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.

In this modern timeline, humans have made settlements on the moon, and their devices have detected anomalous signals originating from a spot in the moon.

This spot would be somewhere hidden inside the moon. A monolith would be found here. The monolith has a ratio of 1:4:9, is completely and utterly black, and made from a highly resistant material that man cannot damage. This monolith is how man acquires solid evidence to intelligent, extraterrestrial lifeforms.

Now for where the majority of the story happens: A crew of 5 consisting of David Bowman, Frank Poole and 3 others are on a mission to Jupiter, in the spaceship Discovery. There is also an AI that takes care of all automation and helps the cosmonauts, called HAL 9000. The other 3 in this crew are in sleeping pods, or rather cryogenic chambers of sorts, they’re unconscious. Planned to wake up when Discovery arrives at Jupiter. While on their way to Jupiter; HAL goes psychotic and murders Poole by deceiving the two with a malfunction of a part of an antenna that maintains communication with the Earth, and crashing the detachable repair pod on Poole. HAL then tries to murder Bowman and the rest of the sleeping crew by emptying out the air in the cabin by opening Discovery’s gates to space. Bowman is the sole survivor of this encounter, where he takes refuge in an emergency pod and inhales oxygen from a tube in it.

Bowman then goes into a control room of sorts in Discovery, where HAL’s memory modules are located. He takes away all memory modules except for the ones required to maintain the automated system. He manually points the antenna to restore comms with Earth. This is where he is told the actual goal of the mission; investigating anomalous signals originating from one of Saturn’s moons.

David conducts a flyby of Jupiter, using its gravity to speed Discovery up and arrives at Iapetus, where the signals originate from.

He discovers a massive monolith on the satellite. He knows that he won’t go back to Earth with how the mission broke down, and tells Earth he will land on the satellite. Nearing the monolith, which also has the mysterious ratio of 1:4:9, he discovers its top seemingly opening up to a whole new universe.

After deciding to go into this monolith’s opening, he witnesses sceneries many of which is hard to comprehend by a human; and unused, abandoned space-highways. He finally ends up in a hotel, or what seems to be one. This hotel is made by the mentioned lifeforms, and it is complete and exact copies of what is depicted in movies. The drawers wouldn’t open, the books on the bookshelves were solid and hadn’t any writing on them, they wouldn’t open either.

Bowman then goes into a kitchen of sorts, finds a fridge with “food” inside. There are normal, man-made looking packages, but only with a blue, doughy substance. David likes its taste. All packages contain this dough. Beer cans, cereal boxes… All of them. There is also no drink other than complete and pure water.

David then goes to sleep in a bedroom of the hotel. Here he is visited by the superior lifeform. The rest of it is unclear, but my interpretation is that they seem to fuse or combine, the original David’s consciousness seems to vanish along with the hotel, and David and the lifeform become what is called the “Star Child”. The Star Child goes back to Earth (not landing on it), and seems to toy with the Earth with its godly powers.

My Criticism

1. Covers a timeline way too big for the length of the book. Many jumps, and it even takes a brief intermission to explain the history of the advanced civilization in question.

2. Isn’t able to focus on any specific topic

3. Although technically impressive, also fails in some other aspects like:

Downplays the definition of thinking: “If one can’t differentiate a response that HAL says between a human’s, then the AI must be thinking. This makes no sense, doesn’t define what to think is, does a human really “think”? How does “think” work in HAL? What about when some people can differentiate while others can’t?

The last statement applies to AI today as well. Should an AI’s creation, for example an image, be a product of work by a sentient being if people can’t differentiate whether it was human made or not? Or is it just a collection, a mix of human work, combined by an imitation of the mind of man?

4. Sudden references to other writers are… unfunny. Dropping the name of Edgar Allan Poe in the middle of telling something is just rather unimpressive, immersion-breaking, and has very obvious intent.

The Ending

I did not know what to expect for the ending, but I think that it falls into a common trap many SciFi writers seem to make: the Godhood.

A sudden transcending to the incomprehensible above and beyond, is a cheap exit.

The sudden absurdism doesn’t fit the rest of the book.

What I Liked

1. Technicality: It was quite nice reading how David maneuvered near Jupiter to manipulate its gravity for his own advantage.

2. Architecture of Discovery: Its detailed layout is awesome, and HAL’s “eyes”, or lenses, placed around inside the aircraft is iconic.

3. Worldbuilding: Albeit not too impressive until the late parts of the novel, the detailed descriptions of the structures made by man on the Moon, the looks of the planets and satellites, and the structures by the unknown lifeforms are great.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d rate this novel a solid 6/10. In my opinion, the ending and the jarring skips and intermissions drag it down way too much.

• SciFi