2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

I’m late to the utilitarian aspect of this novel by Arthur C. Clarke, a companion piece to director and cowriter Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation. Actually, “adaptation” is the wrong word. The project was a years-long collaboration between British countrymen Clarke and Kubrick. The joke is that the screenplay was written by Kubrick with Clarke, and the novel was written by Clarke with Kubrick. They were released the same year. I think I like Clarke—he is more or less the ”sense of wonder” writer in the classic SF with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He’s well-suited to this particular novelization. It’s arguably little more than that, but it does include lots of useful clarifications for a movie that is often intentionally mystifying. The ending is still cosmically ineffable, but a few things about it are nailed down, which is better than nothing. My favorite new detail is the explanation for why the HAL-9000 computer goes crazy. It makes me think about literature versus cinema and all the bromides about showing, not telling. Sometimes cinema is not delivering all the necessary information needed. Sometimes, perhaps, you need to tell as well as show. Kubrick could have included the HAL explanation in the movie, but it would have required exposition. Kubrick could be mulish on how to make a movie, famously often stranding viewers in not just his 2001 movie. Those who find the movie boring perhaps may not need to apply here. I’ve heard it both ways on this novel, but I think it’s a must if you like the movie or Clarke or both. In many ways it is a fix-up novel, tying together previously published short stories, but it’s better by far as a whole than some of the fix-ups I know, including Clifford Simak’s City and Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Turning disparate stories into a novel is harder than you might think. I’m not sure whether I like this more as companion to the movie or as a Clarke novel. It is good either way, a heady froth of human evolution, first contact, and rogue robot. The many small differences between novel and movie are also interesting to ponder. Somebody cue Thus Spake Zarathustra.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.