Chapter 1, The Frozen Years Summary

Dr. Oleg Glazunov comments to Dr. Heywood Floyd that he is in remarkable shape for a man of seventy, although Dr. Floyd is actually one hundred and three years old. Dr. Floyd looks out a window of the Pasteur Space Hospital on the Moon and sees the Earth, six thousand kilometers away. In 2015, Dr. Floyd fell off a second story balcony, which put him in the hospital, when he was only fifty-eight-years-old. Now, forty-six years later in 2061, Dr. Floyd can never return to the Earth, because his body can no longer handle the higher gravity. Two reasons account for Dr. Floyd's longevity. The low lunar gravity slows the aging process, and hibernation during long space flights encourages rejuvenation. Dr. Glazunov assures Dr. Floyd that he is fit to take a space flight on the spaceship Universe. This...