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A review by sidharthvardhan
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
4.0
“They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed and sometimes they reaped.
And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
Written a year before Neil Armstrong became first man to step on moon, the science fiction story is really well written. Clark mixes his speculative predictions with true events from past (like the panic caused by broadcastings of Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’) and once he quoted Niels Bohr (““Your theory is crazy-but not crazy enough to be true.”) I loved his descriptions of lives of astronauts – the long, lonely, boring journeys interrupted by occasional wonderful sights and destinations. Both the beginning and the conclusion were simply incredible.
“In an empty room floating amid the fires of double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry.”
““Where there is light, there still could be life.”
“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
"We can design a system that's proof against accident and stupidity; but we can't design one that's proof against deliberate malice
“Someone had once said that you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there.”
“The word "rescue" was carefully avoided in all the Astronautics Agency's statements and documents; it implied some failure of planning, and the approved jargon was "re-acquisition”.
“Again he began to wonder if he was suffering from amnesia, Paradoxically, that very thought reassured him, if he could remember the word "amnesia" his brain must be in fairly good shape.”
“They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before.
Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”
And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
Written a year before Neil Armstrong became first man to step on moon, the science fiction story is really well written. Clark mixes his speculative predictions with true events from past (like the panic caused by broadcastings of Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’) and once he quoted Niels Bohr (““Your theory is crazy-but not crazy enough to be true.”) I loved his descriptions of lives of astronauts – the long, lonely, boring journeys interrupted by occasional wonderful sights and destinations. Both the beginning and the conclusion were simply incredible.
“In an empty room floating amid the fires of double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry.”
““Where there is light, there still could be life.”
“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
"We can design a system that's proof against accident and stupidity; but we can't design one that's proof against deliberate malice
“Someone had once said that you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there.”
“The word "rescue" was carefully avoided in all the Astronautics Agency's statements and documents; it implied some failure of planning, and the approved jargon was "re-acquisition”.
“Again he began to wonder if he was suffering from amnesia, Paradoxically, that very thought reassured him, if he could remember the word "amnesia" his brain must be in fairly good shape.”
“They had learned to speak, and so had won their first great victory over Time. Now the knowledge of one generation could be handed on to the next, so that each age could profit from those that had gone before.
Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”