Arthur C. CLARKE developed the original idea for
2001: A Space Odyssey in 1953 in a short story titled “Sentinel of Eternity,” later just “Sentinel,” in
which an expedition to the Moon discovers what
is obviously an artifact left by previous visitors,
presumably alien, that never reveals its purpose.
Fifteen years later, Clarke would coauthor a script
with Stanley Kubrick that would be made into one
of the most famous science fiction films of all
time. He simultaneously wrote a book-length version that was released at the same time as the
movie.
The novel explains some but not all of the artifact’s purpose and reveals that its alien builders
had manipulated protohominids to stimulate them
into using tools, thus starting the chain of events
that resulted in intelligent human beings. The
novel then jumps to the near future, in which a
space mission is threatened by a malfunctioning artificial intelligence, the famous Hal, and later a
mystical experience that transforms the only survivor. This vision of a future in which humanity
evolves into another stage of existence can also be
found in Clarke’s earlier novel Childhood’s End
(1953) and was hinted at in his first book-length
fiction, Against the Fall of Night (1948/53).
Clarke revisited this theme in 2010: Odyssey
Two (1982). The defective computer Hal is reactivated in an attempt to discover what went wrong,
while elsewhere an expedition is mounted to visit
the moons of Jupiter, where more alien monoliths
have been discovered. This novel was subsequently
filmed, but much less successfully. 2061: Odyssey
Three (1988) continued the story, with an ever
more ambitious human project to study the monoliths, which appear to be watching over the emergence of another form of intelligent life in the
Jovian system and which eventually will instigate a
major astronomical upheaval to ensure their safety
and prevent humans from interfering with their
development. The series was brought to an apparent close in 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997),
wherein the body of the astronaut lost in 2001 is
recovered and reanimated, and in which humanity
must find a way to deal with an alien monolith
that apparently is malfunctioning. Although the
three sequels are all solidly written, they lack the
freshness that characterized the first book in the
series and most of Clarke’s other work.