The book is always better than the film, but I'd never read 2001 before. What I didn't know, until reading the foreword, is that this novel was literally written in tandem with the film, with Clarke and Kubrick feeding each other ideas. At some points, however, filming overtook writing, or vice versa, and the two stories, though similar, split along two different paths.

After reading the book, the film becomes little more than a very well crafted container: It's pretty and neat to look at it, but open it up, and it's empty. There is none of Clarke's vision of how a being we'd call God would communicate with us across unfathomable time spans, or teach us, or lead us into higher consciousness. Stripped away by Kubrick is the sense that this being truly wants us to be in its image, and that the whole breadcrumb trail of monoliths was designed to do just that. And completely erased is the notion that David Bowman, as Star Child, is now one with the Universe, in some Zen- way, and also much more something we'd called a god.

Don't get me wrong, 2001 is still one of my favorite films, but to get the full meaning and understand the full weight of why 2001 has been called "the perfect science fiction story," you must read the book. Clarke marries science, mysticism, theory, and fantasy in ways no other. Unfortunately, Kubrick stripped away the mysticism and theory and left us what is, in comparison to the book, only a glimmer at something bigger.

Kubrick touched the monolith, but Clarke went inside.
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Classic.

I read 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was a teenager and knew it was a very influential work of fiction because of the film and all the attention it had received. Still, though I found it very entertaining, I did not really get it.

Thirty years later, I have read it again, and though I may not completely get it the second time around, the more mature reader can better grasp the vision and message of the genius author. I especially enjoyed the many allusions to other works and found the reference to Melville's Ahab particularly engrossing.

Clarke’s prose is clear and descriptive and his story line linear and thought provoking. Not just an excellent science fiction novel, this is a work of literature, brilliant.

*** 2023 reread -

I knew back in the day that this was a true science fiction classic, and knew that it was a great work of speculative fiction, but I it even more now and believe this is one of the greatest SF books.

Something I did not pick up on before is the influence of Clarke’s own earlier work Childhood’s End. This 1953 novel, published 15 years before 2001: A Space Odyssey, describes many of Clarke’s most compelling statements about extraterrestrial life and these themes were revisited in 2001.

I’ve read quite a few of his books and I can also see that this was a literary stretch for him, he expanded the philosophical approach of most of his canon while telling a story with some very cool elements. Readers will pick up on horrific aspects of the book as well as different angles on his ordinary SF themes. His writing was better than most of his other works, and they are all good for the most part, and I wondered about his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick.

This was not a novelization of the film, nor was the film based upon the book. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the novel and screenplay contemporaneously and I think that the synergy of their efforts provided to us one of the finest stories, told in both prose and film, that we have seen.

Highly recommended.

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