2001, A space odyssey door Arthur C. Clarke

Number of pages 224 1. Where does the story take place? It begins on the Earth with the evolving of the man-ape culture. After that it begins on Earth, then moving through space towards the moon and also on the moon. Then the store goes on, on Earth and then through space towards Jupiter. And via Jupiter towards Saturn, and via a moon of Saturn to a new dimension. 2. When does the story take place? The story begins three million years ago, and some time to evolve after that. Then the story continues in the future, somewhere in the beginning of the 21st century. Then the story goes on in the next five years.
3. Title explanation. 2001, the beginning of the voyage to the moon and the discovery of the black monolith. An odyssey is to come, just like the real odyssey, like Orpheus, it is an voyage with an unknown goal, what will become of the trip is not sure yet. 4. Description main character(s). 4.1 Dave Bowman. Dave is an astronaut. He is chosen to lead the voyage. He is about 35/40 years old For I know he is not married and has no real relatives at home, because the book doesn't speak about that. He must be pretty famous, because the whole world hears
about him in the news reports. His character is good. He is social, although you only know him with Frank Poole and HAL. He respects his colleagues, but when his three hibernation colleagues were about to die, he didn't really care. He was glad
that they weren't his friends. He is very independent, he had to be, he was alone for a couple of months and managed to run the ship on his own. He is also very focused on time, he follows his schedule flawless. I know nothing about his life on Earth. 4.2 Frank Poole Frank is important in the story, but the book is not shown from his perspective. Only how he is seen from Dave's eyes. Frank is also an astronaut, but with another task than Dave, Frank is more a technician. He can fix things very good. He is a very cautious man. He checks his space routines always twice, and performs them with precision. Just like Dave, Frank is a schedule man. He gets up at the same times and performs his tasks at the same time. I don't know if Frank is social. His marital and family status on
Earth is not known either.
4.3 Heywood Floyd Floyd is the main character in the beginning of the story, he is also an astronaut. He has to go to the moon. He is fond of luxuries I think. He likes to be in space and do research. He has three children at home. I presume he is a friendly man. And aged somewhere around 40. 5. Theme(s) The book is all about space. Voyaging, research, extra-terrestrial contact and exploring. Arthur C. Clarke, is a man with a very big sense of precision. He describes the surroundings with great precision and comes up with things that no other writer would think of, really amazing. His meaning for the book is to show his readers how the future could look like
in a couple of decades, I think he has sources in NASA etceteras, so he certainly knows what he talks about. The whole theme of the book is laid to exploring, dealing with unknown situations and learning. The theme leads to unknown information. It is really a good science fiction book. 6. Which part did you like best, why? I liked the beginning best. The possible (fiction) answer for evolution. Aliens that taught man-apes to use tools and help them evolve. I have read his second book, that is completely like this book, but the prologue of this book is interesting, and a nice
solution. 7. Which part did you like least, why? I did not like the last part, when Dave is in the monolith on one of Saturn's moons. The piece is very blurry, I didn't know what he tried to describe. He tried too hard to give details. I didn't understand a great part of the last thirty pages. It was just too difficult. 8. Overall opinion. I think this book is quite good, Clarke is one of the best writers of science fiction books. I would give it a 7.5. His view on space travelling is nice, he gives a lot of detail and knows
a lot about this sort of things. It was nice to read the book.
9. Extract of the story : The story begins with a sort of prologue, it speaks of a group of man-apes. They are not on top of the food chain, so they have to be cautious with every move they make not to be eaten by predators. They usually only eat plants, nuts, berries etceteras. But one day something strange happens. An object arises from the skies and settles in the ape territory. At night, the rectangle shaped object hypnotises the apes and orders them to come to it. When all the apes have arrived it learns them how to use objects to advance their way of living, and give evolution a push. When the session is over the apes return to normal, but now they have their skill of tools. They use their skill to hunt down animals, and so gain a place on top of the food-chain. Now they don't have to be hungry again. And the evolution can take place. (Now
the story goes three million years ahead). Odyssey 2001 is the prequel to his next story, the Odyssey 2010. While reading the story I have found out that the two stories have pretty much in comment. The story of his first space story starts like this. Heywood Floyd is a respected astronaut and space-expert. He is on a mission to the moon, sector Tycho. He has to go there because something suspicious has happened. A whole crew has disappeared and no one has heard of them. Heywood is directed through the moonbase and gets to ride a moonbus. This is all fun but the real work is to come. There is something up that no one would have dared to dream of. While scanning the Tycho-environment something weird is noticed. The magnetic field in the Tycho-canyon is very strange, it is very large and abnormal, but there is no natural cause. So the team starts digging. What they find is absolutely astonishing. It is a cubicle, five feet high, made of an unknown material. Presumably extraterrestrial. It was buried eleven feet beneath the moon surface. The crew doesn't have a moment to overcome this remarkable happening when suddenly a burst of energy leaves the cubicle. All the sensors and electronic equipment go berserk. Later appears that all the Earth's sensors throughout the solar system recorded this blast of energy. But the most peculiar about it is that the beam points directly to Saturn. (Now the story
leaves Heywood and turns over to Dave Bowman and Frank Poole.) Dave and Frank are sent on a voyage to Jupiter with their ship the Discovery. Three of their companions are deeply asleep in hibernation compartments. This is to prevent useless food and oxygen usage. When they are needed they will be woken up. The Discovery is run by a genius computer called Hal 9000. HAL runs all the necessary items that have to be done during the daily period. He runs oxygen control, the hibernation compartments, food supplies and notices any problems that may occur in such a period. HAL can also talk so he is a source of fun or to kill boredom. The two colleagues become friends during their trip to Jupiter, a massive bowl of ever moving gas. As they approach Jupiter Frank and Dave have sweet memories of Earth. Then they arrive at Jupiter and are about to perform their first roundabout. They will lose contact with Earth for an hour. When they turn face to face with Earth again something strange happens. HAL reports a failure. He says that a fragment of the radar, that can point to Earth with a precision of a thousands of a degree, is broken and needs to be fixed within seventy-two hours or contact with Earth will collapse. Frank is the extra-vehicular expert, so he will leave Discovery and fix the
device. When he has replaced the broken fragment and Frank and Dave have researched the broken fragment, they get a real shock. The fragment is not broken. HAL has lied! Dave and Frank won't be able to follow HAL his orders again. But HAL says that the fault is really a fault. Although the fault is not in the fragment, it will be in the whole structure. Dave and Frank presume this is right and go on. They report HAL his strange notice to Earth and go on. But a week later HAL reports another failure in the radar system. Frank and Dave talk this strange incident over and decide to give it another check. Frank leaves Discovery again and in his space-pod he travels towards the radar. He leaves his pod to alter the radar manually. But HAL throttles the pod at full speed towards Frank and kills him. Dave is astonished and can't trust HAL again. But HAL goes on. While Dave tries to wake up his frozen colleagues from their eternal hibernation it seems that HAL has also killed them because there is no signal of life after initiating the de-hibernation sequence. Then it happens. The two doors that protect the ship from the vacuum that belongs to space open and the air, and loose objects that lie in the ship are sucked out of the ship and sent into and Jovian orbit. Dave is still in the ship and must find a way to gain oxygen or he will die. With his breath hold he finds a little cabin that is used for such emergencies. He goes in and turns on the oxygen. He thinks for a minute and decides to put on his space suit and shut down HAL. HAL tries to give Dave second thoughts, but after killing Frank, Dave can't trust HAL again. He enters HAL his control room and pulls out all his intelligence cables. Now HAL
is just an ordinary computer that can't speak and think anymore. Dave returns peace on Discovery again and makes contact to Earth. After telling the story, he has to talk to Heywood Floyd. Floyd tells Dave all about the moon-trip and the rectangular object. Dave is astonished and can't think of anything else. But Floyd tells Dave that he is in space for another purpose than exploring Jupiter. He has to go to Saturn and especially to on of its moons. Because that is where the signal went that was sent from the moon. Now on his new mission Dave will spend a couple of months to get to Saturn. He kills the time with watching television, listen to operas and eventually listening to musical plays such as Beethoven and Mozart. When he arrives at Saturn he gets closer and closer. But contact with Earth will take six hours now, because a message at the speed of light will take three hours to get there. But when Dave gets a closer look at one of Saturns moons he discovers something new. On its surface is a second block of black material, just like on the moon. It is its Big Brother. When Dave is just a few hundred miles from the moons
surface he decides to take his pod and explore the block. He isn't gonna return to Earth anyway, he has a couple of months worth of supplies and it will take the rescue ship three years to get to him. He enters the moons surface and while getting closer to the block, its perspective changes and Dave is sucked in, in some kind of strange way. What happens next is very strange. He is in a new universe, billions of light year away from our solar
system. Dave witnesses a White Dwarf incident. A sun like ours, but a billion times more its mass, that is eating a whole solar system. Normally Dave is dead meat, but something is protecting him and he survives. Then Dave is in a human room, but it is
not real, something is trying to gain his trust, all the food exists of a blue substance, that is pretty good eatable though. Then Dave is not Dave anymore, mind over matter. His mind has left his body and is now a being of pure energy, not relative to time anymore. With his new form Dave goes back to the Earth, not knowing what will become of him in the future.