This post covers Arthur C. Clarke’s second novel on the Space Odyssey Series. For my post on the first book, click here.

Introduction

Although this continuation covers some of the criticisms I’ve commented on the first novel up, it also has many plot holes and irregularities. Although managing to grab my emotions at one point, it has unfortunately not gone much further from that.

The Story

The novel starts between Dr. Dimitri Moisevitch and Heywood Floyd from the previous novel, after Bowman’s disappearance near the mysterious monolith (previously in Iapetus, author decides to switch its location to Io which is a moon of Jupiter), where they talk about the second mission to investigate the massive monolith and its surroundings.

The Story

The novel begins in an ancient timeline, where humans are still cavemen. It covers a brief period of how man started to evolve, after an unknown extraterrestrial and intelligent lifeform drops a monolith that seemed to have effects on man.

It focuses on the tribe’s leader figure. This figure is forgotten, once the book skips the timeline to the future where man has evolved. The modern man quite fits the 1990’s vision of how humans’ advancements would be in the future.

What leaves an effect on me, is always, not the highlights of the story or the ending; but how it feels to live and be encapsulated in the book that was written.

I like post-apocalyptic genres, so a somber, sultry atmosphere— and how the environment cradles one in. That’s how I remember a sci-fi novel.

But it’s not only dark grimey worlds that I like. For example, Dune, by far my favorite series, the vast universe it offers, and what the Sandworm symbolizes. The books genuinely live. They have heartbeats.