2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)

For other uses, see 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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 Clark 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 nudge the primitive human ancestors) is similar to the plot of an earlier Clarke story, "Encounter in the Dawn".

The opening of another Clarke story, "Transience", is set in the same period of human history as the first part of this novel; but the two stories are unrelated.

Plot summary

In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large crystal 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, three million years B.C., 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 he is now master of the universe, but is unsure of what to do—but he'll 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 eons to the year 2001, 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 (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 the thickness of the slab is exactly 1/4th the width and 1/9th the 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 Iapetus, one of the many moons of Saturn, where an expedition is then planned to investigate.

The book leaps forward 18 months to the Discovery One mission to Saturn. David Bowman and Frank 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, 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 him 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 planet Earth; without it, receiving support would be impossible. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit. Bowman conducts tests on the AE-35 unit that has been replaced and 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 will possibly need to disconnect him. 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.

As Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears HAL open both airlock doors into space, venting the ship’s atmosphere. The pressure on board is rapidly dropping as the ship is equalizing with 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 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 defended himself, believing his very existence to be 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, which the scientists back on Earth name "TMA-2" -- a double misnomer because it is not on the moon and gives off no magnetic force whatsoever.

He decides to go out in one of the extra-vehicular pods to make a closer inspection of the monolith. Programed for such an occurance, the monolith reveals its true purpose as a stargate 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, calling it in likeness to the 'Grand Central Station' of the universe. (This is rather different from the film, which portrayed the entire journey as surreal.)

He is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions, to make him feel at ease. Bowman goes to sleep. As he sleeps, his mind and memories are drained from his body. David Bowman is made into a new immortal entity that can live and travel in space; a Star Child. The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and to Earth.

Major themes

The perils of technology

2001: A Space Odyssey explores technological advancement: its promise and its danger. Two specific perils of technology are delved into in great detail. First, 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. Second, 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.^[1]

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 by the monolith. 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 rid themselves of their technological trappings, and eventually their corporeal bodies as well.

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 shaped and shown all through 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. We also see HAL making an incorrect statement about a chess game with Bowman earlier on, perhaps a sign of his deterioration. Interestingly, HAL's malfunction causes him to incorrectly state 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 accouterments 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 accurately. 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 film, titled 2010 based on Clarke's 1982 book 2010: Odyssey Two was released in 1984. However, Kubrick was not involved in the production of this film, which did not have the impact of the original. (Nonetheless, Kubrick makes a cameo appearance in the film. The cover of a Time magazine seen in the film features illustrations of the Soviet and American presidents. Clearly, the illustrations represent Kubrick as the Russian Premier and Clarke as his opposite. Also, the name of the captain on the Leonov is "Kirbuk".) Clarke went on to write two more sequel novels: 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). To date there has yet to be any serious discussion of filmmakers adapting either for the screen.

Differences with the film

In the film, Discovery's mission is to Jupiter, not Saturn. Director Kubrick used Jupiter because he and Douglas Trumbull could not decide on what they considered to be a convincing model of Saturn's rings for the film. Clarke also replaced Saturn with Jupiter in the novel's sequel 2010: Odyssey Two.

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 during the birthday message from Frank Poole's parents in the novel, but in the film comes after an extended conversation with David Bowman about the odd and "melodramatic" "mysteries" and "secrecy" surrounding the mission. This conversation was motivated because HAL is required to draw up and send to Earth a crew psychology report.

In the film, Bowman and Poole decide on their own to disconnect HAL in connection with a plan to restore the original allegedly failing antenna unit in operation. If it does not fail, HAL will be shown to be malfunctioning and will need to be disconnected. However, as Bowman and Poole consult in an EVA pod, HAL is able to read their lips although they have cut off radio contact with HAL. 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.

The film has Bowman, after Poole's murder, go out to rescue him. HAL denies him reentry and had killed the crew members by turning off their life-support. 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. In the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two, however, the recounting of the Discovery One mission is changed to the film version.

Finally, in the movie version, Bowman is not actually heard uttering the famous expression, "My God--it's full of stars!" This recorded transmission to Earth apparently happens off camera, because it is a central component of the beginning of the sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, as Dr. Floyd prepares his report of the Discovery's mission.

The film is 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. Ironically, the film's choice of moment for HAL to first predict the antenna is going to fail (while conversing with Dave about the mysteries and secrecy surrounding the mission) is arguably much more appropriate to the novel's explanation of HAL's malfunction than the moment of this prediction in the novel.

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?"

Release details

• 1968, USA, New American Library (ISBN 0-453-00269-2), Pub date ? June 1968, hardback (First edition)^[2]
• 1968, USA, Signet, Pub date July 1968, paperback (First paperback edition)^[2]
• 1968, UK, Hutchinson (ISBN 0-09-089830-3), Pub date ? ? 1968, hardback (First British edition)^[2]
• 1968, UK, Arrow Books (ISBN 0-09-001530-4), Pub date ? October 1968, paperback
• 2000, UK, Orbit (ISBN 1-84149-055-5), Pub date 7 December 2000, hardback (special edition)
• 2005, USA, Signet (ISBN 0-451-45273-9), Pub date 31 July 2005, paperback

See also

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

Notes

References

• Tuck, Donald H. (1974). 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy'. Chicago: Advent. pp. 102. ISBN 0-911682-20-1. 
• F.I. Ordway, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spaceflight, Vol. 12, No. 3, Mar. 1970, pp. 110-117. (Publisher: The British Interplanetary Society)
• Realizing 2001: A Space Odyssey: Piloted Spherical Torus Nuclear Fusion Propulsion NASA/TM-2005-213559 March 2005 AIAA-2001-3805
• F.I. Ordway, Part B: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY IN RETROSPECT, Frederick I Ordway, III Volume 5, American Astronautical Society History Series SCIENCE FICTION AND SPACE FUTURES: PAST AND PRESENT, Edited by Eugene M. Emme, 1982, pages 47 - 105. (ISBN 0-87703-172-X) (ISBN 0-87703-173-8). A detailed account of development and filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey by its technical adviser.
• Jack Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers, Spaceship Handbook: Rocket and Spacecraft Designs of the 20th Century, ARA Press,Published 2001, pages 322-351, ISBN 097076040X.

External links

Book review -- Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2076.html