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h4wke 's review for:
2001: A Space Odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
Prescient, ambitious, and a little bit boring.
2001 is iconic, both as a book and a movie (and an actual year since Spy Kids released within it), however I do think I prefer the film. I had a problem with Clarke overexplaining to the reader directly in Childhood's End, but there it was more of a nitpick. Here it's a full-on negative. There is a reason for it though; the tech he describes is impressively accurate to what we have today. However, it's just that reason that makes the first two thirds of the novel disappointingly dull (excluding the creepy monolith sections). Fortunately the last sequence is awesome, and explores aspects that the film couldn't pull off visually very well at the time. A bit of the ambiguity is lost here understandably, but for the final third it's at least a decent trade off.
Perhaps that's why I enjoy the book less. The film trusts the audience more, and lets them make up their own mind about the ending. And the classical soundtrack helps secure the timeless feeling that just isn't there in the pages, where everything is told to the reader and the characters fall flat.
So it's a hard book to judge. It's one that I'm rating more for what it was at the time rather than my actual enjoyment, because of how important it was and is.
2001 is iconic, both as a book and a movie (and an actual year since Spy Kids released within it), however I do think I prefer the film. I had a problem with Clarke overexplaining to the reader directly in Childhood's End, but there it was more of a nitpick. Here it's a full-on negative. There is a reason for it though; the tech he describes is impressively accurate to what we have today. However, it's just that reason that makes the first two thirds of the novel disappointingly dull (excluding the creepy monolith sections). Fortunately the last sequence is awesome, and explores aspects that the film couldn't pull off visually very well at the time. A bit of the ambiguity is lost here understandably, but for the final third it's at least a decent trade off.
Perhaps that's why I enjoy the book less. The film trusts the audience more, and lets them make up their own mind about the ending. And the classical soundtrack helps secure the timeless feeling that just isn't there in the pages, where everything is told to the reader and the characters fall flat.
So it's a hard book to judge. It's one that I'm rating more for what it was at the time rather than my actual enjoyment, because of how important it was and is.