On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began. This date will forever go down in history as the start of the bloodiest war in America. Prior to this day, Abraham Lincoln's presidential victory led the southern states to succeed from the Union. The succession came out of the issue of slavery. Lincoln's refusal to remove Union soldiers out of the South began the Confederate's attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
Take a journey through the history of science fiction and examine the cultural influences—such as the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race—that shaped Stanley Kubrick's visionary 1968 film, *2001: A Space Odyssey*.