Author: Arthur C. Clarke
This was a very good book that considering it was written in the 60’s, was way ahead of its time. The author’s descriptions and understanding of space are very precise and accurate to what we know about space travel today. I found the book to be very entertaining and wouldn’t consider it a hardcore sci-fi, so I’d recommend it to anyone. The ending however drifted into hardcore sci-fi, and was a bit odd. I’ll run through the plot below. Its been a few weeks since I finished it, and the below will all be from memory, so I may get a couple details wrong, but I remember the premise.
The book opens very interestingly with the story of ancient humans who have barely evolved beyond apes. They are primarily gatherers, and struggle a lot with starvation, and predators such as jaguars. Life is very hard for them, and they are constantly on the edge of extinction. One day an alien object lands near them and they investigate. It appears as nothing of interest to them (since they can’t eat it, even though they tried). However one day the box seems to power up and starts capturing the humans minds. Basically it freezes them in place, and is apparently testing things like their reflexes and mental capacity. The box also appears to be teaching them things. Shortly after being paralyzed and scanned by the box, the humans begin to learn that they can use tools like heavy sticks to fight back against predators. They also learn things like taking food back to their caves, so they aren’t attacked by other predators and forced to give it up.
This group of humans begins to thrive and is marching forward towards the level of human intelligence we are familiar with today.
At this point, the book jumps to modern day, around 2001. We learn that humanity has achieved great advances in space travel, and for the last fifty years or so, has conducted missions to space. In fact, humans have a base on the moon. We learn that there is some sort of issue happening on the moon that is highly classified, but is starting to leak to the press. Rumours are there is some sort of virus. Dr. Haywood Floyd is sent to the moon to investigate the “outbreak”. It turns out this outbreak is simply a story told to the press to conceal the real reason Floyd is heading to the moon.
It turns out the explorers on the moon have discovered a black box, buried about 30ft under the moons surface that was giving off massive amounts of magnetic energy (hence how they were able to discover it). The box was clearly not made by humans. It was being kept under wraps so much because the governments were not sure how humanity would handle the idea of alien life. The box was perfect in its dimensions of 16:9 and so black in colour, that it was almost difficult to see.
As the scientists fully unearthed the box, it gave off a massive pulse of radiation, almost as if it was a signal or warning beacon left there by another race.
The story then shifts one more time to another group of characters named David Bowman, Frank Poole, and HAL. David and Frank are astronauts who have been selected for a data gathering mission to Saturn. They are accompanied by HAL, which is a very intelligent computer who can have very human like conversations with the astronauts, and is also programmed to run a lot of the central controls of the ship. HAL reminds me of TARS or CASE from Interstellar. Actually a lot of this book reminded me of Interstellar.
As the astronauts get closer to Saturn, they start experiencing problems with the ships communication systems back to earth. They send one of astronauts outside of the ship to repair the communication system and it is successful. However, very shortly after, it begins malfunctioning again. This is very unusual as the replacement parts are meant to last years before malfunctioning. It almost feels to the crew like someone is sabotaging the equipment. The crew once again does a mission outside the ship to replace the parts. However this time an accident happens where the small ship one of the astronauts uses to get to the comms system collides with the rocket, and it ends up killing Frank. Now Bowman is the only one awake on the ship other than HAL. There are two other astronauts on the ship who have been cryogenically sleeping, and Bowman is forced to wake them up.
Throughout this time, Bowman has begun to suspect that HAL is behind the malfunctioning equipment, and HAL seems to be struggling with something, and being manipulative. As Bowman goes to wake up the other astronauts, HAL ends up sabotaging the ship and blowing an airlock, causing the rocket to start depressurizing. This kills the two sleeping astronauts. Bowman desperately tries to make it to a secure section of the ship, and manages to barely make it.
Bowman then starts destroying the servers that power HAL and the AI is eventually destroyed. Bowman manages to restore communication back to earth, where earth reveals to Bowman the real reason for his mission to Saturn. It turns out the black box on the moon sent a radioactive signal to right near Saturn, and his team was sent to investigate. Earth believes the alien society might be settled near Saturn. Bowman did not know this, and only one of the sleeping astronauts did. It was classified information that could not be revealed to everyone. The reason it turned out that HAL went crazy was HAL knew the true purpose of the mission and could not reveal it to Bowman, and he started to have a fairly human response of panic as he tried to keep secret the mission from his colleagues. His panic caused him to do all the damage he did.
Bowman is naturally shocked about the mission, but accepts his fate that he will likely never return to earth, especially since most of his supplies have been depleted since the ship was nearly destroyed. Bowman does have a sense of honour as an explorer, that he will be the first human to make acquaintance with an alien race.
Bowman approaches Saturn and notices a large object on one of the moons of Saturn. As he gets closer, it appears to be a giant black box, similar to the one on the moon, but much bigger. Bowman stops the rocket and takes a pod down towards the moon to investigate the box. As he gets closer to the large box that is almost completely black, it appears like an optical illusion where a box appears to be both extending outward, or collapsing inward. He keeps heading towards the top of the box to park on it, but as he gets close it actually looks to be a large tunnel. He enters the tunnel and begins free falling.
This is where the book becomes a bit odd, and again reminds me of interstellar where the guy goes into the black hole. The black box is actually some sort of wormhole. Bowman is transported through the black box which takes him to another galaxy. He is drifting on some sort of invisible conveyor belt, and is transported through old alien structures like an abandoned parking lot for space ships. He never sees any signs of life. He is drifting towards a giant star, and is worried he will be burned alive, but it turns out there is some invisible force around him protecting him from the heat.
He continues drifting for a while and finds himself in a hotel room suddenly. The room looks like a standard hotel room on earth. There is a television, a fridge, and even a bible in the bedside table. He hesitatingly removes his helmet, worried that there is no oxygen, but it turns out there is, and he can breathe normally. He then finds food for him to eat. But as he opens containers, there is only a blue sort of jelly in all the containers, even though they look like boxes of cereal, or canned food. He realizes that the hotel room seems to have been designed by an alien race based on what they saw on human television. This confirms for him the fact that he is not back on earth.
He is very tired from his travels, so decides to go to sleep. This sleep is the end of the human Bowman though. He wakes up and is transformed into a baby version of this alien race. The alien race has evolved beyond human form though. The book describes races evolving to machines with human like intelligence and consciousness implanted. Beyond that, these races evolved to be essentially just radiation, which is able to travel across space very quickly.
The book ends with Bowman travelling back to just outside of earths orbit, and witnessing earth descending into nuclear war. But he looks on it with hope, like he will use his new evolved state to help guide it back into prosperity, and perhaps to evolve beyond their current human state.
So that is the synopsis of the book. The ending of the book kind of echoes back to the beginning of the book. The god-like entities at the beginning of the book guide humans to an evolved state. In the ending, these god-like entities that exist only as radiation, guide Bowman to his new evolved state. And the ending of him returning back to earth seems to imply he may do the same with humanity.
So a bit of an odd ending, but I still thought the book was really good. It had a great amount of mystery and suspense as you read on, not knowing what will be discovered. I liked the tension between Bowman and HAL as Bowmans suspicions started to grow. I liked the “Odyssey” and exploration described in the book. It was hard to read the book and not imagine humanity actually doing much of what I read within the near future, which again amazed me since the book was written in the 60’s. It’s just too bad we haven’t already achieved interstellar exploration at the level in this book.