Rating: 
Summary: Open the pod bay doors HAL!
Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey is the first book in the four part series written by the visionary Arthur C. Clarke. The other three books in the series being 2010, 2061, and 3001. This book of imaginative ideas paints word pictures inside the readers' head.
The book begins in late B.C. with the journey of a band of apes. The apes encounter a strange rectangular "box". The box, which will later be referred to as the Monolith, always shows up to change the world's way of thing. The Monolith is the alpha and the omega, it created the world and it can rebuild the world as it wishes. The main character and his crew search for the Monolith and find much more then they ever bargained for.
2001 really was ahead of its time when it was written (Clarke was writing about space and its travels before the first NASA space shuttle was ever launched.) The book really makes the reader think about creation and what happened to create the world and why the world changes like it does. It tests the boundaries of which normal people think. It may change the readers mind on many subjects including the way people are born, grow, age and die.
By reading this book, the reader will gain new knowledge about life. The reader will be compelled to read it again, as I was. Nothing could stop me from reading the other three books, all as imaginative (but not really as good) as 2001. I did see the movie directed by the late Stanley Kubrick before I read the book, but I feel that the book has more impact. (Though the movie is one of the best I have ever seen.) I strongly recommend watching the movie after reading the book; it will connect many things that may not have been as clear.
I loved this book, and if the reader enjoyed it as much as I did, the reader will want to read again and again.
This book will blow your mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible Book
Review: I am a literature major, so please know that I am not giving a biased and uncalled for opinion. I've read many books, and I have even liked those books that most people detest. However, I must say 2001: A Space Odyssey is not all that great. It's boring, takes forever to get to the point, and truly pointless. The movie is even worse. In reality, the movie came first and then the book---it is usually the other way around. Both are horrific.
Rating:
Summary: Classic . One of the best sci-fi books ever written .
Review:
2001 is simply awesome . It might well be one of the best books of the genre ever written .
The concept is great , the compilation even better . Only Clarke could have written this book . His style oozes all over it . It raises many philosophical questions , as all good science fiction should. The cold narrative style of ACC in this book grips you .
If you haven't read 2001 , you haven't really read science fiction .
Rating: 
Summary: Decent
Review: Its a good plot with a good message, but, THERES FAR TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION.
Rating:
Summary: Important and engrossing novel!
Review: Arthur C. Clarke's sensation, 2001, is a classic of our long century of books. This classic is very entertaining, and will keep the reader engrossed for a matter of hours. A very important book for everyone to discover. Each reader will close the book with a new understanding of space and humans. The sequels following this novel are inferior, (exception 2010), and do not have the Clarke touch and creative wit of the original.
So, the story starts with the dawn of humankind, when man apes discover a black monolith one morning. Eventually as we see, this started us on the road to technology. Millions of years later, Heywood Floyd discovers the same type of monolith on the moon. This one is known as the "Tycho" monolith. A mission to Saturn is eventually sent, to investigate strange noises coming down from Saturn to the monolith. The "Discovery" spacecraft carries Commander Dave Bawman, Frank Poole, and the infamous HAL 9000 supercomputor. The computor malfunctions and disaster strikes when an enormous monolith floating adjacent to Jupiter is discovered. I cannot tell you the ending. It is fantastic and will blow you away.
This novel is re released in a brand new, updated paperback with a foreward by the author. Discover the triumph of technology in this revolutionary piece.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough respect for mystery
Review: Kubrick's 2001 was not the adaptation of a book written by A. Clarke; we can rather envision these two works as personal visions on ideas that were initially elaborated by both men. As such, the book clearly pales in comparison to the movie. Book form often enables an artist to add more depth to characters and situations, but Clarke's novel does precisely the opposite: less mysterious, it accumulates words, descriptions and hypotheses while the film lets its ineffable images breathe in silence - the experience Kubrick conveys is impossible to be put into words without being betrayed. As such, the book 'explains' nothing since there is nothing to be explained; everything is to be lived. The relation between the film and the book, for me, is thus analogous to the relation between mystical experience and its inferior, textual expression. The novel remains interesting and well worth reading as a companion to Kubrick's film, but it should not be considered an adequate 'replacement' of the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Point Of View
Review: This book is subject to many interpretations, and that alone makes it a great story while it also tends to send people off arguing their own points. I'll try to stick to just one in this review, the one I believe is central to enjoying this book. 2001 (book) reveals more of the details of the story than the movie and that there are some differences (going to Saturn in the book, Jupiter in the film, as an example). This doesn't effect the overall read, but I thought it important to point out that the two (book/film) are different enough to be confusing. Many people have seen the film, or parts of it, and that can bring some to seek out the book and others to wonder why they would bother. The story is of Biblical proportions not only in the sense of the widest timeline in a movie (over 3 million years) but that it covers mankind's history without resorting to a long narrative, but by book ending history or in essence - their is no middle story. Man's destiny is outlined in rather 'dry' terms with little detail. Our ancestral relatives are mysteriously guided by the first monolith and we assume this leads us to our intellectual evolution as the 'bone weapon' becomes a space ship (that's from the movie). No time is wasted explaining the change, you just have to accept it. The second monolith, buried on the moon as a marker for us to discover, assuming we did evolve, sets off the two major parts of the story - Mankinds' curiousity vs. his need for secrecy, which is portrayed by the ignorance of the astronauts to their 'real' mission and the hidden knowledge of the on-board computer entity the HAL 9000. The characters are very flat, as is HAL, and that partly distracts the reader from realizing that technology itself is the central theme. This story is a warning about the inhuman direction that mankind is making with technology. Why wouldn't the actors be dull? We are diluting the individualism of mankind even now. I'll dare say that Kubrick intended to expand on the dryness of Clarke's stories (The Sentinel, for one) so as to remind us of mankinds' foolish dependence on the technology we surround ourselves with. I mention the movie here as it reveals how the collaberation with Clarke had influenced the book. Clarke wrote this novel in tandem with his input on the movie screenplay and besides, Clarke is well known for taking on big issues instead of filling out characters. Back to the story. The malfunctioning of HAL leads to the final shedding of any human element in the story by simply discarding all but one of them. From here on, you experience the story through David Bowman. Victorious over HAL, Bowman has no one to share his final life experience with. The huge monolith, orbiting Saturn, leaves Bowman with a final mission - before he dies, find out what he can. Curiousity wiining out over survival, which seems impossible. This leads to a trip through 'unknown space', a place so 'alien' that Bowman cannot interpret what is going around him. Being nearly driven mad, he is left to viewing some last remnants of his race before he is transformed. Here the book better explains, without revealing any reason or purpose. Bowman is left, in a form he can get his mind around - an infant in space - to contemplate mankind's future. A not so subtle reference is made to the elimination of nuclear weapons. So, the end of the book, which in itself can be interpreted many ways, shows that a superior presence may yet guide us to a better future. This is only one, of many, interpretations I have had of this book/movie since I first read/viewed it, back in '68. The title is, or course, very dated, but it still harks of a future yet untraveled. I found the trip through this book even more 'mind-expanding' than the visual ride through the Jupiter monolith in the movie. So, it is because this story has so open an interpretation that it excels and also tends to baffle some readers and disgust others. It is in the 'not answering' the questions that I give this book 5 Stars. If Clarke had succumbed to giving the reader his own interpretation it would have poisoned the very 'mystery' the book had built. After all, how can you describe something that could be God or a future human species, or anything else in between? Much less give a reason for their actions that would make sense to us mere humans. 2001 is a great read that will leave you thinking the ultimate thought - your very existence. The fun is in the trip, not the destination.
Rating:
Summary: Expected better
Review: ...at times far too poetic for a casual reader like me. The plot was very hard to grasp, it left me with many unanswered questions...although the writing was magnificent and descriptive, it was slow paced and often "boring." There were some very enticing moments but were followed by lagging scenerios .,..
|
