Every once in a while, a book or a movie comes along that defines an era, and makes a mark on our collective psyche. 2001: A Space Odyssey was one such. It began in 1964, when Stanley Kubrick, fresh off the success of Dr Strangelove, decided that he wanted to make "the proverbial good science fiction movie", and approached Arthur C Clarke.
They collaborated on the story, and then they got to work on both the book and the script. The core idea came from a short story that Clarke had written years earlier, called The Sentinel. The script was finished, and filming began well before the novel was done. The film released in the spring of 1968 and the book came out a few months later.
The 1960's were an interesting time for science fiction. With the Apollo project in full swing, there was tremendous interest in space travel, and a fair amount of speculation about the future of mankind. While this was fundamentally a good thing, making a science fiction film at this time posed a unique challenge. When Kubrick and Clarke began work on their story in 1964, they had no idea how it would stand up against reality when NASA eventually succeeded in landing men on the moon. They had a sequence set on the moon in their own story, and they needed it to look good next to the real thing which was just over the horizon. They were trying to guess the future, and to stay ahead of it, and on the whole, they succeeded.
2001: A Space Odyssey explores one of the core themes of science fiction - first contact - and it does so in a singular and awe-inspiring manner. The book begins in the remote past, three million years ago, when aliens visited the earth, aliens who valued all life, particularly intelligent life, and tried to encourage its development wherever they encountered it.
It presents a vision of the future (as imagined in 1968) where humans have established a permanent base on the moon by the end of the twentieth century. This section of the book begins with a team of scientists working on the moon, who come across something curious in the course of their exploration - a large, featureless, black slab, buried thirty feet below the surface of the moon. It is obviously not natural. They study it in every way they can think of, but they don't learn much, other than the fact that the slab is three million years old. Buried on the moon well before there were humans on the earth. The slab does not respond to any probe or test. It remains completely inert until the sun comes up over the horizon....and then it emits an electronic scream, a signal aimed at Saturn, and more specifically at one of its moons.
What follows is an expedition to Saturn on the spaceship Discovery, with its crew of five humans and one artificially intelligent computer called HAL9000. Three of the crew members are in hibernation while the other two, David Bowman and Frank Poole run the ship with the help of HAL. It's a months-long, mostly uneventful trip, until things start to go wrong.
What follows is an incredible feat of imagination that explores humanity's place in the universe, and tries to paint a picture of what an alien race millions of years in advance of us might be like. The result is both an awe inspiring and deeply satisfying read.
2001, the movie has made a place for itself in cinematic history. Kubrick uses stunning visuals set to a brilliantly crafted musical score to make the movie an incredible experience. Clarke accomplishes a similar feat without the aid of visuals or music. It is impossible to read this book and come out feeling unaffected. This is a book that stays with you.
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Note: 2001: A Space Odyssey was intended to be a standalone novel, and can still be read as such, but it eventually became the first of a four-part series. While all the books in the series feature one or more of the characters introduced in the first book, the second book is the only direct sequel. The two books read together tell a larger story. With 2010: Space Odyssey Two, Arthur C Clarke accomplished the rare feat of creating a sequel that rivals its predecessor in its imaginative brilliance.