2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)
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- For other uses, see 2001: A Space Odyssey (disambiguation).
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| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Space Odyssey |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
| Released | 1968 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 224 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-09-089830-3 (first edition, hardback) |
| Followed by | 2010: Odyssey Two |
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, most notably "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). For an elaboration of Clark and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project, see The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Signet., 1972.
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[edit] Plot summary
In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large crystal monolith (black in the film adaptation) to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in ancient Africa, three million years B.C., where it inspires a starving group of the hominid ancestors of human beings to conceive of tools. The ape-men use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard that had been preying on them; the next day the main ape character, "Moon-Watcher", uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe. Moon-Watcher reflects that he is now master of the universe, but is unsure of what to do - but he'll think of something.
The book then leaps millennia to the year 1999, detailing Dr. Heywood Floyd's travelling to Clavius base on the Moon. Upon his arrival, Floyd attends a meeting. A lead scientist explains that they have found a magnetic disturbance in Tycho, one of the Moon's craters. An excavation of the area has revealed a large black slab, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One (TMA-1). It is precisely fashioned and, at three million years of age, was not made by humans. It is the first evidence for the existence of intelligent life off the Earth. Floyd and a team of scientists drive across the moon to actually view TMA-1. They arrive just as sunlight hits upon it for the first time in three million years. It then sends a piercing radio transmission to the far reaches of the solar system.
The book then leaps forward 18 months to the Discovery One mission to Saturn. David Bowman and Frank Poole are the conscious human beings aboard Discovery One. Three of their colleagues are in a state of suspended animation, to be awakened when they near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer, maintains the ship and is an active part of life aboard.
While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family back home, HAL tells him that the AE-35 unit of the ship is going to malfunction. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit, which is critical for sustaining communication with Earth. Bowman conducts tests on the AE-35 unit that has been replaced and determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Later, HAL claims that the replacement AE-35 unit will fail. Apprehensive, Poole and Bowman radio back to Earth; they are told that something is wrong with HAL and are given orders to disconnect him. These instructions are interrupted as the signal is broken. HAL informs them that the AE-35 unit has malfunctioned.
Poole again takes a pod outside the ship to bring in the failed AE-35 unit. As he is removing the unit, the pod, which he had left further from the ship, begins moving toward him. He is powerless to move out of the way in time and is killed by the impact; his spacesuit ripped open. Bowman is shocked by Poole's death and is deeply distressed. He is unsure whether HAL, a computer, really could have killed Poole. He decides that he will need to wake up the other three astronauts. He has a long argument with HAL, with HAL refusing to obey his orders on the basis that he is supposedly incapacitated. Bowman threatens to disconnect him and HAL relents, giving him manual control over the process of ending the hibernation.
As Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he feels a cold chill; HAL has opened the inner and outer airlock doors to space, venting the ship’s atmosphere. The pressure on board is rapidly dropping as the ship is equalizing with the vacuum of space. Bowman makes his way into a sealed emergency shelter which has an isolated oxygen supply and spare spacesuit. He then puts on the spacesuit and re-enters the ship, knowing that the three hibernating astronauts are dead. Bowman then laboriously disconnects HAL, whom he now knows to be a murderer. Bowman puts the ship back in order and manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that the true purpose of the mission is to explore Japetus (the third-largest moon of Saturn), and contact the society that buried the monolith on the Moon.
Bowman learns that HAL had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, HAL might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he defended himself, because his very existence was at stake.
Bowman spends months on the ship, alone, slowly approaching Japetus. A return to Earth is out of the question, as HAL's sudden decompression of Discovery severely damaged the ship's air filtration system, leaving Bowman with far less breathable air than either returning to Earth or waiting for a rescue ship would require. Hibernation is impossible without HAL to monitor it. During his long approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the moon. When he gets closer, he realizes that this is an immense black monolith, identical to TMA-1, only much larger, which the scientists back on Earth name "TMA-2". The name is doubly inappropriate: this object is not in the Tycho crater and, unlike its lunar counterpart, it has no magnetic field.
He decides to go out in one of the extra-vehicular pods to put down on the monolith. The monolith, which had been inert for so long, opens and swallows Bowman's pod as he proclaims: "The thing's hollow -- it goes on forever -- and -- oh my God! -- it's full of stars!" Mission control never hears from Bowman again.
Bowman moves very quickly through a field of stars that seem to have no end emerging in a star system far outside our galaxy. Eventually, he is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions, to make him feel at ease. Bowman goes to sleep. As he sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body. David Bowman is made into a new, immortal entity that can live and travel in space; a Star Child. The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and to Earth, where it detonates a nuclear missile while it's in flight and saves millions of lives. It then reflects that it is master of the universe, but is unsure of what to do - but it'll think of something.
[edit] Major themes
The Perils of Technology
2001: A Space Odyssey explores technological advancement, its promise and its danger. Two specific perils of technology are delved into in great detail. First, the HAL 9000 computer puts forward the troubles that can crop up when man builds machines, the inner workings of which he does not fully comprehend and therefore cannot fully control. Second, the book explores the perils related with the atomic age - in this novel the Cold War is apparently still on, and right at the end of the book one side has apparently launched nuclear weapons at the other: it is only through the Star Child's intervention that humanity is saved.
Evolution
2001: A Space Odyssey takes a protracted view of progress, human and otherwise. The story follows the growth of human civilization from primitive man-ape. Distinctively, Space Odyssey is concerned about not only the evolution that has led to the development of humanity, but also the evolution that humanity might undergo in the future. Hence, we follow Bowman as he is turned into a Star-Child by the monolith. The novel acknowledges that evolutionary theory entails that humanity is not the end, but only a step in the process. One way this process might continue, the book imagines, is that humans will learn to rid themselves of their technological trappings, and eventually their corporeal bodies as well.
Space Exploration
When 2001: A Space Odyssey was written, mankind had not yet set foot on the moon. The space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union were only in the early stages. Much room was left to imagine the future of the space program. Space Odyssey offers one such vision, offering a glimpse at what space exploration might one day become. Lengthy journeys, such as manned flights to Saturn, and advanced technologies, such as suspended animation, are shaped and shown all through the novel.
Technological Malfunctions
As HAL begins to malfunction, his actions become less predictable. It begins with something more or less trivial — predicting the AE-35 unit will malfunction when there is, in fact, nothing wrong with it. Interestingly, HAL's malfunction causes him to incorrectly predict that other things will malfunction. HAL's break down contrasts with an otherwise flawlessly planned undertaking, making his malfunction more prominent. This warns of the danger of creating technologies that are not fully controllable.
The Trappings of Space Travel
2001: A Space Odyssey offers a comprehensive look at the scientific world it is set in. Attention to detail is taken to guarantee that the reader gets a sensation of familiarity of the technology described in the book. Dr. Floyd's journey to Space Station One is depicted with awareness of fine points such as the experience of a Space Shuttle launch, the adhesive sauces used to keep food firmly in place on one's plate, and even the zero gravity toilet.
The HAL 9000 Computer
The HAL 9000 computer symbolizes the progress of technology. It represents many apprehensions about technology. First, HAL is an artificial intelligence – it can mimic all of the thought processes of the human brain with greater speed and reliability. Second, its inner workings are not completely understood – even by the people who created it. HAL is an extraordinarily potent technology that cannot be fully controlled. When HAL begins to deviate from the way in which it has been programmed, this is an illustration of the apprehension many people held that our own technological development will someday come back to haunt us in surprising and unanticipated ways. See also HAL 9000.
[edit] Sequels
A sequel to the film, titled 2010: The Year We Make Contact was based on Clarke's 1982 book 2010: Odyssey Two and was released in 1984. However, Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which did not have the impact of the original. (Nonetheless, Kubrick makes a cameo appearance in the film. The cover of a Time magazine seen in the film features illustrations of the Soviet and American presidents. Clearly, the illustrations represent Kubrick as the Russian Premier and Clarke as his opposite. Also, the name of the captain on the Leonov is "Kirbuk".) Clarke went on to write two more sequel novels: 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). To date there has yet to be any serious discussion of filmmakers adapting either for the screen.
[edit] Trivia
- Roger Ebert notes that Kubrick originally intended for the first spaceship seen in the film to be an orbiting bomb platform, but in the end he decided to leave the ship's meaning more ambiguous. Clarke, however, retained and clearly stated this fact in the novel. [1]
- It has been frequently noted that "HAL" is "IBM", shifted one letter backward. Clarke has repeatedly insisted that this is a coincidence. In his sequel novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, he even included this matter in a sequence of dialogue with the computer's creator. See HAL 9000.
- The name of the Saturnian moon Iapetus is spelled Japetus in the book. This is a common alternative rendering of the name, which derives from the fact that 'I' often stands for 'J' in the Latin language (see modern spelling of Latin).
- The book's descriptions of the moon Japetus closely resemble those of another Saturnian moon, Mimas; this was a coincidence, as close-up images of Saturn's moons did not become available until 1980.
- In the film, Discovery's mission is to Jupiter, not Saturn. Director Kubrick used Jupiter because he could not find what he considered to be a convincing model of Saturn's rings for the film. Clarke also replaced Saturn with Jupiter in the novel's sequel. See 2010: Odyssey Two.
- The name of the pod that killed Frank Poole, Betty, is the name of Winona Ryder's ship in the film Alien Resurrection.
- The names of David and Hal were used in the Metal Gear series as Solid Snake and Otacon's real names
[edit] Release details
- 1968, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-089830-3), Pub date ? ? 1968, hardback (First edition)
- 1968, USA, New American Library (ISBN 0-453-00269-2), Pub date ? June 1968, hardback
- 1968, UK, Arrow Books (ISBN 0-09-001530-4), Pub date ? October 1968, paperback
- 2000, UK, Orbit (ISBN 1-84149-055-5), Pub date 7 December 2000, hardback (special edition)
- 2005, USA, Signet (ISBN 0-451-45273-9), Pub date 31 July 2005, paperback
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| The Space Odyssey series | |
|---|---|
| Films | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) |
| Novels | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) | 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) | 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) |
| Comics | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1976) |
| Short stories | "The Sentinel" (written 1948, first published 1951 as "Sentinel of Eternity") |
| Characters | HAL 9000 | David Bowman | Dr. Chandra | Walter Curnow | Heywood Floyd | Frank Poole |
| Vehicles | Discovery One | EVA Pod | Leonov | Orion III | Aries Ib | Space Station V |
| Locations | Earth | Moon | Clavius Base | Tycho | Jupiter | Europa | Io | Ganymede | Saturn | Iapetus |
| Cast | Keir Dullea | John Lithgow | Gary Lockwood | Helen Mirren | Douglas Rain | Roy Scheider | William Sylvester | Leonard Rossiter | Margaret Tyzack |
| Crew/creators | Arthur C. Clarke | Peter Hyams | Jack Kirby | Stanley Kubrick |
| Interpretations | Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| Music | Alex North's 2001: A Space Odyssey |
