Jellybabies and gummibears! Lend me your eyes!
As I mentioned in the end of my previous post, this is where the book explains a lot better than the movie.
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| That shouldn’t be so hard to figure out, I know, Bison |
Anyways… Let’s dig in to the rest of this mind-numbingly long book review.
Bowman’s now putting the ship back together after HAL’s rampage, and learning about the true nature of the mission. Yes! Frank Poole and Dave Bowman did NOT know about the true nature of the mission. Frank was killed without knowing why. It was because HAL’s programming made him a paranoid psycho, which angers Dave when he finds out. And who wouldn’t be angry?
“Uhm… Your friend was killed by a malfunctioning program.”
It’s explained that HAL has a conscience and that it was gnawing on him since he couldn’t tell Frank and Dave anything about the true form of the mission. HAL panics in the end and tries to get rid of the evidence, but is caught in the act causing him to go on a murder spree. Poor HAL?
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| Do you feel sympathy for this? |
Now he’s getting closer to Saturn. The question is… Is there a greeting party to welcome him?
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| Don’t forget to wipe your feet. |
Wow.. A whole chapter for speculations of what the extra-terrestrials might be like. Here’s where the movie kind of lost me, I didn’t know that Bowman had been alone for three months, and is fighting the feeling of loneliness by playing music, plays, audio books and such. He’s closing up on Saturn now, and is looking at it through a telescope in amazement. He feels pride that he is going to be the Ambassador of Earth. I think it’s unfortunate, because to me it seems like he’s lost his marbles. And he takes great care to not have seemed to have lost his marbles, it points out that this guy’s rambling mad.
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| No, mission control.. I am fine. Everything is fine and dandy. |
Dave finally reaches Saturn (Not Jupiter like in the movie), and is starting to orbit one of the moons, the Japetus. The only reason why the Japetus is Discovery’s goal is because the other half is white and the other half is completely dark. The shiny part seems almost artificial. Bowman, spending the last of Discovery’s fuel to get to the Japetus’ gravitational orbit, considers the Japetus as a big eye. Clearly Dave has lost his mind, and he knows it, and thus has kept his inner musings to himself, and not reported them to Mission Control. The Japetus is housing the TMA-1’s big brother, another slab.
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| I did see it coming a mile away. From the distance from Japetus to Discovery, one could say. |
Here’s another chapter about the extraterrestrials, and how they’ve manipulated millions of worlds, just like they did with the man-apes. They were now the lords of space or something. They had now removed themselves from their bodies; the only thing they hadn’t got rid of was death.
Seriously, the movie was better paced at this moment, we have spent several chapters just to see Bowman go down to the Japetus and enter the damn Star Gate. Did I skip anything? No! The Slab on Japetus is a Star Gate. And here is when he says: “My god! It’s full of stars!” And after that I will quote the chapter that comes after that:
“The Star Gate opened. The Star Gate closed. In a moment of time too short to be measured, Space turned and twisted upon itself. Then Japetus was alone once more, as it had been for three million years – alone, except for a deserted but not yet derelict ship, sending back to its makers messages which they could neither believe nor understand.”
This is where Stanley Kubrick tried to use seizure inducing images to explain what was happening, but just left me confused. And now seems rushed for some reason, maybe Stanley got as impatient at this part and just wanted it to be over.
When he comes out from the slab, he sees a white sky with black stars, and that’s why Kubrick used the negative effect on the picture. Then he goes through another slab and ends up near a Red Sun with wrecks of spaceships around it. Clarke hints to that they were left because they weren’t needed. While he is floating above the surface of the red sun, he is somehow transported to this hotel. Where everything seems a-OK, Bowman himself thinks he’s gone bonkers, but as a curious man, he starts to inspect the place. He is vary of many things, realizes that most of the stuff is just surfaces, with no content. He finds a room, and he changes into clothes, eats, showers, watches TV and goes to sleep. Is he in the aliens’ test rooms?
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| “Tsk, tsk. Our first human, and we got the bad specimen.” |
Something is observing David Bowman while he is sleeping. Then we switch to Dave’s point of view again, and then he goes through all his memories. And I mean ALL of his memories. Suddenly, a baby starts crying. Dave Bowman has changed into this being without physical form, something the author had mentioned in the beginning. And that’s why he had turned into a baby, since he was just a baby space being, learning… And learning fast. He is now a Star-Child. He returned to Earth, but I can’t fathom why. To protect it perhaps?
So, what did I learn from this? That I should never, ever, ever review a book… Ever! It’s too time consuming, too much to remember, and frankly, too much work. Especially this book, the beginning was a hard read, the middle went fine, and the end was too slow… And anticlimactic.
The movie’s end was too compressed, this one was too long. I’m never going to get satisfied, when it comes to 2001.
So.. I asked a question in this title, as well as the introduction in part 1. Stockholm syndrome or Masochism? Well… I have to be honest, a part of me liked the book, the sci-fi geek in me, but another part of me just trudged along the pages, a part I don’t know is. But the more I think of it… I think I just LOVE punishing myself.
Like reminding me that Star Wars is coming in 3D
Anyways… Go ahead and give me suggestions what to do next in the comments, because I am spent after this, and I’m almost all out of ideas. So help me! Find me a crappy movie, a game or whatever to rant about. Anything but a book.
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