Finish Wing Commander

Fly for the Empire; the best space combat sim, from 1994.

Eight galaxies, wireframe ships and free trade; the game that invented open-ended space.

Fly for the Rebellion in 1993, managing shields and laser power by keyboard; the sim TIE Fighter answers.

Custom races, ship design and a galaxy to argue over; the 4X the genre still copies.

Vector rocks, one ship and hyperspace; Atari's 1979 arcade high-score machine.

Watch Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey

Read Solaris, a classic science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem exploring themes of human psychology and alien contact

Clarke's novel written alongside Kubrick's film, and it explains the ending.