Clarke wrote this novel while Stanley Kubrick created the film, the two collaborating on both projects. The novel is much more detailed and intimate, and definitely easier to comprehend. Even though history has disproved its "predictions," it's still loaded with exciting and awe-inspiring science fiction. --Brooks Peck

Product Description
2001: A Space Odyssey is the classic science fiction novel that changed the way we looked at the stars and ourselves....

2001: A Space Odyssey inspired what is perhaps the greatest science fiction film ever made- brilliantly imagined by the late Stanley Kubrick....

2001 is finally here....

"Dazzling...wrenching, eerie, a mind-bender."-Time

"Full of poetry, scientific imagination and typically wry Clarke wit. By standing the universe on its head, he makes us see the ordinary universe in a different light...a complex allegory about the history of the world."-The New Yorker

"Brain-boggling." -Life

"Clark has constructed an effective work of fiction...with the meticulous creation of an extraterrestrial environment...Mr. Clark is a master."--Library Journal

"Breathtaking."-Saturday Review

I read this book for the first time, shortly after I saw the movie. This was when it first came out. While Stanley Kubrick's film is a masterpiece on it's own, the book does a great deal to fill in the inevitable blanks in the movie. The movie is unlike anything you have ever seen, very short on dialog, extremely visual. Hence my recommendation that you read the book, then see the movie. It will make more sense. By the way, the movie was among the first real attempts at visual realism with the subject of sci-fi (sorry fellow Star Wars fans, these guys did it first). So well did it succeed, so powerful and detailed were the production values, that it set the standard for sci-fi movies that came after. But, that's a different review.

The book seeks to offer an answer to a few of the most intriguing and fundamental questions of all time; "Who are we, how did we get to be what we are, what will become of us?". It begins with the establishment of a connection between our ape-ancestors and an elemental survival dilemma. How do we survive? The means must exist, yet, we are hopelessly weaker and outnumbered by our ecological competitors. An outside force supplies the seed of an idea and in so doing, launches us toward a chain of events in the unforeseeable future. It is up to us to accept the idea, process it, integrate it into our thinking, and apply it to our problem.

As the future unfolds, mankind's natural desire to explore leads us to a discovery that will end forever the question of our uniqueness in the universe. It is a discovery that is as impossible for us to understand as it was our survival problem millennia ago. Once again, we must grope in the dark, fearful, yet fascinated. Once again, the seed of an answer is supplied. We are riveted by our curiosity and incapable of stepping back from the urge to discover the next fragment of this trail of crumbs being left for us.

The story reaches it's full height with yet another discovery. This is the climactic scene where the chain reaction set off back in the distant past leads to a doorway unlike any other we have stepped through. This is what fans still refer to as the "Ultimate Trip" sequence.

If you traveled millions of miles and millions of years, if you found yourself at a door that was clearly created by someone or something well beyond your understanding, if it were impossible to go back but terrifying to go on, if you knew that to step through this door would lead to unpredictable consequences, and if you had no one but yourself to talk to, would you step across the threshold?

The dialog is minimalist, but, descriptive in the way only a scientist like Clarke can make it. The dry, dispassionate, scientific, narrative makes the conclusion so much more startling. As you put yourself in the cockpit with the main character, David Bowman, himself a scientist-explorer, and watch the limits of your knowledge stretch and shatter into so many motes of dust, like the dust of the ages from which you came, you will know the imprisonment of fascination, the power of knowledge, and the awe of understanding.

Record your final log entry, tighten your harness, check your oxygen. In "2001", you will have to make this choice.


A superb book, far better than the movie   June 21, 2000
 14 out of 28 found this review helpful

Kubrick's movie was groundbreaking, original and did a lot to establish space movies as a genre. But, like most post-Strangelove Kubrick, it did so at the expense of a narrative. In the book, Clarke takes care of such mundane matters as givign the reader an idea of what's going on. Indeed, the book is more visionary than the movie in many ways. Clarke's brief discussion of the aliens' history -- from biological creatures, to robotic intelligences, to something far greater -- is the sort of thing Ray Kurzweil writes happily about (and Bill Joy writes unhappily about) today. But Clarke wrote it over 30 years ago. As usual, he was ahead of his time.


Engrossing   July 1, 2000
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

When I saw the movie 2001, I was completely confused. I understood the basic plot line but didn't understand any of the nuances. I found the end especially baffling.

Reading the book cleared up my confusion and answered my questions (and created a few more). The premise of the book is excellent. Instead of having a typical face-to-face run-in with aliens, the characters in the book come upon evidence of alien intelligence: a black monolith which pre-dates modern history. As they try to discover who left the monolith, questions are answered and many more questions arise. The storyline was unique, and although the characters were underdeveloped they were believable. The imagery in the book was wonderful: I could picture Jupiter, Saturn, and the moons of the planets as Clarke described them. I found it amazing how accurate his descriptions were considering what we know now about these heavenly bodies compared to what they knew at the time the book was written.

I would recommend this book to science fiction fans who aren't interested in violence. This doesn't have any of the wars or combat that many SF books have. I would also recommend it to technical-oriented people who have an interest in learning more about astronomy.


Widely considered one of the best. . .   December 6, 2001
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

. . .serious science fiction novels ever written. This reviewer has to agree.

From a beginning 10 million years in the past, to the "creation" of whatever it is that David Bowman becomes, 2001: A Space Odyssey grips the reader and doesn't let go.

Much has been said about this book; and I'm not going to re-hash what other reviewers have written. I just wanted to add a few thoughts:

1) In the third novel in this series "2061: Odyssey 3" Clarke admits what became evident in the second book (and in the original movie). There are significant differences between the book and the movie, most importantly, the replacement of Jupiter for Saturn as the destination of "Discovery". While Saturn's moon Iaptus was a more "believable" destination (and location for the Monolith) the story could not have been sustained over several novels.

2) From a perspective of 35 years later, it is interesting to see Clarke's perspective of the "Cold War" and how it would affect man in space.

3) Clarke's theology is present in this book -- and only becomes more clear throughout the subsequent volumes. It is an utterly humanistic theology centered on the evolution of mind. Nevertheless, there remains still hints of the transcendent (also visible in several of Clarke's other novels) which clearly disturb the otherwise cold rationality of his thought.