2001: A Space Odyssey

In March of this year one of the greatest writers of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the age of ninety. I had of course heard of his work, but I never actually read anything by him so I decided to dig up some of his work. My reading pile is several feet high at the moment so it took me a while to get to it but this week I finally finished the work for which he is probably best known, 2001: A Space Odyssey.The film by Stanley Kubrick and this novel, written and produced simultaneously are a landmark in the genre. In preparation to this review I watched the film as well. I've seen parts of it before by I watched it in it's entirety for the first time. Although I feel you can't really separate the two I decided I liked the book better even though the film is visually stunning keeping in mind it is forty years old by now.

A summary of the plot is a bit difficult, the book consists of several loosely connected parts, I'll cover the first two, you'll have to make your own way from there. The story begins some three million years ago when a group of ape-men, as Clarke describes them, discover an strange monolith. Given the timing and the knowledge of human evolution at the time he most likely based them on some species of Australopithecus. Human ancestry is still poorly understood so it makes sense to be vague on that particular detail. The ape-men are living a marginal life in an environment that had gradually become dryer and less forested. Survival and food occupy all their attention and they are slowly loosing the battle. Then the monolith shows them the use of tools and the ape-men become hunters.

Three million years later the ancestors of our ape-men come across another monolith. This time it buried on the moon and it was clearly left there to be found. Scientists quickly discover that the artefact has been buried there three million years ago. The conclusion is inescapable, they have found the first signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. And the monolith surprises them in another way too. When sunlight hits is for the first time in three million years it sends out a clear radio signal in the direction of Saturn. What have they found here? An intergalactic bugler alarm? There is only one way to find out. An expedition is mounted to Saturn. An expedition so secret not even the astronauts know it's true goal. Only the ships computer, a powerful artificial intelligence by the name of HAL9000 has been fully briefed.

Clarke is not know for his highly literary approach of the genre but rather for his realistic descriptions of space travel, his optimistic vision of the future and of course the accuracy his predictions (a debatable matter in my opinion). I very much enjoyed the descriptions of space travel without he artificial gravity nonsense you'll find in most science fiction. His eye for detail, the small things that can cause problems in a zero-gravity environment, is brilliant. Especially if you consider it was written in an age when space flight was in it's infancy. Come to think of it, the time of the release of this book and film, just before the landing on the moon by Neill Armstong c.s. probably contributed to it's status. The moon landing took some of the fiction out of science fiction. His ideas on artificial intelligence are quite interesting too. I thought the HAL in the book a lot more creepy than the one in the film, even if that single red light is a great way of visualizing HAL.

The year 2001 has come and passed and looking at the future Clarke describes in his book he seems to have been a bit too optimistic. He also failed to foresee the fall of the USSR for instance. It seems he was also too optimistic about the possibilities of manned space travel. In recent years unmanned spacecraft have proven to be more a versatile and more cost effective way of exploring space. On the other hand one has to wonder what might have been possible if all the funds and effort would have gone into manned space travel. Clarke thought it pretty likely we would find life or traces thereof in other places in the solar system. The moon has not been explored as thoroughly as it has been in the book but the chance of finding any sort of (past) life seems quite remote. Clarke also seems to favour a theory on the formation of the moon that is not currently the one thought of as most likely. The list of inaccuracies is quite long if you bother to pay attention to them. None of them really distracted me form the story though.

2001: A Space Odyssey is probably not the greatest work of science fiction from a literary point of view but the sheer power of Clarke's vision make it live up to it's reputation as a classic in my opinion. The book also explains a lot of things the film leaves (deliberately) vague. In fact I don't think there is a single person who understood the film after seeing it the first time. Especially the end, which can only be described as Kubrick's interpretation of a particularly heavy LSD trip, leaves the viewer with a lot of questions. The novel explains a lot of these things. I don't think Kubrick and Clarke meant it that way but I don't think you can really separate the two. The way the film and the book came to be is unique, neither can claim seniority really and they are somehow intertwined. The best thing to do is probably watch the film, read the book and then watch the film again. Which is precisely what I am going to do.

Other Reviews of works by Arthur C. Clarke

2010: Odyssey Two - Jun 29, 2008