{"id":632,"date":"2020-10-14T01:39:15","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T01:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/?p=632"},"modified":"2021-08-19T03:18:03","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T03:18:03","slug":"an-overlong-review-of-2001-a-space-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"An Overlong Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"2001\"<\/p>\n

Actually, this is less a review and more a rambling, diatribe-laden book report, and it\u2019s brimming with spoilers. I spend a lot of time comparing the book and the movie.<\/p>\n

The short version is: Wow, 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>! Great book! Five stars!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I saw elements of many of Clarke\u2019s short stories, including \u201cHoliday on the Moon,\u201d \u201cRescue Party,\u201d and \u201cEncounter in the Dawn,\u201d and saw a few of the themes from Childhood\u2019s End<\/em>. Although \u201cThe Sentinel\u201d is sometimes referred to as the foundation for 2001, I barely see the connection aside from the lunar setting.<\/p>\n

Back in 2016 I listened to a big fat audio book called The Dark Forest<\/em> by Cixin Liu. It\u2019s a good book, you should check it out. Here\u2019s a direct quote from somewhere in that giant tome where a character examining an alien artifact is reminded of something:<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than two centuries before, in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke had described a black monolith left on the moon by an advanced alien civilization. Surveyors had measured its dimensions with ordinary rulers and had found a ratio of one to four to nine. When these figures were rechecked using the most high-precision measurement technology on Earth, the ratio remained an exact one to four to nine, with no error at all. Clarke described it as a \u2018passive yet almost arrogant display of geometrical perfection.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After listening to that bit, I rewound the audio book and listened to it again. Then I paused the recording and thought, Wait, 2001 was a book? I was immediately skeptical. And look, most of this is ignorance\u2014I\u2019d been reading for pleasure for less than a year at that point, and I didn\u2019t really know who Arthur C. Clarke was. Not really. In fact, the only reason I knew about him at all was because the main character from the video game Dead Space was named Isaac Clarke, and the game studio\u2019s PR material often called attention to the inspiration for his name. So I knew he was a sci-fi author, but that was pretty much it.<\/p>\n

I knew that Stanley Kubrick had teamed up with a sci-fi writer for the plot of the 1968 movie, but I\u2019d hitherto not made the connection it was Clarke, nor did I know a book had been written in conjunction with the movie. And even though I could have easily Googled it, I shrugged and figured some hack named Clarke probably novelized the movie years after the film\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I was completely wrong. I was comically wrong. As I now understand it, Kubrick read one of Clarke\u2019s earlier novels, Childhood\u2019s End<\/em> (also a great book, you should check it out!), and wrote him a letter saying, more or less, \u201cHey I loved your book. You and I should do a movie together.\u201d So they get together and have a number of conversations about where to start, and Kubrick suggests at length that Clarke should first write a novel so that Kubrick could turn it into a movie. Everyone wins: Clarke doesn\u2019t have to worry about how to write a screenplay, and Kubrick will have the source material to write the screenplay himself. They spend many 18-hour days together over a period of time spit-balling ideas, a \u201c130-page prose treatment\u201d is written, and then they both get to work independently\u2014Clarke refining his novel, Kubrick making his movie.<\/p>\n

There are probably some more details in there, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar<\/strong>: My favorite board game is Alien Frontiers<\/em>. I wonder if I would have been more familiar with Clarke if one of the alien moon\u2019s regions had been named after him? End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for my initial skepticism was that, for my whole life, friends and family have had so many varying interpretations of the movie\u2019s ending. There are a bevy of hourlong vlogs on YouTube where people try to get to the bottom of it. We watched the movie in English class once, and afterwards, there was a class discussion about what we thought the last part meant (Was it a metaphor? Something to be taken literally? Did Bowman die\u2014were those bizarre visuals simply Bowman\u2019s neuron\u2019s firing as he flew into Jupiter and got crushed by the pressure?), but the teacher never mentioned that there was a clear and concise explanation in the book, or even that such a book existed.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar:<\/strong> There\u2019s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to interpretations of the movie, and a subsection, \u201cClarke\u2019s novel as explanation,\u201d does throw some shade on idea that the book is an answer key. But after reading the book and following it up with another viewing of the movie… well, it\u2019s hard not to think of the book as an answer key. End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this has clearly been a long time coming: After reading several other Clarke books\u2014after reading Childhood\u2019s End<\/em>, Rendezvous with Rama<\/em>, and the complete collection of his more than 100 short stories\u2014he\u2019s become one of favorite authors, and I\u2019ve gradually become aware that 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em> is a legitimate, classic, beloved novel. So I finally picked it up.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar:<\/strong> My dad apparently loved the movie. I recall that when I was very young, he showed me a seemingly never-ending movie clip where some apes find a creepy rectangle and then beat each other to death. Then an ape throws a bone in the air, and my dad turns to look at me as the bone blinks into a spaceship and then says something like \u201cTAA-DAA!\u201d And I cannot articulate how thoroughly unimpressed I was. He was so disappointed. And now that I think of it, I just said \u201cmovie clip\u201d a minute ago but honestly, I\u2019m sure he was watching the whole movie and intended to watch it with me. But, come on, like I was going to watch 30 straight minutes of a guy sleeping on a space plane? I was seven.<\/p>\n

Anyway, 28 years later, I\u2019m 35, and I totally love the movie now. Even though I didn\u2019t understand a lick of it after Hal got shut down, it is mesmerizing how crisp and clear and beautiful that movie is. So after I finished 2001 (the book) a few days ago, I rented the movie on YouTube and I swear, the EXACT SAME SCENE played out with my seven-year-old daughter. I was waiting for her reaction when the bone turned into the ship, and she just blinked and said, \u201cCan I go now?\u201d<\/p>\n

Through time and space, my dad and I shared the same heart-sinking moment of dejection. End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

First and foremost (he says, 1,000 words later), everything you didn\u2019t know about the movie is in here, and it\u2019s unambiguous. It would be difficult not to spend the majority of what follows comparing the book and the movie, so… I\u2019m going to spend the majority of what follows comparing the book and the movie. Heehee.<\/p>\n

Part I of the book, Primeval Night<\/strong>, begins millions of years in the past, where an ape (nicknamed Moon-Watcher by the narrator) spends his days hunting for bits of food where he can find it. Berries, roots, that sort of thing. The apes are perpetually hungry, malnourished, tired. There are pigs that scrounge along with the apes (as opposed to tapirs in the movie), but it has never occurred to the apes that these pigs could be a potential source of food. Occasionally, a leopard will get the drop on one of them, and it doesn\u2019t even cross the minds of the other apes to intervene.<\/p>\n

One morning, Moon-Watcher awakens and discovers a large milky white crystal of sorts in their living space (as opposed to a monolith in the movie). The thing transmits a sort of instruction to him, and he realizes he can use things like rocks and bones as tools. He kills a pig, the other apes follow suit, and now the apes are all fat and happy, with all the pork they could ever want.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the first big book\/movie difference: In the book, the apes realize they can retaliate against the leopard with rocks and bones. And they do! They take on the leopard and before you know it, the leopard\u2019s life is flashing before its eyes and it tries to retreat. It\u2019s pretty exciting.<\/p>\n

In the movie, though, Moon-Watcher realizes he can use bones as clubs and, after he and his group hunt some tapirs, they beat another ape to death over a waterhole dispute. I recognize that it was probably easier to film costumed ape-men play-fighting each other than a real leopard, but this scene always hit hard for me. To see them fight each other, to see them realize they no longer had to rely on shouting and puffing out their chests to intimidate their rivals. It was ugly and animalistic and made even the small cultural advancement of improvised tools seem grey.<\/p>\n

You know what happens next. Everyone does. The story jumps ahead to a space-age 1999 almost as abruptly as the movie, but the jump is thrilling\u2014not confusing.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar:<\/strong> One of the film critics who attended the premier of the movie way back in 1968 said in his review, \u201cThis prologue is just a tedious basketful of mixed materials dumped in our laps for future reference. What\u2019s worse, we don\u2019t need it. Nothing in the rest of the film depends on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While I can imagine it must have been jarring to witness 20 dialogue-free minutes of film that end abruptly and swaps settings, I disagree strongly that it\u2019s unneeded! The Monolith, bro! That\u2019s what ties the prologue in with everything else. 1960s film critics, amirite?! End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Part II, TMA-1<\/strong>, was my least favorite part of the book. It reminded me of a 1951 short story Arthur C. Clarke wrote for Heiress Magazine called \u201cHoliday on the Moon,\u201d wherein a little girl goes on vacation to the Moon with her family. (Micro sidebar:<\/strong> Because this magazine catered to girls and young women, ACC wrote the story under a pseudonym\u2014he was worried it would damage his reputation.) It\u2019s a pleasant story but is mostly a vehicle to explain in painstaking detail things like low gravity and lack of atmosphere on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the scenes where Heywood Floyd travels from Earth to the Moon are\u2026 er\u2026 they feel like edutainment, or soft advertising. You know those faux travel posters on the Star Tours ride at Disneyland? Kind of like that\u2014\u201cCome fly our space planes and experience zero gravity! Have a layover on a space station!\u201d It\u2019s fine, it\u2019s pleasant, it\u2019s anodyne and completely inoffensive.<\/p>\n

And yeah, in the movie, these sections are nearly unbearable. Each cut is just soooooooooooo slooooooow. Watch our spaaaaaaaace plane match speeds with the spaaaaaaace station and then slowly go insiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is a tiny bit of intrigue built up around Heywood FLoyd\u2019s purpose for returning to the moon. Talk of an epidemic has planet-side individuals worried their lunar friends and family may be in danger. But shortly after Heywood lands, it\u2019s revealed in a meeting that this is a purposefully disseminated cover-up to keep people from the truth: an alien artefact has been excavated from the Tycho crater.<\/p>\n

Quick Sidebar:<\/strong> I seriously doubt this is the first book to contrive a government conspiracy, but it was interesting the lengths ACC went to to justify it. These days, aliens or alien tech or alien relics are always at a government facility, and the fact that it\u2019s TOP SECRET is pretty much taken for granted. Here, the widespread-panic-inducing radio dramas of H.G. Wells\u2019s War of the Worlds is cited as a reason why the monolith should be kept secret. I liked that. End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So Heywood and a small crew travel to the dig site and check out the monolith nicknamed TMA-1. What tipped spacefarers off that something might be buried there was a magnetic survey taken of the moon:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like a contour map, though it showed magnetic intensity, not heights above sea level. For the most part, the lines were roughly parallel and spaced well apart; but in one corner of the map they became suddenly packed together, to form a series of concentric circles\u2014like a drawing of a knothole in a piece of wood.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So they get there and take a short ramp down to the dig site where the monolith stands. They look at it, they touch it, they line up to take photos with it, and then an ear-splitting ringing in everyone\u2019s helmets causes them to double over in pain.<\/p>\n

This was something I never understood in the movie; because the monolith from the beginning caused Moon-Watcher to have an epiphany about tools, I used to think the ringing in the crew\u2019s ears was just another epiphany being delivered. After all, 18 months later, they\u2019re en route to Jupiter with a newly developed artificial intelligence. But that wasn\u2019t it\u2014the book describes the same scene, but makes it clear that as the sun touched the black rectangle for the first time in millions of years, it powered the monolith up and sent a radio transition that caused feedback in the communication systems of their helmets. \u201cSome immaterial pattern of energy, throwing off a spray of radiation like the wake of a racing speedboat, had leaped from the face of the Moon, and was heading out toward the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the movie does explain this, kind of, but it\u2019s the very last sentence in the entire movie, right before Bowman leaves the ship in his pod, spoken by a figure in a pre-recorded message: \u201cExcept for a single, very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin and purpose still a total mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another thing that surprised me (especially since I\u2019d been under the impression the second monolith provided the astronauts with the epiphany to build and A.I.) was that the trip to Jupiter had already been in preparation for several years. The signal from the monolith merely updated the purpose. \u201cIt had begun, five years ago as Project Jupiter\u2014the first manned round trip to the greatest of the planets. The ship was nearly ready for the two-year voyage when, somewhat abruptly, the mission profile had been changed.\u201d Instead of going to Jupiter, they\u2019d now be flying to Japetus, one of Saturn\u2019s moons.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar:<\/strong> Of course, those who have seen the movie know that the mission indeed went to Jupiter, but this was a movie-only decision. Arthur C. Clarke tells us: \u201cWhy the change from Saturn to Jupiter? Well, it made a more straightforward story line\u2014and, more important, the special-effects department couldn\u2019t produce a Saturn that Stanley found convincing.\u201d So there you go, fun movie\/book difference. End sidebar.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus begins Parts III (Between Planets<\/strong>) and IV (Abyss<\/strong>). They\u2019re my favorite parts of the movie, but not the book. These parts play out pretty much exactly like the movie: Bowman and Poole, the pair of astronauts originally intended for Project Jupiter, carry out their duties while three additional astronauts hibernate in cold sleep. Just as in the movie, we never see them, never hear them speak.<\/p>\n

Hal, the onboard A.I., alerts the crew that something\u2019s gone wrong with a part of the ship, but an EVA hot-swap reveals that Hal made a mistake\u2014the part was fine.<\/p>\n

Where the two mediums differ slightly is the delivery. In the book, Bowman and Poole discuss the mishap, but they do so with an air of lighthearted embarrassment\u2014like they\u2019re worried they\u2019ll hurt Hal\u2019s feelings by talking about it. Poole shifts uncomfortably and suggests Hal might be a bit of a hypochondriac. This is in stark contrast the movie\u2019s expressionless, dull dialogue where the two of them talk in circles like they\u2019re adlibbing the script. I mean, for reals, let\u2019s examine a snippet of the dialogue from the movie:<\/p>\n

“Well what do you think?”
\n“I’m not sure. What do you think?”
\n“I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”
\n“You do?”
\n“Yeah, definitely. Don’t you?”
\n“I don’t know. I think so.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granted, I know things spice up a bit right after that line, but I\u2019m trying to make a point here! Here\u2019s how the characters in the book have the entirety of the conversation (I\u2019m cutting a tiny bit of the prose, btw, just to highlight the dialogue):<\/p>\n

\u201cMission Control has just dropped a small bomb on us.\u201d He lowered his voice, like a doctor discussing an illness in front of the patient. \u201cWe may have a slight case of hypochondria aboard.\u201d
\n\u201cOh\u2014I see. What else did they tell you?\u201d
\n\u201cThat there was no cause for alarm. They said that twice, which rather spoiled the effect as far as I was concerned. And that they were considering a temporary switchover to Earth control while they ran a program analysis.\u201d
\nThey both knew, of course, that Hal was hearing every word, but they could not help these polite circumlocutions. Hal was their colleague, and they did not wish to embarrass him. Yet at this stage it did not seem necessary to discuss the matter in private.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although I favor the book\u2019s dialogue to that of the movie, the way the movie handled the scene was far superior in my opinion. Apparently, the actor who played Poole read the script and complained to Kubrick that it was terrible (Kind of like how Harrison Ford sort of famously told Lucas regarding Star Wars, \u201cYou can type this sh*t, but you sure can\u2019t say it!\u201d). So Kubrick sat down with the actor and told him not to complain, but to instead bring an idea to the table\u2014and his idea was to have Bowman and Poole go into one of the pods and have their conversation in private. Despite the bland dialogue, the revelation that Hal could read their lips was almost frightening. Bonus points for the movie here.<\/p>\n

Quick sidebar:<\/strong> Speaking of the book\u2019s dialogue, there are little human touches all over Clarke\u2019s novel, little bits that make the world feel a tad more lived in and less sterile. My favorite example of this was when Heywood Floyd entered the conference room on Clavius Base:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe briefing took place in a large rectangular chamber that could hold a hundred people with ease. It \u2026 would have looked like a model conference room but for the numerous posters, pinups, notices, and amateur paintings, which indicated that it was also the center of the local cultural life. Floyd was particularly struck by a collection of signs, obviously assembled with loving care, which carried such messages as PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS \u2026 NO PARKING ON EVEN DAYS \u2026 DEFENSE DE FUMER \u2026 TO THE BEACH \u2026 CATTLE CROSSING \u2026 SOFT SHOULDERS and DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. If these were genuine\u2014as they certainly appeared to be\u2014their transportation from Earth had cost a small fortune. There was a touching defiance about them; on this hostile world, men could still joke about the things that they had been forced to leave behind\u2014and which their children would never miss.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Isn\u2019t that nice? For comparison, the same scene from the movie was a featureless room with floor-to-ceiling light panels\u2026 which, I admit, makes it a bit harder to date, since there\u2019s nothing (aside from the characters\u2019 clothes) tying it to a specific time period. End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The details vary, but the book and movie are similar enough. Poole goes on another EVA, and Hal freaks out and kills him, then kills the hibernating crew, and then Bowman disconnects Hal. What the movie is missing, in my opinion, is any sort of explanation about WHY Hal went off the deep end. The book explains this with economical prose (and I\u2019ve made a few cuts for even more brevity):<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the last hundred million miles, [Hal] had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time was fast approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to deceive them. The three hibernators already knew the truth\u2014for the were Discovery\u2019s real payload, trained for the most important mission in the history of mankind. \u2026 It was a secret that, with the greatest determination, was very hard to conceal\u2014for it affected one\u2019s attitude, one\u2019s voice, one\u2019s total outlook on the universe. \u2026 [Hal] was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity\u2014the truth, and the concealment of truth. \u2026 He had begun to make mistakes, although, like a neurotic who could not observe his own symptoms, he would have denied it. \u2026 [H]e might have handled it \u2026 if he had not been faced with a crisis that challenged his very existence. He had been threatened with disconnection \u2026 To Hal, this was the equivalent of death.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you go. Hal was asked to keep a secret from Bowman and Poole, and because that went against his design, he began to malfunction and eventually had a complete breakdown. The last chapter of Part IV is titled \u201cThe Secret,\u201d and in it Heywood Floyd sends a frank transmission to Bowman. He explains why the real mission was kept secret and, while tacitly acknowledging that Bowman is as good as dead, prays that he will still provide Mission Control with his observations. It\u2019s pretty chilling stuff, and Bowman seems resigned to his fate almost immediately.<\/p>\n

Part V, The Moons of Saturn, isn\u2019t in the movie at all but it\u2019s obvious why it was skipped. It\u2019s a series of short chapters that illustrate exactly how alone Bowman felt on the Discovery. He finds much to do, carrying out all the duties he used to share with Poole and that Hal used to handle. His tastes in music evolve rapidly until he can only listen to instrumentals\u2014any lyrics ruin the experience for him, since they deal with Earth problems that seem entirely mundane. After all, what is relationship drama or politics to a man who is completely alone, hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth without any hope of return?<\/p>\n

When he finally does reach Japetus, he sees the final monolith erect on the Jovian moon\u2019s surface. What the movie doesn\u2019t give us is the immense scale of the object; the thing we see Bowman approach orbiting Jupiter in the movie is more than two kilometers long, believe it or not. Another thing we don\u2019t get form the movie, probably because it would have demystified everything, is this little tidbit:<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax. Those who had begun the experiment, so long ago, had not been men\u2014or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Bowman gets in his pod and lands on the top of the monolith… and then sinks into it. He describes what he sees for the people back on Earth, and the final transmission he sends is: \u201cThe thing\u2019s hollow\u2014it goes on forever\u2014and\u2014oh my God!\u2014it\u2019s full of stars!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick Sidebar:<\/strong> The impetus for this far-longer-than-normal \u201creview\u201d is that I didn\u2019t recall a single person in my life ever mentioning the book, and that I didn\u2019t even know the book existed prior to reading Liu\u2019s The Dark Forest. Still, somehow, I\u2019m familiar with the above quote even though it doesn\u2019t appear in the movie at all. Odd how that transcended the book, probably because the quote showed up in an online meme somewhere superimposed over Keir Dullea\u2019s face (the actor who played David Bowman). A friend recently shared a Facebook post asking friends to post their favorite lines from sci-fi movies, and one friend answered, \u201cMy God, it\u2019s full of stars!\u201d End sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So here we go: Part VI, Through the Star Gate. I was so confounded by this part of the movie that I recall laughing at several points. I saw it once as a child, once as a teen, once as a young adult, and then once again right after finishing the book\u2014and it\u2019s still looks, mostly, like a bad acid trip. It is stunning, certainly. It is beautiful. But until Bowman blinks in normal color, it\u2019s also incomprehensible. And it\u2019s not like it becomes any clearer once he\u2019s in the hotel room.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Bowman\u2019s pod sinks into the monolith, and it becomes a \u201cstar gate\u201d that jettisons him through space at an unimaginable speed. He looks through his window and sees alien architecture whiz by, all of it in various stages of decay. He passes \u201cthrough a Grand Central Station of the Galaxy.\u201d Whole worlds passed before his eyes. A short excerpt:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pierced and faceted planet slowly rolled beneath him, without any real change of scenery. He guessed that he was about ten miles above the surface, and should be able to see any signs of life with ease. But this whole world was deserted; intelligence had come here, worked its will upon it, and gone its way again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he noticed, humped above the flat plain perhaps twenty miles away, a roughly cylindrical pile of debris that could only be the carcass of a gigantic ship. It was too distant for him to see any details, and it passed out of sight within a few seconds, but he could make out broken ribs and dully gleaming sheets of metal that had been partly peeled off like the skin of an orange.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he continues on, faster and faster, until:<\/p>\n

\u201c[N]ow he was sure he was not returning to the Solar System, and in a flash of insight that might have been wholly spurious, he knew what this thing must surely be. It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So he continues in his little pod, on and on and on and on and on, until he\u2019s suddenly in a fancy hotel room. At length, he leaves his pod and begins to examine the objects around the room. One really interesting thing he notices is that everything is out of focus\u2014the titles on the book and the text within are of a low resolution, as if they\u2019ve been generated by a computer with only a small photograph for reference. There are various containers of food and beer, but they contain only an odd blue dough that doesn\u2019t taste half bad. And Bowman waits. And waits and waits, until a monolith appears in the room. And then, in the blink of an eye, he is excised from his own body.<\/p>\n

Rather than state exactly what happens after that, let me go all the way back to Chapter 37 and explain what happened to the beings who placed the monoliths:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now, out among the stars, evolution was driving toward new goals. The first explorers … had long since come to the limits of flesh and blood; as soon as their machines were better than their bodies, it was time to move. First their brains, and then their thoughts alone, they transferred into shining new homes of metal and of plastic. In these, they roamed among the stars. They no longer built spaceships. They were spaceships. But the age of Machine-entities swiftly passed. … They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so, in then end, I\u2019ll repeat that it\u2019s hard not to view the book as an answer key.<\/p>\n

But this book is more than that\u2014it doesn\u2019t have to be a companion novel. This book was a masterpiece. I was so delighted to learn Childhood\u2019s End is what prompted Kubrick to reach out to Clarke, because the themes are so similar! After all, it’s in that book that people evolve beyond the need for flesh and become spirits.<\/p>\n

It was a lot of fun to spot themes and styles throughout this book similar to Clarke’s various short stories.\u00a0 “Encounter in the Dawn” seems to have led to Part I, “Holiday on the Moon”\u00a0seems to have led to Part II, “The Sentinel” surely led to Part III, and Part VI seems to be a mishmash of ideas from Childhood’s End and “Rescue Party.”\u00a0 Even if you already know every plot point of the movie, this book is worth reading.\u00a0\u00a0I loved it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, this is less a review and more a rambling, diatribe-laden book report, and it\u2019s brimming with spoilers. I spend a lot of time comparing the book and the movie. The short version is: Wow, 2001: A Space Odyssey! Great book! Five stars! I saw elements of many of Clarke\u2019s short stories, including \u201cHoliday on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undinestudios.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}