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bookishwendy 's review for:
2001: A Space Odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
I listened to this one as an audiobook that happened to be produced in the year 2000. The first half hour or so of the recording is a direct address by author Arthur C. Clarke (also recorded in the year 2000) about the development of the 2001 book/film and its legacy. One of the things about this book that most surprised me was the fact that the film actually came first...or at least was released about a year (I think, don't quote me) before the novel. Director Stanley Kubrick and Clarke actually worked very closely on the novel-inspiration for the film...which was originally envisioned as merely an expeditious way to write out the story before converting it into screenplay form. The novel was more or less an afterthought.
I haven't seen the film in years and only really remember the most pivotal, memorable scenes (and Hal. Who can forget Hal?) but it's no surprise that film and novel plot lines are very similar. In fact, as Clarke mentions in his introduction, the only main differences are in medium (because novels demand more "explaining" while films use visuals) and in technical limitations (the rendezvous with Saturn in the novel was changed to Jupiter in the film because the effects department couldn't produce a viable Saturn effect). Both film and novel feel surprisingly modern, though I did laugh when in the novel there is mention of a typewriter at the moon base. And also the amazing digital news technology that updates every HOUR *gasp* rendering paper news technology obsolete. The future is truly mind-boggling!
All joking aside, I wonder if perhaps the focus in 2001 on distant space and alien intelligence in forms we cannot comprehend should perhaps take a backseat to the unanswered questions about artificial intelligence as posed by Hal, the vengeful (?) machine. The technological developments of the twenty-first century have made the latter an issue of computer/human relations an immediate one, while cuts to NASA have kept interstellar human travel the same pipe dream it was in the 1960s (only these days the technology seems to be within reach, if not the $$$ (yet). At any rate, Hal's passive-aggressive mutiny is the tensest (read: best) part of the novel, second only to the interesting prehistorical hypothesis. The novel does explain a lot more of the background to the film's iconic visuals (the tossed bone, the obelisks) but regardless of trippy exposition or trippy visuals, the ending sequence still leaves me with a "huh?"
I haven't seen the film in years and only really remember the most pivotal, memorable scenes (and Hal. Who can forget Hal?) but it's no surprise that film and novel plot lines are very similar. In fact, as Clarke mentions in his introduction, the only main differences are in medium (because novels demand more "explaining" while films use visuals) and in technical limitations (the rendezvous with Saturn in the novel was changed to Jupiter in the film because the effects department couldn't produce a viable Saturn effect). Both film and novel feel surprisingly modern, though I did laugh when in the novel there is mention of a typewriter at the moon base. And also the amazing digital news technology that updates every HOUR *gasp* rendering paper news technology obsolete. The future is truly mind-boggling!
All joking aside, I wonder if perhaps the focus in 2001 on distant space and alien intelligence in forms we cannot comprehend should perhaps take a backseat to the unanswered questions about artificial intelligence as posed by Hal, the vengeful (?) machine. The technological developments of the twenty-first century have made the latter an issue of computer/human relations an immediate one, while cuts to NASA have kept interstellar human travel the same pipe dream it was in the 1960s (only these days the technology seems to be within reach, if not the $$$ (yet). At any rate, Hal's passive-aggressive mutiny is the tensest (read: best) part of the novel, second only to the interesting prehistorical hypothesis. The novel does explain a lot more of the background to the film's iconic visuals (the tossed bone, the obelisks) but regardless of trippy exposition or trippy visuals, the ending sequence still leaves me with a "huh?"