2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)

This article is about the novel. For the film, see 2001: A Space Odyssey (film). For the story in general, see 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2001: A Space Odyssey

File:2001 NAL.jpg Dust-jacket from the first edition
Author	Arthur C. Clarke
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Space Odyssey
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	New American Library
Publication date	1968
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	221 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	0-453-00269-2
Followed by	2010: Odyssey Two

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, most notably "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). For an elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project, see The Lost Worlds of 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Signet, 1972.

The first part of the novel (in which aliens influence the primitive human ancestors) is similar to the plot of an earlier Clarke story, "Encounter in the Dawn".

Plot summary

In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a device with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in ancient Africa, 3 million years B.C. (in the movie, this was altered to 4 million years), where it inspires a starving group of the hominid ancestors of human beings to conceive of tools. The ape-men use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard that had been preying on them; the next day, the main ape character, Moon-Watcher, uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe. Moon-Watcher reflects that though he is now master of the world, he is unsure of what to do next—but he will think of something. The book suggests that the monolith was instrumental in awakening intelligence, and enabling the transition of the ape-men to a higher order, with the ability to fashion crude tools and thereby be able to hunt and forage for food in a much more efficient fashion.

The book then leaps ahead a few million years to the year 1999, detailing Dr. Heywood Floyd's travel to Clavius Base on the Moon. Upon his arrival, Floyd attends a meeting. A lead scientist explains that they have found a magnetic disturbance in Tycho, one of the Moon's craters, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One, or TMA-1. An excavation of the area has revealed a large black slab; it is precisely fashioned to a ratio of exactly 1:4:9, or 1²:2²:3²—that is to say that the thickness of the slab is exactly 1/4 of its width and 1/9 of its height. Such a construction rules out any naturally-occurring phenomena, and at three million years of age, it was not crafted by human hands. It is the first evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Floyd and a team of scientists drive across the moon to actually view TMA-1. They arrive just as sunlight hits upon it for the first time in three million years. It then sends a piercing radio transmission to the far reaches of the solar system. The signal is tracked to Japetus, one of the many moons of Saturn, where an expedition is then planned to investigate.

The book leaps forward 18 months to 2001 to the Discovery One mission to Saturn. Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Francis Poole are the only conscious human beings aboard Discovery One spaceship. Their three other colleagues are in a state of suspended animation, to be awakened when they near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer addressed as "Hal," maintains the ship and is a vital part of life aboard.

While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family back home, Hal tells Bowman that the AE-35 unit of the ship is going to malfunction. The AE-35 unit is responsible for keeping their communication dish aimed at Earth; without it, receiving support would be impossible. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit. But when Bowman conducts tests on the AE-35 unit that has been replaced, he determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Poole and Bowman become suspicious at Hal's refusal to admit that there could be something wrong with his failure detection sensors. Hal then claims that the replacement AE-35 unit will fail. Poole and Bowman radio back to Earth; they are told that there is most definitely something wrong with Hal, and are directed to disconnect him for analysis. These instructions are interrupted as the signal is broken. Hal informs them that the AE-35 unit has malfunctioned.

Poole takes a pod outside the ship to bring in the failed AE-35 unit. As he is removing the unit, the pod, which he had left parked close by, on the ship's hull, begins moving toward him. He is powerless to move out of the way in time and is killed when his spacesuit is torn, exposing him to the vacuum of space. Bowman is shocked by Poole's death and is deeply distressed. He is unsure whether Hal, a machine, really could have killed Poole. He decides that he will need to wake up the other three astronauts. He has an argument with Hal, with Hal refusing to obey his orders to switch the hibernation pods to manual operation, insisting that Bowman is incapacitated. Bowman threatens to disconnect him if his orders are not obeyed, and Hal relents, giving him manual control to wake the sleeping scientists.

But as Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears Hal open both airlock doors into space, venting the ship’s internal atmosphere. The air on board is lost to the vacuum of space. Bowman makes his way into a sealed emergency shelter, which has an isolated oxygen supply and spare spacesuit. He then puts on the spacesuit and re-enters the ship, knowing Hal to be a murderer. Bowman then laboriously disconnects the computer, puts the ship back in order and manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that the true purpose of the mission is to explore Japetus, the third-largest moon of Saturn, in the hope of contacting the society that buried the monolith on the Moon.

Bowman learns that Hal had begun to feel guilty and conflicted about keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, which ran contrary to his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully. This conflict had started to manifest itself in little errors. Given time, Hal might have been able to resolve this crisis peacefully, but when he was threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of the state of sleep.

Bowman spends months on the ship, alone, slowly approaching Japetus. A return to Earth is now out of the question, as Hal's sudden decompression of Discovery severely damaged the ship's air filtration system, leaving Bowman with far less breathable air than either returning to Earth or waiting for a rescue ship would require, and hibernation is impossible without Hal to monitor it. During his long approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the surface of Japetus. When he gets closer, he realizes that this is an immense black monolith, identical in shape to TMA-1, only much larger. The scientists back on Earth name this monolith "TMA-2," which name Bowman points out is a double misnomer because it is not in the Tycho moon crater and gives off no magnetic anomaly whatsoever.

He decides to go out in one of the extra-vehicular pods to make a closer inspection of the monolith. Programmed for just such an occurrence, the monolith reveals its true purpose as a star gate when it opens and pulls in Bowman's pod. Before he vanishes, Mission control hears him proclaim: "The thing's hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!"

Bowman is transported via the monolith to a star system far outside our galaxy. During this journey, he goes through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes; he dubs it the 'Grand Central Station' of the universe.

He is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions, and designed to make him feel at ease. Bowman goes to sleep. As he sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body, and he is made into a new immortal entity, a Star Child, that can live and travel in space. The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and to Earth. Once there, he destroys an orbiting nuclear warhead. Like Moon-Watcher three million years before him, the Star Child is now master of the world and uncertain what to do next—but as Moon-Watcher eventually did, the Star Child too will think of something.

Major themes

The Perils of Technology

2001: A Space Odyssey explores technological advancement: its promise and its danger. The HAL 9000 computer puts forward the troubles that can crop up when man builds machines, the inner workings of which he does not fully comprehend and therefore cannot fully control.

The Perils of Nuclear War

The book explores the perils related with the atomic age. In this novel, the Cold War is apparently still on, and at the end of the book one side has apparently launched nuclear weapons at the other. It is only through the Star Child's intervention that humanity is saved. Roger Ebert notes that Kubrick originally intended for the first spaceship seen in the film to be an orbiting bomb platform, but in the end he decided to leave the ship's meaning more ambiguous. Clarke, however, retained and clearly stated this fact in the novel.

Evolution

2001: A Space Odyssey takes a panoramic overview of progress, human and otherwise. The story follows the growth of human civilization from primitive man-ape. Distinctively, Space Odyssey is concerned about not only the evolution that has led to the development of humanity, but also the evolution that humanity might undergo in the future. Hence, we follow Bowman as he is turned into a Star-Child. The novel acknowledges that evolutionary theory entails that humanity is not the end, but only a step in the process. One way this process might continue, the book imagines, is that humans will learn to move to robot bodies and eventually rid themselves of a physical form altogether.

Space exploration

When 2001: A Space Odyssey was written, mankind had not yet set foot on the moon. The space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union were only in the early stages. Much room was left to imagine the future of the space program. Space Odyssey offers one such vision, offering a glimpse at what space exploration might one day become. Lengthy journeys, such as manned flights to Saturn, and advanced technologies, such as suspended animation, are described in the novel.

Technological malfunctions

As Hal begins to malfunction, his actions become less predictable. It begins with something more or less trivial--predicting the AE-35 unit will malfunction when there is, in fact, nothing wrong with it. Interestingly, Hal's malfunction causes him to state, incorrectly, a prediction that other things will malfunction. Hal's breakdown contrasts with an otherwise flawlessly planned undertaking, making his malfunction more prominent. This warns of the danger of creating technologies that are not fully controllable.

The accoutrements of space travel

2001: A Space Odyssey is deliberately written so as to give the reader an almost kinesthetic familiarity with the experience of space travel and the technologies encountered. Large sections of the novel are devoted to descriptions of these. The novel discusses orbital mechanics and the maneuvers associated with space travel very realistically. The daily lives of Bowman and Poole on board the Discovery One are discussed in detail and give the impression of a busy yet mundane lifestyle with few surprises until the malfunction of Hal. Dr. Floyd's journey to Space Station One is depicted with awareness of fine points such as the experience of a Space Shuttle launch, the adhesive sauces used to keep food firmly in place on one's plate, and even the zero gravity toilet.

Sequels

A sequel to the book, entitled 2010: Odyssey Two, was published in 1982 and adapted as a motion picture in 1984 (though without Kubrick's involvement). Clarke went on to write two more sequel novels: 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). To date, the last two novels have yet to be adapted as films.

Differences from the film

Although the novel and film were developed simultaneously, the novel follows early drafts of the film, from which the final version deviated. These changes were often for practical reasons relating to what could be filmed economically, and a few were due to differences of opinion between Kubrick and Clarke. The most notable differences are a change in the destination planet from Saturn to Jupiter, the nature of the sequence of events leading to HAL's demise. Stylistic differences may be more important than content differences. Of lesser importance are the appearance of the monolith, the age of HAL, and the novel giving names to various spacecraft, prehistoric apes, and HAL's inventor.

Stylistically, the novel generally fleshes out and makes concrete many events left somewhat enigmatic in the film, as has been noted by many observers. Vincent LeBrutto has noted that the novel has "strong narrative structure" which fleshes out the story, while the film is a mainly visual experience where much remains "symbolic". Randy Rasmussen has noted that the personality of Heywood Floyd is different as in Clarke's novel he finds space travel thrilling acting almost as a "spokesman for Clarke" whereas in the film, he experiences space travel as "routine" and "tedious."

In the film, Discovery's mission is to Jupiter, not Saturn. Kubrick used Jupiter because he and special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull could not decide on what they considered to be a convincing model of Saturn's rings for the film. Clarke went on to replace Saturn with Jupiter in the novel's sequel 2010: Odyssey Two. Trumbull later developed a more convincing image of Saturn for his own directorial debut Silent Running.

The general sequence of the showdown with Hal is different in the film than in the book. HAL's initial assertion that the AE-35 unit will fail comes in the film after an extended conversation with David Bowman about the odd and "melodramatic" "mysteries" and "secrecy" surrounding the mission, motivated because HAL is required to draw up and send to Earth a crew psychology report. In the novel it is during the birthday message to Frank Poole.

In the film, Bowman and Poole decide on their own to disconnect HAL in context of a plan to restore the allegedly failing antenna unit in operation. If it does not fail, HAL will be shown to be malfunctioning. HAL discovers the plan by reading their lips through the EVA pod window. In Clarke's novel, ground control orders Bowman and Poole to disconnect HAL should he prove to be malfunctioning a second time in predicting that the second unit is going to go bad.

However, in Clarke's novel, after Poole's death Bowman tries waking up the other crew members, whereupon HAL opens both the internal and external airlock doors, suffocating these three and almost killing Bowman. The film has Bowman, after Poole's murder, go out to rescue him. HAL denies him reentry and kills the hibernating crew members by turning off their life-support. In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, however, the recounting of the Discovery One mission is changed to the film version.

The film is generally far more enigmatic about the reason for HAL's failure, while the novel spells out that HAL is caught up in an internal conflict because he is ordered to lie about the purpose of the mission.

Because of what photographed well, the appearance of the monolith that guided moon-watcher and the other 'man-apes' at the beginning of the story was changed from novel to film. In the novel, this monolith is a translucent crystal; In the film, it is solid black. The TMA1 and TMA2 monoliths were unchanged.

In the book, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997, but in the movie the year is given as 1992. It has been thought that Kubrick wanted HAL to be the same age as a young bright child, nine years old.

The famous quote that opens the film sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact - "My God—it's full of stars!" - is actually not in the 2001 film, although it is in the 2001 book.

Iapetus vs. Japetus

The name of the Saturnian moon Iapetus is spelled Japetus in the book. This is an alternative rendering of the name, which derives from the fact that 'consonantal I' often stands for 'J' in the Latin language (see modern spelling of Latin).

In his exhaustive book on the film, The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (Signet Press, 1970, p. 290), author Jerome Agel discusses the point that "Iapetus" is the most common rendering of the name, according to many sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary. He goes on to say that "Clarke, the perfectionist", spells it Japetus. Agel then cites the dictionary that defines "Jape" as "to jest; to joke; to mock or make fun of." He then asks the reader, "Is Clarke trying to tell us something?"

Clarke himself directly addressed the spelling issue in chapter 19 of The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Signet, 1972, p. 127), explaining that he simply (and unconsciously) used the spelling he was familiar with from The Conquest of Space (1949) by Willy Ley and Chesley Bonestell, presuming that the 'J' form is the German rendering of the Greek.

Release details

• 1968, USA, New American Library (ISBN 0-453-00269-2), June 1968, hardback (First edition)
• 1968, USA, Signet, July 1968, paperback (First paperback edition)
• 1968, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-089830-3), 1968, hardback (First British edition)
• 1968, UK, Arrow Books (ISBN 0-09-001530-4), October 1968, paperback
• 2000, UK, Orbit (ISBN 1-84149-055-5), December 2000, hardback (special edition)
• 2005, USA, Signet (ISBN 0-451-45273-9), July 2005, paperback

See also

• List of fictional computers
• Toynbee tiles
• Childhood's End
• Olaf Stapledon

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Ebert, Roger (2004). The Great Movies. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-76791-038-9.
• Hagerty, Jack (2001). Spaceship Handbook: Rocket and Spacecraft Designs of the 20th Century, Fictional, Factual, and Fantasy. ARA Press. pp. 322–351. ISBN 0-9707604-0-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• LoBrutto, Vincent (1999). Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306809064.
• Locke, George (1978). Science Fiction First Editions: a select bibliography and notes for the collector.. London: Ferret Fantasy.
• Ordway III, Frederick Ira (March 1970). "2001: A Space Odyssey". Spaceflight. 12 (3). The British Interplanetary Society: 110–117.
• Ordway III, Frederick Ira (1982). "2001: A Space Odyssey in Retrospect". In Eugene M. Emme (ed.). American Astronautical Society History. Science Fiction and Space Futures: Past and Present. Vol. 5. pp. 47–105. ISBN 0-87703-172-X. Retrieved 23 March 2011. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help) A detailed account of development and filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey by its technical adviser.
• Rasmussen, Randy (2005). Stanley Kubrick: Seven Films Analyzed. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0786421525.
• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 102. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
• Williams, Craig H. (March 2005). Realizing "2001: A Space Odyssey": Piloted Spherical Torus Nuclear Fusion Propulsion (PDF). Cleveland, Ohio: John H. Glenn Research Center. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

External links

• Book review -- Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
• 2001: A Space Odyssey title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database