Heywood R. Floyd

Dr. Heywood R. Floyd is a fictional character in the "Space Odyssey" series by Arthur C. Clarke. He features in ' and is the main protagonist in ' and "". In the first movie he is portrayed by William Sylvester, in the second by Roy Scheider.

Heywood Floyd was born in 1956 in the USA. By 1999 he is chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, in charge of overseeing all American flight operations. He has two daughters (only one in the movies, born 1994) and was widowed when his wife Marion died in a plane crash (in the movies this didn't happen until after 2001).

As chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, Floyd was called up to Clavius Base on the Moon after a large rectangular black monolith dubbed TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1) had been uncovered there. He was present when the monolith emitted a signal when first exposed to sunlight. He authorized the mission on "Discovery" to Jupiter (Saturn in the first novel) to trace where the signals emitted by TMA-1 lead to.

After the fiasco on board "Discovery" with HAL 9000 and the disappearance of David Bowman, Heywood Floyd was labeled as a scapegoat. He was forced to resign from the National Council of Astronautics, to be replaced by Victor Millson. He moved to Hawaii, where he became the Chancellor of the University. He married a woman named Caroline and together they had a son Chris, born 2008 (2006 in the movie).

He was one of the three American experts who were posted aboard the USSR vessel "Alexei Leonov" in the joint US-USSR mission back to Jupiter to find out what happened. He went along with the designer of "Discovery", Walter Curnow, and the creator of HAL, Dr Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai or Dr Chandra for short. Once Discovery had been reached and HAL reactivated, he was warned by David Bowman to leave the Jovian system in preparation for the transformation of Jupiter into the mini-sun Lucifer in order to assist in the survival of the creatures living in the subterranean oceans of Europa.

In the novels, Floyd's marriage to Caroline broke apart as a result of the "Leonov" mission.

Following his return he was estranged from his son Chris. After an accident involving falling off a second-story balcony he was shipped to the orbital station 'Pasteur' for medical treatment. By the time he had healed properly his body had adjusted to one-sixth gravity and he could no longer handle Earth gravity, and so was forced to stay as a permanent resident of 'Pasteur'.

Floyd spent almost fifty years living in the Pasteur, up until 2061 at the age of 103 (his aging had been halted twice in his times in cryogenic hibernation on the "Leonov" mission) at which time he only appeared to be around 65. His son Chris had married and had a son, Chris II, before being killed in the "Copernicus Disaster".

Floyd was one of six celebrities brought aboard the Tsung Spacelines ship "Universe" for its historic landing on Comet Halley, and became one of the first people to walk on the comet's surface. It was also jokingly rumored that he was having an affair with former famous actress Yva Merlin. When news was heard that "Universe"'s sister ship "Galaxy", of which Chris Floyd II was a crew member, had crash-landed on Europa, Floyd found himself on a rescue mission to save "Galaxy". He helped convince the crew of attempting Second Officer Jolson's plan of taking water fuel from a geyser on Halley's Comet called "Old Faithful" rather than returning to the Moon first. That plan turned out to be successful.

At Yva Merlin's suggestion, Floyd called David Bowman on the radio asking for permission to land on Europa. That night he woke up to find a tiny version of the monolith floating inside his quarters. At that point, Heywood Floyd was split into two people: one was a human the same as he always was, and the other was an immortal being like David Bowman and HAL. On Europa the immortal Floyd appeared to his grandson Chris, making him think that Floyd was dead and he'd seen his ghost. Chris soon discovered that Floyd was not dead when they were reunited, and they became closer following these events. It is not known what became of Floyd, but due to his age it is fair to assume that he died some time after.

Meanwhile, on Europa, the immortal Floyd became acquainted with Bowman and HAL. It was revealed that they "recruited" him to help them develop the Europans to further intelligence within the life-span of Lucifer. Despite this, Floyd does not feature in any form in "".

Trivia

* Kubrick directed "2001: A Space Odyssey," and also directed the first film adaptation of Stephen King's novel "The Shining." In the adaptation of King's novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption", there were two characters named Heywood and Floyd.
* "2001: A Space Odyssey" shows a pre-recorded film with Dr. Floyd briefing the astronauts but his first name is spelled "Haywood".