2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C ClarkeTakeaway: The unknown may be the greatest horror of all.

I am a fan of science fiction.  And I know I have seen 2001 at least twice.  But I did not really remember much about it outside of the main story and the beautiful space shots.  So when it was the Kindle Daily Deal last week I picked up the kindle version.  And since the audiobook was discounted to $1.99 with purchase of the kindle book I picked that up as well and alternated between reading on kindle and listening to the audiobook.

(If you have a kindle and like audiobooks you really should try whyspersync.  It is Amazon’s ability for you to move seamlessly between your kindle and audible.com audiobook without losing your place. I have started using it quite a bit.)

This edition of the book opens with an introduction by Arthur C Clarke.  He read the introduction in 2000 (when he was 82 and 8 years before he died.)  In audio, it is actually him reading the introduction and his age is evident.  I had no idea that the book and the movie were written together at the same time.  Clarke and Kubrick made changes to each in order to incorporate elements from one into the other.  But there are differences and I will go back and watch the movie soon.

It is always interesting reading historical books about the future.  There are always accurate assumptions, but so much is also wrong.  The flight to the moon at the beginning of the book shows the sexism of the times with a young female flight attendant.  And in the description of the moon base it talks about the expense of having 8 different options of images of Earth that you could put in your apartment’s “window”.  Clarke couldn’t conceive of the ability of digital storage being so cheap that unlimited image storage would be possible.

Once I finished the book I am pretty sure I never watched (or read) 2010 or 3001.  I need to pick those up.

2001: A Space Odyssey Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Audiobook is discounted to $1.99 with purchase of Kindle Book and the Kindle Version is lendable.  If you want to borrow the kindle edition leave a comment below.

Leave a Comment