Usually seeing the movie helps me figure out the book. Here it’s the other way around.
Published in 1968, the same year as the movie of the same name, 2001: A Space Odyssey is Arthur C. Clarke’s fictionalization of how man might at last unravel the mystery of his being – and his purpose.
In the process, Clarke does indeed unlock an even more imponderable mystery – just what is going on in that Stanley Kubrick movie.
Originally based on his short story “The Sentinel” – and much expanded upon after he partnered with Kubrick to adapt it for film, Clarke examines mankind’s evolution from a prehistoric ape-like creature staring at the moon to astronauts walking on the lunar surface.
What connects them across the millennia are these strange onyx-like reflective monoliths. At the beginning of the novel, we saw the “man-apes” spurred to use tools and eat meat by means of the monolith’s non-vocal directions. Cut to the moon crater Clavius, where excavators uncover another such monolith. When this object is hit by the rays of the sun, it emits a powerful beam of radiation in the direction of Saturn.
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| A flyover view courtesy of NASA captures the immensity of Clavius, one of the Moon's largest craters (144 miles in diameter) and the location of the dig that launches the main plotline in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Image from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4868. |
“What you are now looking at is the first evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth,” one scientist announces. Unnerved but curious, astronauts are sent to find out more about the beam’s destination.
Not being a fan of the movie, which I find overlong and opaque to a fault, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself engaged by the novel, and following along much more easily despite quite a lot of labyrinthine conceptualizing. I don’t understand everything I read, but I enjoyed the ride more this time. At least the questions have a shape to them.
Clarke’s clean, antiseptic prose style is not dissimilar to the design of Kubrick’s film, but Clarke takes time to pause and explain things. His love of and appetite for astronomy and astrophysics are communicated in a fluid, digestible way.
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| Arthur C. Clarke (left) with Stanley Kubrick on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unlike other Kubrick book adaptations, this was developed in tandem with the writing. Yet there are key differences. Image from https://www.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/7xpv5o/masters_arthur_c_clarke_and_stanley_kubrick/. |
The novel is built like the movie: A short introductory section features early humans somewhere in Africa and explains just how they are threatened by extinction. Then they get a crash course in tools courtesy of the monolith, which disappears after the primitives have weaponized the stones and bones around them.
Then we meet Dr. Heywood Floyd, being shuttled to the Moon to oversee the discovery of the second monolith. All this is being done in secret, with a cover story about a lunar flu to fool the Soviets and Chinese, who while not particular hostile are still geopolitical rivals.
Finally comes the longest section, and much longer in the novel, where we observe the flight of the spaceship Discovery and meet its crew: astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole and their heuristically programmed algorithmic computer. But you can call him HAL.
HAL basically runs everything on the Discovery, Clarke explains:
Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could easily run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to discover how much truth that jest contained.
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| In the film, Poole (Gary Lockwood) and Bowman (Keir Dullea) discuss their concerns about HAL from an enclosed pod, so they won't be overheard. In the novel, tensions never escalate to this point. Image from https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/how-2001-a-space-odyssey-has-influenced-pop-culture.html. |
In fact, HAL is keeping a secret which will eventually bring the mission to a screeching halt.
The above is no spoiler to anyone who has seen the movie, or just picked up the second-hand references which have abounded in our culture for the past 50 years. But there are critical differences. Most notable to me was the focus of the novel on the intricacies of the Discovery journey. Details are given about the spaceship’s inspection of an asteroid as well as of Jupiter, which figures here as an astronomical perturbation to slingshot the craft to Saturn. In the movie, Jupiter is the final destination.
Quite a long section details the release of a miniature ceramic-covered probe into Jupiter’s dense atmosphere. Poole and Bowman watch from a monitor as the doomed probe beams its final images of an immense, golden sea: “…was this, they wondered, merely the result of chemical and electrical forces down there in that seething cauldron – or was it the byproduct of some fantastic form of life?”
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| Jupiter as seen from the Juno spacecraft in 2018. According to recent reports, there are no less than 79 moons orbiting the gas giant. Image by Kevin M. Gill/NASA from https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/jupiter-12-moons-79-total-orbit-scientists/story?id=56663455. |
A lot of debate can be had over whether 2001: A Space Odyssey falls under the genre of science fiction or speculative fiction. Certainly sci-fi elements are here: space travel, planet exploration, and even aliens. Yet this is first and last a novel not about adventure, but ideas.
In the opening section, Clarke speculates about a collective Jungian subconscious being formed around the experience of the ape-men who live in fear of mass starvation and the occasional leopard attack: “In the caves, between spells of fitful dozing and fearful waiting, were being born the nightmares of generations yet to be.”
In the Dr. Floyd section, we learn details about life on the Moon, including the fact a generation of young people are coming of age without ever experiencing Earth first-hand. Gravity, it turns out, is a problem that can be solved:
Space Station One revolved once a minute, and the centrifugal force generated by this slow spin produced an artificial gravity equal to the Moon’s. This, it had been discovered, was a good compromise between Earth gravity and no gravity at all; moreover, it gave moonbound passengers a chance to become acclimatized.
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| Space Station One as seen in the film. Clarke notes that the centrifugal force of the spinning station is designed to allow for freer movement the nearer inhabitants are to the axis, where a lounge and shops are located. Image from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/2/1847203/-2001-A-Space-Odyssey-the-51st-Anniversary-of-Stanley-Kubrick-s-Masterpiece. |
Finally, aboard the Discovery in what I presume is supposed to be the year 2001, we learn about how the spacemen work together on this multi-year trip, with Bowman nominally in command.
Clarke was a dry writer, but he did allow for moments of humanity and humor. When Poole reports on a conversation he just had with Mission Control, he notes they said “there was no cause for alarm. They said that twice, which rather spoiled the effect as far as I was concerned.”
Even astronaut sex habits get some attention:
It was true – indeed, notorious – that seamen had compensations at other ports; unfortunately there were no tropical islands full of dusky maids beyond the orbit of Earth. The space medics, of course, had tackled this problem with their usual enthusiasm; the ship’s pharmacopoeia provided adequate, though hardly glamorous, substitutes.
The Saturn voyage is the money part of the book, the part from which it enjoys most of its phantasmagoric reputation. In some ways, this is unfair; the prehistoric story is a wonderful self-contained story not unlike Clarke’s classic short “The Nine Billion Names Of God” which resolves on a beguilingly ambiguous note. Of course, the rest of 2001: A Space Odyssey spoils this ambiguity by explaining everything.
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| A scene from the "Dawn Of Man" section of the movie. In the novel, it is explained that the monolith manipulates the apemen to use bones as tools and even tie knots. Image from https://hyperallergic.com/286102/artist-renders-2001-a-space-odyssey-into-569-gifs-to-test-fair-use-boundaries/. |
Such explanatory resolve might deaden a novel in another writer’s hands, even a good one. But Clarke knows how to tease out the implications of his tale in slow, suspenseful degrees. His focus on astronomical filigree actually works in building tension, as when he has Bowman examining how different Saturn’s rings look close up, or listening to the sound made by Jupiter’s radiation emissions that suggest “the cries of demented birds”:
It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and as meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.
That’s why I think the term “speculative fiction” suits this novel. As a straight story, it’s a fairly dry read. Not only are Bowman and Poole dull for the most part, they aren’t at risk here of being upstaged by HAL 9000 the way they were in the movie. HAL has his breakdown in the novel just like the film, but there’s not as much suspense built around that here, nor the odd notes of sympathy you feel for the strangely human machine in Kubrick’s film.
Clarke’s explanation for HAL’s misbehavior was the least effective part of my read. Kubrick’s choice to say less on the matter makes the enigma of artificial intelligence more beguiling. Here a somewhat soulless quality to life is presented very casually, with Bowman noting an extended hibernation period with a certain ant-like detachment: “He was not sure whether he had lost a week of his life – or whether he had postponed his eventual death by the same amount of time.”
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| In the 1970s, Marvel Comics launched its own 2001: A Space Odyssey title. The original issue, seen above, was a faithful presentation of the film with some novel elements included. By the end of its brief run, stories focused on the adventures of a heroic robot called "Mister Machine." Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(comics). |
Ultimately, Bowman seems to understand he’s on a suicide mission; it is understood the Discovery won’t be able to make it back from its trip and the survival of the crew will depend on the government building a second spaceship of greater power. Bowman seems fine with that as long as he can extend the boundaries of human understanding, which Clarke seems to regard as a wholly normal point of view.
My sense is that Clarke the futurist was more at ease with the idea of machine over man than Kubrick was in the movie.
The ending of the book likewise gives more detail than the movie did, but here I found the journey more rewarding, if still perplexing. Clarke’s ambition to offer a persuasive construct as to “what-it-all-means” commands respect if not always agreement.
No doubt neither of us can agree with Clarke or with each other on everything where the origin of cosmos is concerned. But I found myself more engaged reading this than I was watching the movie. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a darn fine read, and worth your time if you ever wonder about the big Why.
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