2001: A Space Odyssey (Hardcover)

by Arthur C. Clarke (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artifact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained--the best--and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, the ultra-capable HAL 9000. But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.

Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions," it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. --Brooks Peck --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal
Odyssey is an oddity: it is a novel based on a screenplay by Clarke and Kubrick that itself was based on a Clarke short story. And though it has thrilled fans for 31 years, still no one is really sure what it means. This nice hardcover sports a new introduction by Clarke.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: NAL Hardcover (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451198492
• ISBN-13: 978-0451198495
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (259 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #673,374 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Prescient on post-Darwinian transhumanism, November 29, 2005

By	Paul Z. "Paul" (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Mass Market Paperback)

In the background Clarke introduces us to an advanced civilization that helped Earth's "dumb" apes evolve millions of years ago into modern humans by teaching them how to kill prey. I'm fascinated by these mysterious characters lurking in the background. They, like us, evolved from ocean slime, then into intelligent, self-aware carbon-based beings like us, then into machines, then finally into states of organized energy. Then the reader is suddenly translated into modern times. Humans, developing powerful artificial intelligent life, are at the cusp of taking the next evolutionary leap. This, post-Darwinian evolution, is what 2001 is REALLY about--all of the conflict between humans and their AI life forms is just a side topic. Unfortunately for me, this side topic makes the bulk of the book, which is definitely enjoyable on its own to be sure, and makes sense of the movie.

On the other hand, a book I recently read and strongly recommend, Beyond Future Shock by Alaniz, picks up where Clarke coldly left off. Like 2001, it is a strong science fiction book. Starting in WWI, tracking the lives, romances, struggles and triumphs of several infant Germans who will live through WWII, the Cold War, and into the age of youth cocktails when these "kids" are in their late 90s, Alaniz tracks the science behind the coming transhuman age with masterful, subtle "Clarkian" writing. He also tracks the potential perils, and the problem of Luddism and religion versus science. As you sink deep into Alaniz's powerful imagery, you will find yourself thinking about mankind's various potential fates in the coming few decades: some horribly dystopian some reasonably utopian. Singularity (read the new book by Kurzweil) will soon be upon on us.

For me, Alaniz has finished with genius what Clarke only touched upon in 2001. I am fully sastisfied at last.

Paul

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "2001" - A Sci-Fi Tour de Force, November 2, 1997

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, June 30, 2000

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.