“2001 a Space Odyssey” is one of the great novels of science fiction!It begins millions of years in the past where early
ancestors of man are visited by a
monolith that appears on the African savanna one night. The species is so dim it is barely able to notice the stranger let alone tell that the stone is blatantly begins experimenting with tribe members. Having set this tribe on the road to planetary domination, the stone vanishes until the end of the twentieth century when another similar obelisk is found buried on the moon. Once uncovered this stone sends a message into deep space and goes dormant.The story jumps to “The Discovery” spaceship, man’s first mission to the outer solar system. It is nominally run by
astronauts named Bowmen and Poole. Really though a computer named HAL is in control. HAL breaks down. First he kills some astronauts in hypersleep and Poole then it nearly destroys the skip trying to kill Bowman. Bowman survives, disables Hal and learns that the ship’s secret mission was to look at a new monolith on Saturn’s moon Japetus.Bowman goes to Japetus himself, gets sucked into the monolith and takes a ride to a sort of intergalactic way station where he is converted into a super being and sent back to be Earth’s future.This is successful science fiction but is lacking as a novel. In novel’s, we expect the main characters to undergo learning and transformation. This novel’s characters all get left behind or are killed except Bowman born millions of years after the novel’s beginning. We are meant to understand that the main character is humanity itself, successfully passing from Homo Sapiens, and on to whatever Bowman becomes. It’s either brilliant or going too far. The book has been successful.