What's so great about A Space Odyssey ?

[Tobias Funke]

I've read 2001 and 2010 and I like them both. Haven't seen the movie because, well, I don't see any reason to after reading the books and it frankly looks boring. The OP probably isn't even around anymore, but the book has my recommendation (which carries quite a bit of weight around these parts!). It's a pretty quick read too, so even if you don't like it, no big deal.

It's amazing how widely varied tastes are when it comes to sci-fi. A lot of people think Childhood's End is one of Clarke's best, but I think towards the end

Spoiler

it just becomes another of the seemingly infinite stories from around that time---the time when the Rhine experiments were still taken seriously---that has humanity taking its place as the godlike, often psychic, race we're destined to become while all the other, sometimes much more advanced, alien races watch in admiration and fear...boring (and, when shrunk to our global scale, vaguely racist too, a claim that would get one laughed off this forum if Asimov himself didn't make the connection with his editor in mind).

Still a pretty good read, but Rendezvous with Rama is much better imo.

 

[paisiello2]

My favorite film of all time by my favorite director of all time.

Beside the sheer beauty of the photography I think it is also very profound. The whole film to me is an exploration of the evolution of human intelligence: from apes learning to use tools to modern man and their AI machines, to the next step which is speculated to come from contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence.

 

[guysensei1]

To tell you the truth, I couldn't stand the slow pace of the movie, the repetitive noises and the silent parts.

I'm too impatient for that kind of stuff :/ Oh well.

 

[paisiello2]

Too bad because a lot of great art a lot of the time requires patience to fully appreciate. Criticism is fine but what are you comparing it to? MIB 2?

 

[Evo]

TBH, it's just a movie. I personally didn't like it that much. To each his own, it's a matter of taste.

 

[tfr000]

Reviving an old thread...
2001 the book was awesome. The Discovery's final destination is Saturn, not Jupiter, in particular the moon Iapetus. Seems Iapetus is bi-color - very bright on one side, very dark on the other. This is true - Iapetus does indeed have a large, bright spot on it. In the book, the monolith is in the center of it. Imagine Discovery among the rings...
The movie... kind of lost it after Bowman went out in the pod to investigate the monolith. In the book, there is a long, long interval of passing through bizarre space-scapes, rather thought-provoking ones, before the pod plunks down into the room for the final couple of scenes. This was all sort of glossed over in the movie with that psychedelic colors/Bowman making scary faces/loud and tense music thing. Must have run out of budget or something.
2010 - yuck. I lost track of it after that.
Someone mentioned Clarke's Childhood's End. I found a copy at the town dump a few years ago. I had never read it. Wow. Same basic sort of plot only much creepier.

 

[Dr Wu]

I'm afraid I couldn't get on with 2061 and 3001. They both ended up at my local Oxfam shop. I was also less than satisfied with 2010 when it first came out. To me it came across as disjointed and I found that long film-script-like dialogue at the start particularly off-putting. I've changed my mind about the novel since then. Clarke's depiction of Jupiter and its Galilean moons, plus several later scenes, I still find captivating. I saw the film version of 2010 so long ago now that I can no longer trust my memories, never mind my critical faculties.

So what's so great about the movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey? I guess the same question can apply to films like Citizen Kane, Psycho, Pulp Fiction, to name but three - all groundbreaking movies of their day, and doubtless they too had their share of critics. All I can say in defence of 2001 is that a friend of mine who had never seen the film (yes, such people do exist) finally got round to watching it three years ago, initially with some reluctance, I'm bound to say. He was, nonetheless, completely blown away by the film - and this from someone who in his time has sat through Star Wars and its many spin-offs, Close Encounters, ET, the Matrix Trilogy etc etc. Not bad for a film then in its 44th year.

Just one last thing: if 2001 is not among the greatest - if not the very greatest - SF films yet made, all I can say is: compared to what?

 

[Loren]

What's so great about "A Space Odyssey"?

Ok, here we go (may contain spoilers)...

I'm quite a fan of scientific fiction. I watched 2001 a few years ago when I was still young and wasn't really a great thinker: I hated it. A few days ago, I watched it again because all the hype and "the best movie ever" people kept telling me and I kept reading in reviews over and over. Yeah, ok, I re-watched it and it sucked even more than the first time. Then I thought: yeah, ok, maybe I'm just too dumb to get it... I should probably get to the next part. And I did, I just finished reading 2010 and I found nothing exceptionally good in it, in fact, I found it quite boring.

About 2001: yeah, effects are pretty cool, the exhibitionism is also fantastic, graphics are very immersive and stuff. But where is the plot? People go to Jupiter, people die, the astronaut "allucinates", people die, the supercomputer gets crazy, the monolit is really powerful, yeah, yeah, yeah, where is the plot? Where is the explanation? Where's the cause? What can I take from the movie? Is it all because of the special effects?

So went to the next book waiting for some plausible explanations and possibly a plot. People get in a new vehicle and try to salve the old ship from 2001. The travel is pretty boring, they find a new monolit, it's pretty amazing, they find the ship, they run into usual orbital mechanics problems, the chinese astronaut says they have found ET life (how does this matter, anyway?), they reprogram the old crazy supercomputer, they simply TURN BACK and the monolit fuses Jupiter into a new star.

Seriously? Explanations, anyone? From what I have read so far, there are simply no explanations to what happened, there is no thrilling story, there is absolutely nothing that keeps you reading, there is absolutely nothing I can take from what I have read. There is no plot (Clarke sure has some good insights, but from what I've seen, he is incapable of using them).

If it's supposed to continue in the next book, he should've put it into a single book, because it's pretty stupid to have a full book without a proper ending.

What have you found attractive in this series that I can't find?

The problem is you watched the movie. Kubrick was obviously a genius in the film industry, but the film doesn't do the story justice. You have to read the first book!

Aas for the sequels, they explain the story in increasing detail. The last one, 3001 is not as good as its predecessors.

I could explain the whole premise of the series, but that would be spoiling it for you. If after reading the books you still don't get it, then open a new thread and ask specific questions.

Clarke's works are less about entertaining than encouraging the reader to stretch his/her imagination, which means you have to think. This is not Star Wars.

Lastly, films are a great media, but written novels are superior in many regards. If you constrain yourself to film you are missing a more significant means of understanding.

 

[Dr Wu]

One sub-theme about 2001 I've always enjoyed is the irony of human beings journeying to Jupiter (in the film) to seek further evidence of sentient extraterrestrial life, and beyond that shortening the odds of achieving contact with these super-intelligent aliens - only to learn that they don't even understand their own creation: Hal.

 

[Janus]

Reviving an old thread...
2001 the book was awesome. The Discovery's final destination is Saturn, not Jupiter, in particular the moon Iapetus. Seems Iapetus is bi-color - very bright on one side, very dark on the other. This is true - Iapetus does indeed have a large, bright spot on it. In the book, the monolith is in the center of it. Imagine Discovery among the rings...
The movie... kind of lost it after Bowman went out in the pod to investigate the monolith. In the book, there is a long, long interval of passing through bizarre space-scapes, rather thought-provoking ones, before the pod plunks down into the room for the final couple of scenes. This was all sort of glossed over in the movie with that psychedelic colors/Bowman making scary faces/loud and tense music thing. Must have run out of budget or something.

The thing about 2001 is that the movie was not based on the book or the book on the movie, but they were more or less written together. They were two different visions of the story. The change from Saturn in the Book to Jupiter in the movie was due to the fact that, at the time, they did not think they could do justice to Saturn's rings.

As far as the final scenes in the movie go, Carl Sagan once said that he thought that Kubrick got it right in terms of what a meeting with an highly advanced alien race would be like; a series of impressions that we would not be able to make sense of.

2010 - yuck. I lost track of it after that.
Someone mentioned Clarke's Childhood's End. I found a copy at the town dump a few years ago. I had never read it. Wow. Same basic sort of plot only much creepier.

 

[paisiello2]

Someone mentioned Clarke's Childhood's End. I found a copy at the town dump a few years ago. I had never read it. Wow. Same basic sort of plot only much creepier.

Other than they are both about alien contact, I don't see how the plots are the same, even basically. I agree it is creepier, though.

 

[tfr000]

Other than they are both about alien contact, I don't see how the plots are the same, even basically. I agree it is creepier, though.

Vastly superior alien life shepherding the development of the human race.

 

[_PJ_]

Aas for the sequels, they explain the story in increasing detail. The last one, 3001 is not as good as its predecessors.

I could explain the whole premise of the series...encouraging the reader to stretch his/her imagination, which means you have to think. This is not Star Wars..

Spoiler

To be honest, I felt the whole series more "Independence Day" but without Will Smith.
Aside from the predictive power such as http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24477667 I found that it was rather extreme that the incredibly ancient masterfully advanced alien species could be defeated so readily by a

 

[paisiello2]

Vastly superior alien life shepherding the development of the human race.

I guess I never thought about 2001 that way but it seems a reasonable interpretation.

 

[_PJ_]

I guess I never thought about 2001 that way but it seems a reasonable interpretation.

"Interpretation"?

It's the entire plot of 2001... There's no room for other interpretation when it's essentially spelled out that this is why the monolith's are deployed. Although I would not use the word 'shepherding', shepherds are not likely to terminate their whole flock just because they decide they no longer like the sheep...

 

[arabianights]

I read the book first, then saw the movie.

love the book but find the movie rather boring.