2001: A Space Odyssey

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Hard Cover, USA, 1st Edition.

Status

I do not own this book, but have listened to it on audio book.

Review

Overall, I enjoyed this novel, but it felt pretty disjointed. The three main sections are tied together by a common theme, but not well enough for my tastes. It felt more like three different books in a series. I liked the description of the early ape-men society, and the suspense of finding the monolith on the moon, I also liked the fear of HAL, but overall, I think this was underplayed. Clarke gives away too much to the reader, killing the suspense, and HAL never really seemed like much of a threat despite his hyper-intelligent AI. I also felt the ending was too long and descriptive of things that were essentially impossible to picture in my head. I liked the idea of the alien race using their powers to construct an Earth-like setting based on poorly understood information from Earth, an idea seen over and over again in sci-fi (Contact, Star Trek: TNG, Interstellar, etc.), but since the aliens were essentially god-like, this seems out-of-place.

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