2001: A Space Odyssey

[1001shelf]

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, published 1968. Place reviews here.

[Kristel]

2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke. I watched the movie when it came out in 1968 and finally got the book read. Not sure why it took me so long, it is not a long book. I found Hal and space travel really scary. This book was written in conjunction with Stanley Kubrick and the film was released before the book. When this movie and book were first released man had not yet walked on the moon. This book covers from early man-ape to the evolution of man to star child. It is a book about technology, artificial intelligence, aliens, and space travel. The book actually is quite detailed about the space travel. I found the book slow to get into. For me it was hard to engage until Hal becomes malevolent and has to be taken out. That is quite a tension filled section. I also found the last sections of the book to be like the first part. I just wasn't all that engaged. The movie was quite awesome, ahead of its time and received awards for visual affects. Arthur C. Clarke born in 1917 was a British science fiction author. 2001 is made up of some short stories he had written. The book and movie were worked on in tandem. The editor's of 1001 state that while the details of the passage of time made the author's projected futuristic developments not age well, Clarke is known and respected for the many fictional predictions that have become fact. Rating 4.29

[Valerie]

read April 2022

Despite owning this book for 40+ years (as part of a set of Clarke’s books) I don’t think I’ve ever read it before. I may have started previously, as Part 1 seemed a little familiar, but didn’t finish. This time, I found the book to be much more interesting and readable. I liked it quite a lot until the last Part (6), which was a little mystical for my taste and knocked .5 of a star off of my rating.

I’ve always thought of Clarke as a writer of hard science fiction, which this would fall into, but it is not full of dull and hard to understand physics or astronomy. It is more of a low key adventure story. Since this novel was produced concurrently with the film, you can pick out the parts that would work well on film. Clarke was a towering figure in science fiction, and quite an accurate futurist. In this novel contemporary readers can easily identify much of the technology we take for granted now – eg. iPads, video-conferencing, AI (which is definitely the ‘grandfather’ of “ART” in the Murderbot books), etc. This short novel is definitely worth reading just to see it’s influence on contemporary science fiction. 3.5*

[Jamie]

I've read this book at leats twice, and seen the movie more than once. I have not finished the sequels yet, which I plan to do, maybe in 2024. The first time I read it I found it boring, since not much actually happens. I was decades older by the most recent reading, and appreciated the story a lot more. It is certainly a classic sci-fi novel and for folks who enjoy sci-fi it is a must-read, but I wonder about the reasons why this book is included on the Boxall list. I do think more people need to read 'science fiction' because so much of what is included in this genre's stories is actually almost contemporary with our modern technology that the issues dealt with in sci-fi are increasingly relevant to our present society. I am not sure I'd insist that all readers muct read this particular book, though.

I do read sci-fi, a lot, and I probably gave this book 4, or 4.5 stars last time I read it.

[Patrick]

Pre-2017 review:

**** 1/2

I am not really a sci-fi fanatic (well, I haven't yet seen the movie that preceded this book), but I have to admit, I got literally hooked on this one. There was a lot of prescience from Clarke in many respects and his inherent warnings about the potential dangers of AI, pushed to the limit, are extremely relevant today. While we are still dreaming/hoping for extra-terrestrial contact, his scenarios at the beginning and at the end of the book are just two plausible ways it could happen (or has happened). Now I need to see the movie!

[Jenna]

As a bibliophile, I'm always inclined to read the book first before seeing the movie, but this one proves that movies and books are really different art forms, and when the movie was the apotheosis of the project, you don't really need to read the book. There are so many things here that don't work as well in book form that were excellent in the movie - for example HAL is not creepy unless you can hear his creepy voice in your head from having watched the movie. There is much less tension in so many of the scenes where HAL goes rogue because they have to be described factually, rather than lived through with emotional musical cues. The gorgeous space scenes are described, but how much more thrilling to see them. Clarke in the intro describes writing in parallel with the movie development in order to have a story that hung together before they turned it into a tedious script, but also re-writing in order to match the film, which is reworked for dramatic purposes in many places, so the movie does have precedence.

My other comment is that although the science in the science fiction may have aged well, the sexism definitely did not. I don't really need "girl secretaries" and Bali dancing stewardess and ships with feminine names because of their "unpredictable temperaments."