This flyby (Quicktime animation of the flyby events) caused me to think back to the context of the movies "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the sequel "2010". Arthur C. Clarke collaborated on the screenplays for both -- "2001" was based loosely on his story "The Sentinel".
(In case you're wondering, I know it's "flies". Havin' some fun.)
There might be small spoilers about the plot of each book and movie below. Of course, all of this is probably Googlable. (Hmm, try saying that five times fast.)
I read -- and enjoyed immensely -- the novelization of "2001". It's short and fast. What readers may not know is that in the movie production, the spaceship Discovery was originally destined for Saturn. There were good reasons for that: the presence of the rings was attributed to activity of the black monolith builders, and the moon Iapetus (which is still pretty weird) was weirder back then, when very little could be perceived about it other than it was about 6x brighter on one side of its orbit around Saturn than on the other side. As Cassini has found out, it's painted by ring-derived dust to make this unique light side/dark side pattern. Picture below.
Unusual Iapetus
As viewers of the movie know, Discovery went to Jupiter, not Saturn. The reason was that Kubrick wasn't satisfied with the attempts to render
Saturn's rings, and gave up, and so the ship went to Jupiter instead, which was easier to depict.
This set up "2010" (and I should note that our spacefaring is a lot less advanced on the cusp of 2010 than Clarke thought it was; apparently he didn't consider the funding constraints of space travel, but to his credit, he DID consider the gravity constraints) -- and Clarke, probably figuring a lot more people saw the movie than read the book, sent the sequel-nauts to Jupiter in his book sequel (which was the basis of the movie screenplay, naturally) to fetch Discovery and murdering HAL --- which should have been in orbit around Saturn, if he'd stuck to his original concept. He and the movie-makers also had images from the Voyagers to make the science more realistic and up-to-date, as well. This included improved knowledge of the icy moon Europa, which Galileo subsequently discovered has ice tectonics likely due to a liquid ocean somewhere beneath the ice. Clarke didn't need that -- he just needed Europa to be icy, and utilized this fact to set up the star-seeding, life-encouraging denouement induced by the monolith builders -- I'm trying not to give too much away here on the off-chance the rare person reading this might want to see the movies or read the books.
I'm still peeved at Clarke, God rest his soul, for not going to Saturn in the sequel, because I still think Saturn made more artistic sense (despite the fact that mighty Jove also has a ring system, though much more tenuous than Saturn's). The first thing I thought of when the plumes of Enceladus were discovered was that Enceladus could be Saturn's version of Europa. It turns out that based on what is currently known, Enceladus likely doesn't have liquid water beneath its icy crust (but I don't think that's been entirely ruled out). But in the context of extremophiles -- organisms that live under extraordinarily extreme conditions that "we" would think should be inhospitable to life -- I think there could still be a chance (even if it's small, that's all they need) that primitive organisms could still live on Enceladus. That's what was needed in "2010". Saturn and icy Enceladus possess all the other necessary "ingredients": and the special effects akin to the climax of "2010" would have been even more astonishing for Saturn, provided that it was made with current CGI technology and not the movie special effects technology circa 1984 -- wow, was it that long ago???
This is all water under the bridge (I'll be posting on new and amazing bridges soon) and past history. But while I'm at it, why in the WORLD hasn't there been a special-effects updated remake of "Fantastic Voyage", with a) Megan Fox, b) Olivia Wilde, c) Jessica Alba, or d) Evangeline Lilly assuming the Racquel Welch role? (I'm accepting nominations for other young, suitably endowed starlets to be cast in this role). Seriously, this is a NATURAL (heh heh heh) for current cinematic computer-generated special effects -- and it would be much more educational and cerebral (heh heh heh) than "Transformers 3".
Umm,by the way, I just checked, and "Day After Tomorrow", "Independence Day" and "2012" director Roland Emmerich had been picked to do a "Fantastic Voyage" sequel, but that news is from 2007 and that there were artistic differences between Emmerich and screenwriter James Cameron, but according to
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.
as of last March somebody was still trying to get keep this going.
Done right -- I'd like to see it, and not just to find out who gets to fill Racquel's skin-tight scuba suit and go diving amidst the dangerous antibodies. But given the way other remakes have gone, the odds of it being "done right" are probably about 20%.
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