angeles Review of Books. An excerpt about 2001: A Space Odyssey:

“Tod Mesirow:

The idea of an intelligent computer, an artificial intelligence like HAL, do you think we’ll achieve that?

Arthur C. Clarke: 

Oh, I don’t think there’s any question of that. I think that the people that say we will never develop computer intelligence — they merely prove that some biological systems don’t have much intelligence.

Tod Mesirow:

What was it like to create the scene when HAL is dying in 2001?

Arthur C. Clarke:

Well, Danny Curry deserves most of the credit for that, and by the way, when I switch off my computer you hear HAL say, “My mind is going.” It happens every time I switch it off. [laughs]

Tod Mesirow:

Was 2001 an interesting experience? You’re planning what would happen if —

Arthur C. Clarke:

Well, it was, you know, a fascinating experience, for many reasons. I was moonlighting at Time Life where I was doing a book called Man and Space. This was in 1964 when the Apollo Program, you know, had been announced. But, no one really believed we would go to the moon and, still sort of had a skepticism. And also, Stanley and I had to outguess what would happen, I believe — this may not be true, maybe Stanley’s publicity department — he’s supposed to have gone to Lloyd’s, taken an insurance against Martians being discovered before the film was released. [laughs] Well, I don’t think — I don’t know how Lloyd’s would have carried the odds on that one. [laughs] So, anyway, we were writing the film, before we had any close-ups of the moon’s surface. We had to guess what it might be like, and there are all sorts of problems. I — we — I think we did pretty well. One or two mistakes. For instance, we show the moon as more rugged then in fact it turned out to be. It turned out to be sort of smooth and sort of sandblasted.”