2001 Nights

2001 Nights (2001夜物語) is a science fiction manga series written and illustrated by Yukinobu Hoshino and originally serialized in Futabasha's Monthly Super Action starting from June 1984. It was then collected into three bound volumes by Futabasha, released between August 18, 1985 and October 24, 1986. The series was licensed for an English-language release by Viz Media and published in North America starting March 22, 1996. 2001 Nights is largely inspired by classic hard science fiction, with many visual homages to previous science fiction novels and films.

Manga
2001 Nights consists of several loosely connected short stories, all taking place in the same timeline, with the whole series spanning several hundred years. Many of the stories are related to each other (even across books), each building upon the achievements of the previous ones. The stories are often (but not always) scientifically plausible, recalling a lot of the early science fiction of the 1950 and 1960 eras.

2001 Nights
2001 Nights was adapted into a one-episode original video animation (OVA) by TMS Entertainment and released on VHS in July 1987. It has not been licensed in English.

TO
Two stories from 2001 Nights, Night 13 (Symbiotic Planet) and Night 15 (Elliptical Orbit) respectively, were recently adapted into TO, a two-episode computer animation (CGI) original video animation (OVA), and released on DVD and Blu-ray by Avex in December 2009, in Japan.

TO was scheduled to air on TBS (U.S. cable TV channel) and BS-TBS (Japanese satellite TV broadcaster) in November and December 2009, prior to the DVD and Blu-ray release.

A 10 minute trailer was released on Youtube by Avex in November 2009.

Stories
The stories that make up the complete manga are placed in chronological order, with one exception. By the technology used, Night 14 ("Elliptical Orbit") seems to belong somewhere between Nights 6 and 7 (after the invention of suspended animation and interstellar travel, but before the Lucifer discovery).