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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"2001" - A Sci-Fi Tour de Force,
By A Customer
This review is from: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Hardcover)
Consider that this book was written almost 30 years ago. Consider what has happened in space exploration since then. One can only wonder at how Clarke and Kubrick were able to achieve this. A movie like this had never been attempted on this scale before. I read this book for the first time, shortly after I saw the movie. This was when it first came out. While Stanley Kubrick's film is a masterpiece on it's own, the book does a great deal to fill in the inevitable blanks in the movie. The movie is unlike anything you have ever seen, very short on dialog, extremely visual. Hence my recommendation that you read the book, then see the movie. It will make more sense. By the way, the movie was among the first real attempts at visual realism with the subject of sci-fi (sorry fellow Star Wars fans, these guys did it first). So well did it succeed, so powerful and detailed were the production values, that it set the standard for sci-fi movies that came after. But, that's a different review. The book seeks to offer an answer to a few of the most intriguing and fundamental questions of all time; "Who are we, how did we get to be what we are, what will become of us?". It begins with the establishment of a connection between our ape-ancestors and an elemental survival dilemma. How do we survive? The means must exist, yet, we are hopelessly weaker and outnumbered by our ecological competitors. An outside force supplies the seed of an idea and in so doing, launches us toward a chain of events in the unforeseeable future. It is up to us to accept the idea, process it, integrate it into our thinking, and apply it to our problem. As the future unfolds, mankind's natural desire to explore leads us to a discovery that will end forever the question of our uniqueness in the universe. It is a discovery that is as impossible for us to understand as it was our survival problem millennia ago. Once again, we must grope in the dark, fearful, yet fascinated. Once again, the seed of an answer is supplied. We are riveted by our curiosity and incapable of stepping back from the urge to discover the next fragment of this trail of crumbs being left for us. The story reaches it's full height with yet another discovery. This is the climactic scene where the chain reaction set off back in the distant past leads to a doorway unlike any other we have stepped through. This is what fans still refer to as the "Ultimate Trip" sequence. If you traveled millions of miles and millions of years, if you found yourself at a door that was clearly created by someone or something well beyond your understanding, if it were impossible to go back but terrifying to go on, if you knew that to step through this door would lead to unpredictable consequences, and if you had no one but yourself to talk to, would you step across the threshold? The dialog is minimalist, but, descriptive in the way only a scientist like Clarke can make it. The dry, dispassionate, scientific, narrative makes the conclusion so much more startling. As you put yourself in the cockpit with the main character, David Bowman, himself a scientist-explorer, and watch the limits of your knowledge stretch and shatter into so many motes of dust, like the dust of the ages from which you came, you will know the imprisonment of fascination, the power of knowledge, and the awe of understanding. Record your final log entry, tighten your harness, check your oxygen. In "2001", you will have to make this choice.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing,
By A Customer
This review is from: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Paperback)
When I saw the movie 2001, I was completely confused. I understood the basic plot line but didn't understand any of the nuances. I found the end especially baffling.Reading the book cleared up my confusion and answered my questions (and created a few more). The premise of the book is excellent. Instead of having a typical face-to-face run-in with aliens, the characters in the book come upon evidence of alien intelligence: a black monolith which pre-dates modern history. As they try to discover who left the monolith, questions are answered and many more questions arise. The storyline was unique, and although the characters were underdeveloped they were believable. The imagery in the book was wonderful: I could picture Jupiter, Saturn, and the moons of the planets as Clarke described them. I found it amazing how accurate his descriptions were considering what we know now about these heavenly bodies compared to what they knew at the time the book was written. I would recommend this book to science fiction fans who aren't interested in violence. This doesn't have any of the wars or combat that many SF books have. I would also recommend it to technical-oriented people who have an interest in learning more about astronomy.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evolution of Man,
By
This review is from: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Mass Market Paperback)
I have seen the Stanley Kubrick film of the same title hundreds of times before I decided to read the book. As the opening credits in the film state, "Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke". Because the movie and the book were written simultaneously, I never thought the book would be much different. Once I began reading, however, I was stunned at how wrong I was, where in fact there was more than I dreamed of. What the movie could not convey, or maybe even did not want to convey was exposed in the writing. Clarke writes with clarity and passion; not just for writing, but also science as a means of expressing ones own existence. That existence being the ultimate question of man's relationship with the universe and the environment he has created for himself. The book is existential as well as mystical: scientific as well as theological: revaltory as well as inquisitive. The story follows the same track as the movie, yet with inner dialogue of the apes on Earth and their first meeting with the Black Monolith, describing how the impact of this clean, smooth, black mystery impacted their means of survival through the use of weaponry and tools. Following some 2001 years later into deep space towards Jupiter we meet H.A.L., another enigma that similarly impacts man and his ability to control his fate or destiny. For anyone who has seen the movie, the book will not surprise you as far as the generic structure of the story, yet Clarke's handling of the subject completely unknown at the time is simply startling. Published in 1968 (a year before landing on the moon), Clarke dedicates this book to Stanley Kubrick. Likewise, Kubrick made a similar gesture with his film. This new edition includes some thoughts on the year 2001, as well as a small write-up on his relationship with Stanley. Highly reccomended.
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