Why the title of ‘A successful failure’ ? Well, because the third manned mission to the moon, part of the Project Apollo was a failure to make it to its target, but managed to be successful in a return journey back to Earth. There had been 2 successful moon landings so far, a major success for the US in its space program. The 3rd such mission did not have the same amount of public involvement, and yet turned out to be an extremely riveting adventure, because of the drama involved. An explosion in space, power failure, less air, and the consequent on-the-spot-engineering to make things work out and get the 3 astronauts back to Earth made for an excellent story waiting to be told. The incredible thing was that it took so long to be made into a movie, released at a time when the current generation would not know or remember about this incident.

The whole incident was turned into a 1995 movie starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris; the movie was in turn based on a book called ‘Lost Moon’ by Jim Lovell (the actual commander of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission; the other members of the mission were Command Module pilot John L. “Jack” Swigert, and Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise) and Jeffrey Kluger. The movie was praised by critics for a good dramatization of an epic episode during the space race while being accurate to the actual events and the scientific facts. Some of the scenes involving weightlessness were filmed abroad the NASA flight that is actually used to mimic microgravity for a brief periods of time, the KC-135 aircraft called the ‘Vomit Comet’.
The movie starts out with details of the build-up to the Apollo program, covers the first landing on the moon, and then moves onto the actual planning of the crew for the Apollo 13 mission, including the fact that the crew was not originally planned for this mission. The movie then covers the lift-off into space with a slight problem, and soon moves into the actual disaster, with the explosion, leaking of the oxygen tanks, cancellation of the lunar landing mission, and then the entire drama of the magnificent engineering feats involved in working out how to get the crew back from deep space (where there is no possibility of a rescue mission).
The movie was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won 2 awards (but none of the acting and other high profile awards):
* Won - Best Film Editing — Mike Hill, Daniel Hanley
* Won - Best Sound Mixing — Rick Dior, Steve Pederson, Scott Millan, David MacMilan
* Nominated - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Ed Harris
* Nominated - Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role — Kathleen Quinlan
* Nominated - Best Achievement in Art Direction — Michael Corenblith, Merideth Boswell
* Nominated - Best Original Score — James Horner
* Nominated - Best Picture — Brian Grazer
* Nominated - Best Visual Effects — Robert Legato, Michael Kanfer, Leslie Ekker, Matt Sweeney
* Nominated - Best Adapted Screenplay — William Broyles Jr., Al Reinert

Arthur C Clarke was a visionary story teller and science fiction writer. He will forever be remembered for his visionary writings, such as the conceptualization of the geo-stationary communications satellite; and for his great works of fiction such as the ‘Space Odyssey 2001′ (made into a excellent movie). In Space Odyssey 2010, he continues his work, moving ahead the story of the monolith around Jupiter (in a slight adjustment, while 2001 the book was about Saturn, while 2001 the movie was about Jupiter, and hence 2010 the book refers to Jupiter - so readers should not get confused that the first book talks about Saturn while the second book talks about Jupiter).
2001 was in the decade when the quest for the moon was at its peak, and the book was right before the Moon landings were planned, so there was a great more public enthusiasm for the book (more suspense). This book (Odyssey 2) was released in 1982, so it was not directly linked to anything happening in real life, and the space program was ongoing, but that initial romanticism was missing.

This book was set in a period 9 years after the events of 2001, and a joint Soviet-American expedition on Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov is planned to visit the abandoned Discovery spacecraft so that they can find out what really happened (after all, David Bowman vanished from the viewpoint of Earth (he turned into a starchild)), as well as to determine what happened with regard to the monolith. However, there is a surprise since a spacecraft leaps out of Earth orbit, and is revealed to be a Chinese inter-planetary spacecraft called Tsien, setting a course for Jupiter and expected to reach before the Leonov.
The Tsien lands on Europa to collect water for its propulsion, but runs into an accident when native life forms overwhelm the ship (attracted by the light from the ship) and given the loss of the ship, the crew are destined to die there (the final survivor radioing this information to the arriving Leonov). The Loenov eventually reaches the Discovery and Dr. Chandra manages to reactivate HAL. At the same time, we learn that the ethereal form of David Bowman visits his mother and girlfriend on Earth; he also does investigation of the life forms on Europa and in the cloud region of Jupiter. In the balance between these 2, the life forms on Europa are deemed to have a far greater potential for growth and evolution.
Bowman then appears before Floyd and warns that they must leave Jupiter within 15 days. Naturally, the crew hesitate to believe Floyd until they see the monoliths growing all over Jupiter, at which point an emergency mission is setup, using the Discovery as a booster for increasing speed. And in a scene designed to remind humans about the awesome capabilities of the intelligence behind the monoliths, the monoliths actually increase the density of Jupiter until the planet becomes a star (having achieved nuclear fusion). And there is a final warning that Bowman delivers via HAL, “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.” HAL in turn is absorbed in the monolith just like David Bowman was.

If there are 2 things that Arthur C Clarke will be most famous for, my guess would be for his visionary work, including the concept of a geo-stationary satellite (most famously used to position communications satellites) and for his creation of the best seller 2001: A space Odyssey and its sequels (2010, 2061, and 3001). These were created for and along with an incredible movie of the same name by Stanley Kubrick. Together, this book, and the novel both captured the fascination with space (and its dangers), along with a fear of what an advanced computer (H.A.L) can do (somewhat similar to the fear of sharks that got positively entrenched with the movie Jaws).
Both the book and the screenplay for the movie went hand in hand, and were based on the short story ‘The Sentinel’ written by Arthur C Clarke in 1950. The novel was an important milestone in the history of science fiction, combining elements of man’s historical development, delves into development of space travel and the problems of differential gravity, aliens and the thought that there is a master race that kick-started human development, and then how mankind may not have worked out all the issues related to intelligent computers.

The book starts from an age long long ago (3 million years ago) when there were humanoid races in Africa. They managed to survive, only just, getting fruits and the like, and not knowing how to hunt. They had short life spans, and did not have either the feelings of attachment to each other, and would not have been able to do much either. They were at the mercy of wild beasts, with no instruments with which to defend themselves. And then arrives a rectangular black monolith that starts to delve into their minds, developing their minds. They learn how to develop tools from the natural materials at hand such as rocks and the sharp teeth of wild animals. And then they develop the thought of being able to even fight back against the wild animals that threaten them; and most important, get meat from the wild beasts roaming around them. Humanity gets kick-started, getting into a period of development that leads to us.
Cut to the present age. Humanity has started exploration on the moon, and there they discover something that astounds them. A sheer black monolith has been discovered underground in the moon, in a sector that the US controls, and the eminent Dr. Heywood Floyd is sent to the moon to do further investigations and help the scientists over there. He is told that they have discovered a magnetic disturbance in a site now called Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One (TMA-1), and they discovered the monolith underground. It is clear that this is not a natural creation, and was actually created 3 million years ago, so this has to be aliens.
Soon, the lunar sunlight hits them, and the monolith, exposed to sunlight for the first time in 3 million years, sends a strong radio signal out that reaches the far extent of the solar system. Switch to the next episode in the book. A ship Discovery One carrying 5 astronauts and an advanced computer HAL 9000 is on its way to Saturn on an exploration mission. 3 of those astronauts are in a state of hibernation, and the remaining 2, Frank Poole and David Bowman, are the ones who are the ones who are supposed to be in charge of the ship (or more likely, be secondary advisors to HAL who can run the ship totally on its own).
The HAL 9000 is an advanced computer, but its designers had never thought about wondering about the impact of the orders it had been given to the intelligent brain. HAL had been given orders to conceal the real knowledge about its mission to both Poole and Bowman (to explore Japetus, the 3rd largest moon of Saturn, the destination of the radio signal from the monolith on the moon), and this was conflicting with its other orders to report all the information fully. This was causing a conflict, and in these strained times, when it felt threatened with termination, it actually decides to kill the astronauts.
So, first it kills Poole by reporting one of the critical AE35 units as malfunctioning twice, and then when Poole goes to investigate, killing him with his own space pod. Then when Bowman threatens it with shut-down, it opens the airlock of the spacecraft to the pressure of the vacuum. Eventually, Bowman gets to an emergency shelter, and then retakes control of the spacecraft by shutting down the circuits of the HAl 9000 computer. He also buries the 3 hibernating astronauts in space, and decides to complete the mission on his own control.
He reaches Japetus with a lot of help from mission control, and discovers a black monolith on the surface. While reporting all this to mission control, he decides to approach Japetus using his space pod, and when almost there, before the pod reaches the monolith, he sends out a final signal ‘The thing’s hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — it’s full of stars!’
Bowman goes through an extra-ordinary journey, realizing that the monolith is a giant switching system, similar to a ‘Grand Central Station’ of the universe. He sees things that he never thought that he would see, while in a protective shield that saves him from the surrounding regions (including a very close red sun). As he finally sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body, becoming a new immortal entity that can travel through space, a Star Child. Bowman now returns to the Solar System and Earth, and is now a very powerful entity, but unsure of what to do - something that he will eventually figure out.

In the 1940’s, a writer starting writing science fiction stories about a empire far in the future (and when we mean far, we mean so far in the future that no one remembers Earth). This is a mega-empire, controlling vast sections of the galaxy in a peaceful existence, enforced by the power of massive spaceships and the power of atomics (weapons as well as other equipment controlled by the power of atomic energy). And then imagine this entire galaxy wide power to be in a slow decline such that no one realizes that it is decaying but no one knows that, except for one man who has invented a new science/maths that is so complicated that very few people can figure it out. (This maths works at predicting the behaviour of people in a crowd, with the bigger the crowd, the more easy the prediction is to make. Conversely, it is impossible to predict what one person can do.) Using this maths, the person has calculated that this mega-empire that has held the peace for thousands of years will die out, and there will come a horrible period of anarchy, war and horror that will last for tens of thousands of years unless some steps are taken to reduce this time period. Asimov took a series of short stories he had written using this theory as a base, and made an epic novel out of this, itself the precursor to a series that won the Hugo Award in 1965. Asimov may have died in 1987, but his name lives on in this mighty series that he wrote.

I have always been a fan of Asimov, so I might be a bit biased, but I have always considered this book to be an incredible book. Part of the beauty of this book is that it does not go into details of what the future will look like in terms of development of machines or other such science, but concentrates on what the society of that time will be like. In many ways, it seems like a continuation of things you can see even now (or could see if you studied the rise and falls of the great empires); using the decay caused by flattery, by too much bureaucracy, and by the presence of weak people in the position of power. You can read about how politics plays a part in everything, and how the power of mass appeal can be used to seduce the masses. In fact, if you look further, you can even relate the use of organized religion (and the terms takes on a new meaning in the book) to be used to control an entire planet (seems similar to what you can see in terms of the influence of religion in large sections of the world ?)
The book starts from the perspective of Hari Seldon, a newly arrived mathematician to the city of Trantor, the heavily settled capital of the Galactic Empire that has been in operation now for 12,000 years. Trantor is a world that has been totally built over now (although modern climatologists will argue that such a doing would totally destroy the climate of the world) and is dependent on a large amount of resources from all over for its survival. He is already getting famous as the inventor of psychohistory, which can be used to predict the future (or more accurately, as he keeps on describing, is a tool that be used to calculate the future of large masses of people). The Emperor calls him, and is not satisfied, and ultimately he is hauled up in front of the court for predicting sedition.
He manages to turn the battle by defining some of the timeframes, and proposes that he can save the future by getting an Encyclopedia Galactica built using his team, and they are moved to a small mineral-less planet called Terminus on the edge of the galaxy. Their true mission is to eventually establish a Foundation that is the core of Seldon’s plan to bring order within a 1000 years. And so starts the story of the Foundation, growing out of this small set.
The story continues 50 years later with the planet being governed by the body writing the encyclopedia, not caring about what else happens. They get a visit from the neighboring provinces, one of the 4 neighboring provinces that have rebelled against the empire and become independent, but are low in technology, with no knowledge of atomics. Terminus is asked to pay tribute for protection (extortion on a planetary scale), and in lieu of minerals, to accept parceling out sections of the planet to the province and accept it as a feudal lord. A visitor from the empire is of no help. It is at the this time that Salvor Hardin, the largely powerless Mayor of Terminus shows his true skills, convincing the other provinces that the move by Anacreon is against them and winning this round. And to cement his triumph, Hari Seldon emerges in a 50 year hologram from the Time Vault and describes that the events were exactly as he expected, and that the concept of an Encyclopedia Galactica was a sham, with the true purpose being to setup the Foundation as the nucleus of a new power center.
3 decades later, the Foundation, using its vastly superior technology and knowledge of atomics, has taken over pseudo-control over the neighboring provinces through a system of science and technology transfer under the guise of a religion called Scienticism. People all over have accepted it as a valid religion, controlled by priests who are educated on Terminus and are capable of controlling the mobs on the various planets. But Terminus by itself does not have any military power of its own, instead depending on the religion to keep things under control. One person, Wiennis, the regent of Anacreon has seen through this and wants to defeat the Foundation militarily and get overall control. Towards this end, he even captures a derelict old massive Empire battleship and gets the Foundation to repair it, something that Salvator Hardin agrees to do. Hardin is under tremendous pressure from a section of his political opposition that does not like this appeasement, and they are enraged at this generosity of the Foundation. However, when Wiennis orders the attack, he finds out the true power of the religion that he endorsed. His ship, and every temple of the land is put under interdict, with the priests telling the population that Wiennis is committing blasphemy and his rebellion is defeated. However, at the end, in another emergence of Hari Seldon in the time vault, he comments about how the religion is enough for defense, but not for expansion.
These were the 2 most interesting chapters of the book, and the remaining chapters of the book talk about how the Foundation now spreads through the power of its technology and through the Merchant Princers, traders who spread the influence of the Foundation through the neighborhood, beating attempts to control this influence from spreading through means of hook or crook. The last section has an interesting story about how, when a society is hooked onto convenient and useful machines in every section of life, a war can be controlled by just denial of such machines to households in the planet.
For true science fiction adherents, this is such a book worth keeping that even buying a hardbound edition will be useful.

I really liked this book, and was even more amazed to discover that this was Asimov’s first published novel, in the year 1950. I became a late fan of Asimov, well into the 10th year of my life before I picked up the first novel, and now I have read so many of them that I can be counted as a bona fide Asimov junkie. Pebble in the Sky is a novel that I have read so many times that it is a wonder that the book I own is not in tatters. This book is part of the Empire series, so called because these are a series of books published with happenings just before the Empire was formed.
Earth is a pretty down-trodden place, with a nuclear war in the past having confined large sections of the earth to be nuclear contaminated wastelands. Earthlings who had emigrated earlier had become spacers, living in large new worlds, with lifelines expanded to 4 times the regular. They detest Earth as a place of squalor, and it would be very difficult for a person from Earth to visit any of the spacer worlds. Even when traveling on Earth, they consider themselves superior.
Earth is ruled by a council with a Minister and his Secretary (a very ambitious person indeed and portrayed as extremely evil). Earth is not free, with an outpost of the Spacers holding actual power, although they don’t interfere too much.
Like any other place without enough resources, and under the control of a foreign power who Earthlings know detest them, the local politicians want to be free of the spacers, and actually, in a far fetched idea, destroy them. This seems far-fetched since there are many millions of spacers to every Earthling, and their technology and resources are vastly superior. And yet, the politicians have a secret weapon, actually 2. There is the knowledge that because of their hardier constitution and with the changes in genetics due to nuclear devastation, there can be made bugs that will affect the spacers, and not the Earthlings (1950 is very early to be talking about biological warfare). The second secret weapon is more about a bit of fanciful science fiction, a device called the Synapsifier that can enhance the mental capability, but the device is not production ready and could adversely affect anybody using it. The final explosive mix to all this is the knowledge that Earth is rumoured to be the starting home of all of humanity, something that Earthlings believe in, but not the Spacers.
Into this cauldron of emotions come 2 different individuals. Joseph Schwartz is a tailor from 1949 who one day becomes the victim of a strange molecular ray from a science experiment. The ray takes him and dumps him many many years in the future, in the time period of the novel. The other is an archaeologist from the Sirius sector (a hotbed of anti-Earth feelings) who believes in the Earth is the Origin theory and wants proof.
On Earth, the Society of the Ancients, the governing body is suspicious of his goals and refuses to give him permission to dig in the holy areas. He also wants to see the Synapisifier, and the Society is very suspicious, but lets him meet the inventor. The inventor has been collaborating with the Society since he wants an exemption to the 60, a policy that decrees that all individuals over the age of 60 will be euthanized in order to conserve resources. He needs an individual to test his device, and he picks Schwartz, who is after all unknown. This device gives Schwartz many superior mental capabilities, including the ability to start to read other person’s thoughts and make them do simple things.
The rest of the story is about how these gentlemen thwart the Society of the Ancients, destroy the plan of the Ancients and save humanity. In the meantime, Schwartz gets time to romance the daughter of the inventor, and eventually for the debt that humanity owes them, gets started a shipment of clean earth in order to make the Earth a bountiful place again.
The prose is very good, the narration of the mental battle near the end is extremely gripping.

There would not have been a serious fan of science fiction movies or a follower of the best in cinema who would not have seen the science fiction classic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Based on the short story, ‘The Sentinel’ by Arthur C Clarke written in 1948, the movie and a new novel based on the movie were written at around the same time, with the movie getting released first in 1968, and the book being co-authored by the movie director ‘Stanley Kubrick’ and ‘Arthur C Clarke’ soon after.
This movie is a very strange movie in many aspects, with barely 40 minutes of dialogs in a 148 minute movie. The movie in many many instances looks very stark, with very sharp scenes. With some delightful music, and excellent visuals, the movie is a treat to watch. The movie also leaves the ending sufficiently vague, and these are actually completed by Clarke in his subsequent novels, ‘2010′, ‘2061′ and ‘3001′. There has been a lot of bitching about the future shown in the movie in the sense that 2001 certainly did not see much of easy space flight, but the fact remains that the American space exploration programme, in its full fancy at the time of Apollo and the moon landings was shut down in the mid 1970’s. If there had been sufficient focus and effort put in that direction, such things would still be realistically possible.
The movie set a new pattern with extensive use of scores from the classical composers, both dead and alive. Kubrick shunned the use of movie composers, instead using works by Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)and György Ligeti.
The movie is so different from the others that the first spoken word is issued half an hour into the movie; try to think of 3 elements in the movie, with speech, music, or silence (pre-dominant in space). At any point of time, any scene had only one of these 3 elements present.
The movie essentially divided its critics into 2 parts, people either loved the movie or hated it. But slowly the movie picked momentum and gained an incredible amount of popular and critical acclaim, enough that it is now in the top 100 movies of all time.
The movie starts out with a tribe of primeval ape man struggling against the odds. One day they find a mysterious black object appears and they nervously go near it. In a kick start initiated by the monolith, Man starts to get intelligent and starts to develop tools. As he is able to use the bone tool, he is able to kill enemies, and thus ends the pre-historic episode in the movie. He throws his weapon in the air in triumph and the scene changes to that of an orbital satellite.
In the present time, the American base in the moon discovers an object buried in the moon a million years ago (dubbed Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1 or TMA-1), and Dr. Floyd, a research scientist wants to see it. They see a monolith, smooth after millions of years. With the first burst of sunlight falling on the monolith, it emits a screech, as if it is time to act now.
Cut to the spaceship Discovery 1 going to the moon. It carried 6 passengers, Dave Bowman, Frank Poole, 3 cryogenically frozen astronauts and HAL (the onboard computer). HAL is the pinnacle of super-computing, designed to communicate like a human, and very human like in its interactions. At this point, the movie starts to move into the dangerous territory.
HAL reports an impending problem in the communication system, and Bowman goes out of the spaceship to explore, but no problem can be seen. Mission control suggest that HAL is facing a problem, and in the meantime, HAL suggests waiting for the part to fail. Dave and Frank go into a pod, away from HAL, to discuss secretly about whether HAL is failing. Conclusion: if the problem repeats, they will disconnect HAL. Unfortunately, HAL is able to hear what they are saying; and now the movie shows the magic, the power of a computing device out to do harm.
Poole goes outside to repair, and steps outside the EVA pod, at which point HAL takes control of the pod and rams the pod at Poole, killing him. Dave, watching, rushed outside in another pod to try and rescue Poole; in the meantime, HAL deliberately disconnects the support system of the 3 cryogenically frozen astronauts, killing them.
When Frank tried to return, HAL refuses to open the door, revealing that he knows of the conspiracy to ‘kill him’. The voice of HAL, always soft-spoken does not hide the danger that Frank is in. HAL also makes it clear that the mission is so important that HAL cannot let Dave screw it up. Dave manages to enter the ship in a risky way, given that he does not have a support system and was exposed to vacuum for a short while. He has one purpose, to deactivate HAL. He starts doing so, and slowly HAL starts to die, all the while protesting about what Dave is doing.
The final part of the movie, with a recording explaining the monolith on the moon and around Jupiter. Dave wants to go out and explore the monolith, and exits the Discovery 1 in an EVA pod. He appears to travel vast distances, first seeming to arrive in a royal room, and goes through some strange experiences, finally seeing himself on his deathbed (through reflected glass) with a monolith nearby. As he tried to touch it, he transforms into a vision called a ‘Star Child’, a fetus like being, surrounded by an orb of light and in the Earth’s orbit.
The movie shows a number of devices that are now present such as flat monitors, glass cockpits in spacecraft, credit cards with magnetic strips, biometric identification

How many people would there be who have not seen or hear about this movie ? This was one of the movies that made Steven Spielberg famous. Released in 1982, it was a financial super-success. At the time of its release, it was the most financially successful movie released; costing a bare $ 10.5 million, it made upwards of $ 790 million. The movie was such a great success, it was re-released in 1985 and again in 2002. The movie was to a large extent based on an imaginary alien companion that Spielberg invented when he was a young child, primarily to overcome the trauma of his parent’s divorce.
The cast of the movie included Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert McNaughton, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. Out of these, Drew Barrymore is the one who is the most famous now. But the one who got the most credit out of this movie is Steven Spielberg who became extremely famous after this movie, and he rightfully credits it as one of his best movies. The character of E.T in this movie was a delightful creation, every small child’s dream, a very good companion. The movie touched the hearts of a whole generation of people and is still remembered as a eminently watchable movie.

The story is not very complicated. A group of aliens are collecting samples of vegetation in the forest when Government agents approach. In their haste to leave, they leave behind one of their own. He is discovered by a young boy Thomas Eliott, who tries to entice the cute looking alien to his room.
He manages to avoid going to school the next day to find out more about the alien and to play with him. He also gets his elder brother Michael and sister Gertie to meet the alien, but hides his from his mother. They get into a sort of conversation with the alien where it floats balls to represent its own solar system and also brings a dead plant back to life.
The two, Eliott and E.T develop a close bond, that also causes Eliott some trouble in school since he does some strange activities that get him sent to the Principal’s office. E.T learns English by watching a television serial called ‘Sesame Street’ and takes Eliott’s help for building a device so that he can call home. On Haloween, they dress E.T as a ghost and take him out of the house and into the forest where E.T successfully calls home.
The next day, both Eliott and E.T seem to be dying, at which time Government agents invade the house and set up a quarantine for Eliott and E.T. E.T suddenly dies, breaking the link between them, and then comes back to life and says his kind are returning to take him back. The kids decide to help E.T escape and stay a step ahead of Government agents in a chase. At this time, one of the most famous sequence of the movie happens where E.T lifts the bicycle in the air when they are trapped in a dead-end. And finally, E.T returns home.

How many people would there be who have not seen or hear about this movie ? This was one of the movies that made Steven Spielberg famous. Released in 1982, it was a financial super-success. At the time of its release, it was the most financially successful movie released; costing a bare $ 10.5 million, it made upwards of $ 790 million. The movie was such a great success, it was re-released in 1985 and again in 2002. The movie was to a large extent based on an imaginary alien companion that Spielberg invented when he was a young child, primarily to overcome the trauma of his parent’s divorce.
The cast of the movie included Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert McNaughton, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. Out of these, Drew Barrymore is the one who is the most famous now. But the one who got the most credit out of this movie is Steven Spielberg who became extremely famous after this movie, and he rightfully credits it as one of his best movies. The character of E.T in this movie was a delightful creation, every small child’s dream, a very good companion. The movie touched the hearts of a whole generation of people and is still remembered as a eminently watchable movie.

The story is not very complicated. A group of aliens are collecting samples of vegetation in the forest when Government agents approach. In their haste to leave, they leave behind one of their own. He is discovered by a young boy Thomas Eliott, who tries to entice the cute looking alien to his room.
He manages to avoid going to school the next day to find out more about the alien and to play with him. He also gets his elder brother Michael and sister Gertie to meet the alien, but hides his from his mother. They get into a sort of conversation with the alien where it floats balls to represent its own solar system and also brings a dead plant back to life.
The two, Eliott and E.T develop a close bond, that also causes Eliott some trouble in school since he does some strange activities that get him sent to the Principal’s office. E.T learns English by watching a television serial called ‘Sesame Street’ and takes Eliott’s help for building a device so that he can call home. On Haloween, they dress E.T as a ghost and take him out of the house and into the forest where E.T successfully calls home.
The next day, both Eliott and E.T seem to be dying, at which time Government agents invade the house and set up a quarantine for Eliott and E.T. E.T suddenly dies, breaking the link between them, and then comes back to life and says his kind are returning to take him back. The kids decide to help E.T escape and stay a step ahead of Government agents in a chase. At this time, one of the most famous sequence of the movie happens where E.T lifts the bicycle in the air when they are trapped in a dead-end. And finally, E.T returns home.