Yes, I am finally posting something! Incredible, isn’t it? The project I took upon me didn’t go as fast as I thought, mostly because reading a book doesn’t go as fast as watching a movie. Before I start I recommend new readers go read “A Praised Oddity" Part 1 and Part 2”, because I will refer to it a lot. This will be quite a lot of movie vs. book. And let’s see if I’m developing Stockholm towards it, or is it just pure masochism.
So… Let’s get this straight, this is 2001. Which is the movie in a book form, and you should know, that the book and the script were written at the same time. This is almost script in book form, but only almost. So without any more stalling, and believe me, I could stall a lot if necessary, let’s dive into this book.
We begin with our beloved man-apes, and yes, before anyone wonders, I read this part with David Attenborough’s in mind, until I realized that Arthur C. Clarke has written it in one of the man-apes’ point of view. It might be to captivate the reader, or make it more involving, but reading about an animal that purely acts on instinct is not what I’d call exciting. This part is excruciatingly long in book form, here I have to say that the movie triumphs, since the viewer doesn’t have to see every small detail of the effects of the stone tablet. How the stone tablet helped man-ape evolve into Man.
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| Whaaaaaat?! |
Finally, we get to the point where we’re introduced to Dr. Heywood Floyd. Random thought… What would his friends call him? Hey? Woody? Hey Hey? Hey Wood? Anyways, I just derailed my train of thoughts.
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| I forgot.. What was I doing? |
Ah! Right! Heywood’s on his way to the moon. And he feels like a more well-rounded character here on the book than on the film, but that’s just to expect, since it’s easier to convey it on the book.
Now we have the scene where they have landed and they’re walking around in the moon station. And yet more character development you didn’t see in the movie. I actually enjoy all this background story that keeps coming up amidst the explanations of the moon station, it makes me feel more involved, instead of just watching a man walking around the moon station, without understanding who the hell he is. Mostly because Dr. Floyd’s introduction doesn’t feel as random as it did in the film. Floyd talks to his best friend, a Russian by the name of Dimitri Moisevitch. Whereas in the film, there are two Russians and another woman asking him questions about the mission and the quarantine of the moon. Reading this book makes me realize that it feels like I’m reading the story for Dead Space, which makes me again think that I probably should get the Dead Space book as well. But I digress... And yes… There is a Dead Space book.
I wonder why Stanley Kubrick changed the Russian friend into several Russians…
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| FOCUS, YAWRET! FOCUS! |
Uhm… Right.. He’s now met with Ralph Halvorsen and Roy Michaels, the book is less cryptic than the movie here. So Dr. Floyd is here for the Stone Tablet. They just made up the story about an epidemic in the Clavius base, just to avoid panic and other stuff, which is kind of counter-productive, since and epidemic would clearly be the cause of panic.
Don’t you think?
So they’re having the briefing, and again, I get the feeling that I’m reading the story of Dead Space. With the TMA-1, which is the black stone slab they found on the moon being that thing on Dead Space that they found – The Marker.
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The movie rushed through these scenes, making it hard to follow, but the book really complements the scenes, and gives the right amount of exposition.
So they’re at the crater where the Slab is. And still it feels very much like I’m reading a Dead Space novel. (But I’m not reading that, I’m reading 2001) Here they got the shrieking static noise, which you see on the movie as well. There are really a lot of descriptions on how they’re in awe of the thing, like they’re the Unitologists from Dead Space. Wow… Dead Space has really drawn inspiration from this book. A LOT!
Discovery…
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| Yes! This is one of my favorite pictures! |
In the film, there were a lot of long sequences of them doing nothing. Let’s have a look and see how the book holds up. In the film the ship was headed to Jupiter, but here in the book they’re headed to Saturn. And we’re introduced to HAL 9000, and here he explains how much of a superpower he really is. He doesn’t need the people on this ship to steer it, he could do that. He doesn’t need people to communicate with Earth, he could do that. The people, the scientists in hibernation are mostly useless cargo for him, until they reach the destination. And Bowman and Poole are actually useless. They could’ve easily slept to the destination, but why weren’t they in hibernation?
HAL 9000: “I AM GOD!”
Now we get to read the monotonous and boring routines of Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, and my god, are they boring. Clarke describes their duties to the fullest, every single thing they have to do, every single thing they have to report on. This is really dragging on now; I had to force myself to read on.
They conduct experiments on an asteroid. Keep going to their destination. They pass Jupiter, and use its gravitational field to gain speed. Now they’re over a hundred days away from Saturn. At this point I just hoped it won’t feel like a hundred days, reading about them reaching Saturn.
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| Woops! Wrong Saturn! |
Not that Saturn!
It’s Poole’s birthday when HAL tells the two about the AE-35 unit, where he predicts it will fault within 72 hours. They will now go out, take it down, and replace it. Try to figure out what will fail in the AE-35, try to fix it again and Poole will get knocked down by his own pod. This scene is very similar to the movie. Except… I can’t remember the birthday scene. HAL is even creepier and nastier on the book than on film.
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| This is the love child of HAL 9000 and SKYNET. There's no way that SKYNET alone could be as vicious as it is. Maybe SKYNET is the love child of HAL 9000 and the CYLONS, and the TERMINATORS are their grand-children. But all this is, of course, just speculation. |
We get the story we didn’t get in the movie, the reason to HAL’s actions. Which is actually mentioned in 2010 – The Year We Made Contact. HAL was programmed to be truthful, but the mission orders he has gotten from the higher ups, tells him to conceal the truth from Poole and Bowman. Which makes HAL into a neurotic bastard that needs to get rid himself of the reason of concealment, Bowman and Poole. One down, one to go. HAL opens the bay doors to suck out the atmosphere, and let in the vacuum. Bowman saves himself in the nick of time, but loses his remaining crewmembers. Bowman sets out to the main processor of HAL, HAL still talking conversationally, not aware that he is causing the problems. In the book, there is less malice in HAL’s character than there was in the film. Bowman “kills” HAL.
I think I’ll stop here, since now in the movie all we see are confusing images, while the book somehow actually starts to explain a lot more at this point.
So far… I have mixed feelings about this book, I like it at some parts, but at others… It really drags out.
Don’t miss the exciting continuance of this Sci-Fi epic, and the answer if I started to like it, or like the punishment.
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