2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey #1)

by Arthur C. Clarke

veldt

there was no surplus energy for such acts of kindness. She had to be left behind, to recover or not with her own resources.

discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.

Like most animals that did not compete for the same food, they merely kept out of each other’s way.

The man-apes had been given their first chance. There would be no second one; the future was, very literally, in their own hands.

arboreal

frieze

hirsute

even the crudest tools could add many years to their lives.

everywhere they winnowed out the creatures who could not adapt.

Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.

gantries

megatonnage

papacy,

Someone had once said that you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there. It was perfectly true.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

verdant

ramparts

gibbous

Under blazing lamps by night, and filtered sunlight by day, acres of stubby green plants grew in a warm, moist atmosphere. They were special mutations, designed for the express purpose of replenishing the air with oxygen, and providing food as a by-product.

This was not art for art’s sake, but art for the sake of sanity.

After ten thousand years, Man had at last found something as exciting as war.

He exchanged the usual small talk that courtesy demanded

The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.

rostrum

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but perhaps men were barbarians, beside the creatures who had made this thing.

epoch,

Pleistocene Era

ebon

Canberra.

triplicated

artificially induced human hibernation

polyominoes.

electronarcosis.

perturbation

The time had not yet come when Man could leave his mark upon the Solar System.

there are no sense organs in the human cortex, after all. The human brain can be operated on without anesthetics.

“You hide a Sun-powered device in darkness—only if you want to know when it is brought out into the light. In other words, the monolith may be some kind of alarm. And we have triggered it.

xenophobia

pogroms,

parochial.

failed fully to understand the psychology of their own creation

any man, in the right circumstances, could be dehumanized by panic.

centenary;

disputation

hoary

Plenipotentiary—

the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.

verniers