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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sort of good-ish,
By
This review is from: The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Paperback)
The literary equivalent of an musical b-sides and rarities compilation, this is a collection of musings on, and extracts from, early versions of the novel of '2001' - Clarke directs the reader to Jerome Agel's then-forthcoming, now-equally-out-of-print 'The Making of Kubrick's 2001' for information on the making of the film. As such, your enjoyment of this is going to depend on your opinion of Clarke's novel (which, without the film, would probably be out-of-print too), and whether you want to read disjointed chapters from early drafts. As glimpses into an alternative '2001', one that Kubrick might have filmed, it's priceless; as entertainment, it's less interesting. Like the other 'hard sci-fi' writers, Clarke is best at the science bits, and a short segment from an alternative finale, one in which the four surviving Discovery crewmembers explore a deep hole in the side of Iapetus (although, oddly, it's only referred to as 'Jupiter V' - perhaps they hadn't named it yet), is fascinating. The talky bits were never his strong point, though, and the pre-flight glimpses at Earth in the year 2001 are full of people not so much conversing, as delivering little scientific monologues at each other. As with everything else Clarke has written, none of the characters have any actual character - although it's possible that this is hyper-realism as, let's face it, most people in the real world are bland, dull and interchangeable, especially when they're at work, and Clarke's characters are always at work. Disappointingly, HAL doesn't appear at all. The other main strand personifies the monolith in the form of Clindar, a tall, noble alien who comes across as an insufferably self-righteous riff on Klaatu from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. One shudders to think how camp the film would have been if this had been filmed. And there are a couple of descriptions of alien landscapes and societies which are quite evocative but have a habit of repeating themselves.There's a reprint of 'The Sentinel' as well, but if you're going to the trouble of ordering this from Amazon (it took about a month for them to find and post it to sodden, freezing, miserable London, which wasn't much slower than a normal order) you've probably read that already. In summary, then, if you're reading this you're either buzzing with curiosity or you're me, and if you're a fan of the film, the book, or Clarke it's essential. You'll probably buy it, read it once, and never read it again, though.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential if you loved 2001,
By
This review is from: The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Paperback)
I highly reccommend this book to you if you enjoyed the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (or the movie, for that matter, but read the book version of it before you read this.) It consists of chapters that were originally written for the book, but were not used. Also included are occasional musings by Clarke on the making of the book, and behind-the-scenes glimpses at the making of the movie. He kept a journal during the entire 4-year process of the making of the works, and some of them are excerpted here. It's interesting to see some of the ideas that were thought up, but abandoned. For instance, what became HAL was originally a walking robot; the initial "Dawn of Man" scenes involved an actual alien, and there are numerous alternate endings (all of them every bit as ornate as the one we're all familar with.) This is sort of the literary equivalent of the movie industry's "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" (which I also reccommend.) A highly worthy buy for the fan.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ideal companion to the classic "2001: A Space Odyssey",
This review is from: The Lost Worlds of 2001 (The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series) (Hardcover)
Arthur C. Clarke
The Lost Worlds of 2001 Sidgwick & Jackson, Paperback, 1972. 12mo. 240 pp. Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke [p. 11]. First published in 1972. Contents Foreword 1. View of the Year 2000 2. Son of Dr. Strangelove 3. The Sentinel 4. Christmas, Shepperton 5. Monoliths and Manuscripts 6. The Dawn of Man 7. First Encounter 8. Moon-Watcher 9. Gift from the Stars 10. Farewell to Earth 11. The Birth of HAL 12. Man and Robot 13. From the Ocean, from the stars 14. With Open Hands 15. Universe 16. Ancestral Voices 17. The Question 18. Midnight, Washington 19. Mission to Jupiter 20. Flight Pay 21. Discovery 22. The Long Sleep 23. Runaway 24. First Man to Jupiter 25. The Smell of Death 26. Alone 27. Joveday 28. Jupiter V 29. Final Orbit 30. The Impossible Stars 31. Something Is Seriously Wrong with Space 32. Ball Game 33. Last Message 34. The Worlds of the Star Gate 35. Reunion 36. Abyss 37. Cosmopolis 38. Scrutiny 39. Skyrock 40. Oceana 41. Into the Night Land 42. Second Lesson Epilogue Note on the contents. The book is a very curious mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Apart from the Foreword and the Epilogue, the contents can be split as follows: - Chapters 1, 3, 7-10, 12-18, 20-33, 35-42 are fiction: leftovers, alternative versions, etc. that were supposed to be used in the writing of the novel but in the event were discarded. The only exception is the short story ''The Sentinel'' which was published as early as 1951. All other pieces apparently appear here for the first time. - Chapters 2, 4-6, 11, 19 and 34 are non-fiction. They mostly serve as links between the fictional parts. The early chapters are mostly concerned with the genesis of the novel and the movie in parallel. ========================================== If you have the same defect of character as I do, namely if Arthur Clarke's classic science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is among the greatest experiences of your young adulthood, you should certainly read this book. First published in 1972, that is when the events were still fresh, ''The Lost Worlds of 2001'' is a detailed account of the strange working relationship between Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick during the 1960s which produced a novel and a movie that have become absolute classics; curiously enough, both were born during the same time and the adaptation for the screen was actually released first, whereas the novel appeared a little later on the same year. I daresay this book might be quite boring for those movie fans who don't care for Arthur Clarke or his novel, but it sure makes an engrossing read for those who do the opposite. It contains lots of compelling and illuminating details about the origins of at least one masterpiece. Since there is in this book quite a bit about the movie, I have to make something clear in the beginning: the extravagant praise usually accorded to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey I have always found frightfully perplexing. Now, I wish there was other say to say it, but there isn't: the movie is perfect crap! What exactly its classical status rests upon is an absolute mystery for me. It is a visual tour de force all right, but that's just about the only asset it might possibly have; except perhaps that some of its music is among the greatest ever composed; if, indeed, the movie has brought to more receptive ears the famous opening of Richard Strauss' magnificent tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra, that's something; actually, this opening is famous more because of this movie than because of anything else, I think. As for the visual side, it is not nearly as impressive today as it must have been in 1968, of course, but it has aged surprisingly well. So much for the good sides though. For otherwise the movie is one failure after another. To begin with, a good many people have complained that when they saw it before the book, they didn't understand the ending at all - only later did the novel make it clear. This is as expected - for the ending is an incomprehensible mess. What's worse, the pace is appallingly slow - imagine a spaceship landing that lasts for full ten minutes, during which you can appreciate Strauss' famous waltz An der schönen blauen Donau, another musical masterpiece from the soundtrack; but even the greatest music cannot make the scene less tedious. The whole cast is downright horrible. Keir Dullea is as dull as a Dave Bowman as one could possibly imagine; the famous dramatic dialogue with HAL is ridiculously inept. The philosophical depth of the novel is completely, absolutely and overwhelmingly missing from the screen adaptation. Surely the movie must have been groundbreaking visually in 1968 - and perhaps not only visually indeed - but what is there to keep it in the stores forty years later I have not the least idea. I wonder how far it would have gone had it not been accompanied by the novel, first published few months after the world premiere. Fortunately, it is with the novel, and especially with the long way how it became what it is, that Arthur Clarke is almost exclusively concerned in ''The Lost Worlds of 2001''; he does mention a number of details about the making of the movie but only in passing. One of the most remarkable things about the novel is that it gives one - or at least me - sense of perfect completeness and, moreover, the illusion of having been written almost at a single stroke. It is really unbelievable to read that it actually was the result of four years hard work and constant collaboration between Clarke and Kubrick; most of the time the latter was engaged in the shooting as well. Their initial plan was - as Arthur charmingly puts it - ''hilariously optimistic'': about two years. The fascinating thing is that the two great men often worked very closely together indeed: brainstorming, lots of new ideas accepted or discarded, numerous revisions of whole episodes mistakenly thought as finished, getting lost in blind alleys, phoning ''Ike Asimov'' for discussion of this or that, and so on and so forth, there were myriad of obstacles to be coped with. What makes such naturally dry matter a highly diverting read is the fact that Arthur Clarke is a wonderful writer, ingeniously combining effective simplicity with inimitable sense of humour. In addition to tons of witty remarks, the book also contains numerous entries copied from a ''log'' he kept during that time; most of these can almost make me choke with laughter; here are some favourites that probably capture the bacchanalian working atmosphere better than anything else: May 28, 1964. Suggested to Stanley that ''they'' might be machines who regard organic life as a hideous disease. Stanley thinks this is cute and feels we've got something. May 31. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen aliens - featureless black pyramids - riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops. [...] July 2-8. Averaging one or two thousand words a day. Stanley reads the first five chapters and says ''We've got a best seller here.'' [...] July 12. Now we have everything - except the plot. [...] July 28. Stanley: ''What we want is a smashing theme of mythic grandeur.'' [...] October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease. [1965.] Some psychotic who insists that Stanley must hire him has been sitting on a park bench outside the office for a couple of weeks, and occasionally comes to the building. In self-defense, Stan has secreted a large hunting knife in his briefcase. October 1. Stanley phoned with another ending. I find I left his treatment in his house last night - unconscious rejection? [...] October 19. Collected by studio car, and spent all day working (or trying to work) with Stan. Despite usual crowds of people getting at him, long phone calls to Hollywood, and a ''work-to-rule'' the unions called, got a lot done and solved (again!) our main plot problems. [...] November 10. Accompanied Stan and the design staff into the Earth-orbit ship and happened to remark that the cockpit looked like a Chinese restaurant. Stan said that killed it instantly for him and called for revisions. Must keep away from the Art Department for a few days. November 16. Long session with Stanley discussing script. Several good ideas, but I rather wish we didn't have any more. Some things never change - or at least they didn't in the beginning of 1966: March 20. Worked hard on the novel all day, and by 9 p.m. had completed messy final draft (what, again!). April 2. Inserted a couple of hundred final (?) words into the MS, and tucked it away. As far as I'm concerned, it's finished. ''Alas, it wasn't.'' is the first sentence of the next paragraph. Indeed, it was just as well that Arthur didn't know at the time that more than two years would pass until the novel is finally published. Just by the way, as an ardent admirer of Somerset Maugham, I cannot but remark on one of the few very serious entries from this diary. It comes in the end of 1965: December 16. My 48th birthday - and Somerset Maugham dies. Trying to make something of this (last of the competition?). Competition? Clarke and Maugham? One of the greatest science fiction writers and one of the greatest... Read more ›
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