I am reviewing the science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke which is an excellent space adventure which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is a special edition of the book which also has a special introduction by the author and 2 of the short stories also by Arthur that inspired the book. Rather unusually Stanley Kubrick the director of the film based on the book and Arthur worked on the screenplay at the same time as Arthur worked on the book. NASA still wasn’t sure what the surface of the moon was like at this time and they needed to do an intelligent story that wouldn’t be superceded by near future knowledge which might render the film obsolete. The book has the destination of the spacecraft Discovery after which one of the space shuttles would be named as one of Saturn’s moons rather than Jupiter’s which was in the film. The plot was that a monolith was found on one of Saturn’s moons and the spaceship was sent there. The ship contained an artificial living computer called HAL which when they got there the computer had to be shut down permanently to restore the realignment of some of the ships circuits. Of course HAL has other ideas and it pains the captain to do it although the computer rebels rather understandably. The ship is potentially stranded and the only solution seems to be to go through the alien stargate they have discovered. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels and films of the science fiction genre ever.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
