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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Clarke, 4 Oct 2003
There is not much that can be said about 2001 that hasn't been said already. It is, of course, a classic among classics, a story that begins three million years in the past and ends in what was, at the time Clarke and Kubrick developed the story, the near future. The background is well known: Stanley Kubrick wanted to make the first "good" sci-fi movie, and to achieve this, he and Clarke collaborated to develop a script based partly on some of Clarke's earlier short stories (The Sentinel, among others). Clarke then wrote the novel from the script.
I have to admit that I've never really liked 2001 all that much, to be honest. The problem with the movie is that you cannot today avoid knowing that you're watching something that was made in the 1960s. Most of the movie is set in the future, but it feels like the past. This problem is, of course, mostly lacking in the book, but then in the book the problem for me is instead that Clarke's style of writing is too brief and abrupt, and the ending doesn't satisfy. I do like the beginning, however, with Moon-Watcher and the early hominids struggling for survival, and I also like the idea of mankind being essentially the creation of an unknown alien intelligence. But I can't escape the feeling that the story should have been more "fleshed out." And, like I said, the ending, when Bowman is transformed into Star-Child, is not satisfying and even a bit disturbing, even if the story in this way does come full-circle at the very end. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing idea (as you could expect from Clarke), but somehow it just doesn't "feel" right. As an explanation to why there doesn't seem to be any intelligent life on other worlds in the universe (why have we not been visited?), it's certainly a breath-taking concept. But the idea of transcendence is a little bit too much mystical and "religious" for my taste. But who's really to say, after all? Maybe our weak and frail physical bodies, that age and decay all too quickly, are only a momentary stage in the chain of evolution. And maybe humanity is the last remaining race in the universe that still have not achieved the next stage.
This will forever remain the novel that Clarke will be best remembered for. And, no one can deny that as a movie, 2001 was the most influential sci-fi movie ever made. It helped to prepare the way for things to come, like Star Wars and the other great sci-fi movies of the late -70s and early -80s. And that's one more thing that we can, partly, thank the genius of Sir Arthur C. Clarke for.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of science fiction's major triumphs, 10 Jan 2004
Arthur C. Clarke's monumental novel 2001: A Space Odyssey is top-notch science fiction that more than earns its spot among the greatest works published in the genre. Reading the novel is quite a different experience from watching Stanley Kubrick's wildly famous movie adaptation of the story. The movie is far too abstract and vague for my tastes, concentrating more on visual wonders than sound plot development. Many of the questions left unanswered in the movie (along with some questions and answers the movie never even addressed) can be found in the novel, and this made for a much more rewarding and satisfying 2001 experience for me. Moviegoers had to wait sixteen years to learn the real story of Hal's failure, but Clarke explains it (and in more detail) in the pages of his original 2001 novel. There are actually a surprising number of differences between the novel and the film, which strikes me as somewhat strange given the fact that the book was inspired by the idea of the film; as a matter of fact, much of the writing took place during the film's production, and Clarke has said that some movie shots led him to make changes to the novel as he was writing it. The story begins in the ancient past, providing much more detail about the appearance of a huge black monolith on earth and its deliberative interference with the man-apes of the area. The film fails to convey the overwhelming impact of the alien monolith on the evolution of life on earth, and that is one important reason why I find the film too vague. The events of Clarke's first few chapters are of great importance in one's understanding of the story, and all the facts become clear in this book. One will also find some major differences between the novel and the movie in terms of the setting of the final events. In the novel, the crucial mission goes to Saturn, whereas the movie takes us no farther than Jupiter; this doesn't change anything really, but Clarke has said that Kubrick made the right decision and saved him some embarrassment from making a visual representation of Saturn that later failed to hold up to more recent scientific discoveries about the ringed planet. Many of the crucial events onboard the Saturn-bound spaceship Discovery also differ significantly between book and movie. Clarke's exposition of the growing doubts expressed by Captains Poole and Bowman over the performance of the onboard supercomputer Hal works much better than Kubrick's lip reading explication, and there is a lot more information provided here about the whys and wherefores of Hal's troubling and duplicitous actions. The pivotal events of Hal's takeover of the ship play much better in the book as well, and the events as described here are actually much more exciting and convincing than the events you see in the film. The novel concludes with a much more revealing look at Bowman's journey beyond Saturn into infinity. Here, Clarke even goes into some detail about the creators of the monoliths, which is a topic the movie never really addresses at all. In the end, the novel is just much more compelling than the film, and for that reason I would recommend watching the movie before reading the book. Kubrick intentionally left his film rather vague and open-ended, and a reading of the much more compelling and informative novel may well rob you of whatever small joys you might otherwise find in the film. In the same vein, the paucity of answers in the movie does little to detract from one's enjoyment of and fascination with the novel.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Way! better than the film ., 5 Jul 2001
By A Customer
SUPERB!!! If you have watched the fim & enjoyed it , you will love the book . Not giving too much away but HAL 9000 is much more evil , you find out about Dave Bowmans struggle for survival - thousands of miles from Earth , ALL ALONE . PLUS! you get to understand his little 'trip' at the end & finally find out what the monaliths are . Don't stop reading though , 2010 / 2061 / 3001 complete the story perfectly .
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