Poll of the Day > Just finished reading 2001 a space odyssey

(+) Yeah! (+)

Clarke was such a visionary, it's pretty crazy. Loved the book and glad I've been getting into sci-fi books over the last year or so. As with most books it was better than the movie.

Anyone else here read it?

Clarke also wrote The Lost Worlds of 2001, which has material from the earlier drafts of the novel that didn't make it into the final version.

Fun fact, the book was written after the movie.

It was (mostly) written concurrently, Clarke worked with Kubrick on the script for the movie and published the book shortly after release.

I had 2010: Odyssey Two and I was fairly certain I had a couple of anthologies but the one story I am remembering from the anthology is actually Robert A Heinlein's Life-Line...

I also had Light of Other Days (with Stephen Baxter) but I don't remember if I ever actually read it.

shadowsword87 posted...

Fun fact, the book was written after the movie.

In turn, the movie was inspired by an earlier short story, so he wrote a novelization of a movie based on one of his own stories.

KodyKeir posted...

I was fairly certain I had a couple of anthologies but the one story I am remembering from the anthology is actually Robert A Heinlein's Life-Line...

It's actually been bugging me since I saw this thread yesterday, I am certain a teacher gave me a collection of stories from Clarke but everything I remember about it points to it being a collection from Heinlein. Going through Clarke's bibliography, the only thing that rings a bell is Light of Other Days (definitely not it) and going through Heinlein's bibliography nothing is ringing any bells (even the books where Life-Line is included)

I wish I could remember the title.

Finish the series. It's pretty good. The books are a lot less boring than the movie.

The end of book 2 seriously fucked me up. I actually had a dream that somehow my dumb fuck husband somehow caused Jupiter to detonate, creating the secondary star they called lucifer.

I read it recently. Really enjoyed it, not sure why I waited so long to read it

I have all 4 of the Space Odyssey books, I just haven't gotten around to reading them. I only recently got 2001 because Amazon almost never puts it on sale, unlike the others.

KodyKeir posted...

It's actually been bugging me since I saw this thread yesterday, I am certain a teacher gave me a collection of stories from Clarke but everything I remember about it points to it being a collection from Heinlein. Going through Clarke's bibliography, the only thing that rings a bell is Light of Other Days (definitely not it) and going through Heinlein's bibliography nothing is ringing any bells (even the books where Life-Line is included)

I wish I could remember the title.

Did you find it yet?

Revelation34 posted...

Did you find it yet?

Not yet, I might have to call him up.

The movie is really way ahead of its time and has some very artistic shots and transitions

But holy shit it is a SLOG at times

Metalsonic66 posted...

The movie is really way ahead of its time and has some very artistic shots and transitions

But holy shit it is a SLOG at times

Personally I loved the movie, I enjoy when stories take their time to build up, whether it's in a movie or book. Maybe it's just me but it feels more grounded when not everything is rushed to the point.

I feel like you generally find that in older books

I'm okay with a story taking it's time

Sometimes you gotta do something to wake the audience up though.

Les Mis is an amazing book but the story comes to a complete halt for chapters at a time for exposition and backstory dumps

Check out Heinlien and Asimov if you have not yet (along with Frank Herbert etc). Old Sci fi was pretty great although I have not kept up with the genre for over 20 years now.

Stranger in a strange land is a good one to start with (was the product of a bet between him and L Ron Hubbard (don't read his books), which he won resoundingly.

I totally grok his books.

Clarke and Asimov are absolute units. Heinlein is hit or miss. Niven was great at giant set pieces but wrote dialog like Sheldon Cooper would. He really shines when he lets others write humans being humans, and in Lucifer's Hammer you can literally see when each author tags out. Ringworld has an amazing setting and the most...robotic dialog.

Scifi in general has one major drawback to me that really breaks the immersion in a way that fantasy can't.

Fantasy never ages. Swords are always swords. Magic fireballs are always whoosh burn.

In sci-fi, it always has the stink of when it was written. I'm not shitting on classic sci-fi, but centuries in the future, people are still being couriered "holotapes". Picard sits at his desk doing personell reviews with 2 dozen PADDs on his desk because in 1986 one tablet multitasking with multiple windows was inconceivable.

Scifi is great, but it ages like milk and fish in a way fantasy just doesn't.

JimBeamMeUp posted...

In sci-fi, it always has the stink of when it was written. I'm not s***ting on classic sci-fi, but centuries in the future, people are still being couriered "holotapes". Picard sits at his desk doing personell reviews with 2 dozen PADDs on his desk because in 1986 one tablet multitasking with multiple windows was inconceivable.

It sounds like someone hasn't lived the multi-pad lifestyle.
It's like dual monitors for your desk.

shadowsword87 posted...

It sounds like someone hasn't lived the multi-pad lifestyle.
It's like dual monitors for your desk.

You obviously get my point though. A sword cleaving an orc in twain is never "cringe worthy". Watching Picard struggle to carry 2 dozen "tablets" to his desk to perform a simple administrative task is hard to look at when I'm literally sitting within 3 feet of 2 cellphones, a tablet, a Chromebook, a laptop, and a desktop and all of them are more than capable of multitasking whilst light speed or multiple factors of lightspeed still elude us completely.

It's sort of ironic how badly a lot of elements of sci-fi age so poorly given Clarke's great quote about "any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic" when some of the absolute units of sci-fi have anachronistic tech whereas things like airships in fantasy can just be handwaved as "magitech".

JimBeamMeUp posted...

centuries in the future, people are still being couriered "holotapes".

https://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3858

JimBeamMeUp posted...

You obviously get my point though. A sword cleaving an orc in twain is never "cringe worthy". Watching Picard struggle to carry 2 dozen "tablets" to his desk to perform a simple administrative task is hard to look at when I'm literally sitting within 3 feet of 2 cellphones, a tablet, a Chromebook, a laptop, and a desktop and all of them are more than capable of multitasking whilst light speed or multiple factors of lightspeed still elude us completely.

It's sort of ironic how badly a lot of elements of sci-fi age so poorly given Clarke's great quote about "any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic" when some of the absolute units of sci-fi have anachronistic tech whereas things like airships in fantasy can just be handwaved as "magitech".

Yes, betting on where the future can lead us just leads to kind of poor imaginings of what the future could be.
But, that's not what makes scifi interesting, the ability to teleport a missile onto another persons ship, or shoot a gauss rifle with flechette bullets to zip though someone, or the ability to have personal flying machines is interesting, but, that's not why I care about scifi settings. It's the fact that scifi is inherently a human question, it's the fact that we have the effective power of gods, but, not necessarily the morality to follow through with it. It amplifies and shows who we are and what we do, and how we justify it.

A lot of the "scifi greats" aren't about what technology is and what it can do, it's following through with the thought of so what. If humans had the ability to travel through space, but are still stuck in tribalism, so what do you get? Dune. If you have humans travel through space, but, hold themselves to an unbendable moral/ethical code, what do you get? Star Trek. Basically every Assimov short story and book is just about humans dealing with who they are, and the technology passes over.

The technology is just a gravy on top of a story about who humans are, and how far we go, in scifi greats.

shadowsword87 posted...

Yes, betting on where the future can lead us just leads to kind of poor imaginings of what the future could be.
But, that's not what makes scifi interesting, the ability to teleport a missile onto another persons ship, or shoot a gauss rifle with flechette bullets to zip though someone, or the ability to have personal flying machines is interesting, but, that's not why I care about scifi settings. It's the fact that scifi is inherently a human question, it's the fact that we have the effective power of gods, but, not necessarily the morality to follow through with it. It amplifies and shows who we are and what we do, and how we justify it.

A lot of the "scifi greats" aren't about what technology is and what it can do, it's following through with the thought of so what. If humans had the ability to travel through space, but are still stuck in tribalism, so what do you get? Dune. If you have humans travel through space, but, hold themselves to an unbendable moral/ethical code, what do you get? Star Trek. Basically every Assimov short story and book is just about humans dealing with who they are, and the technology passes over.

The technology is just a gravy on top of a story about who humans are, and how far we go, in scifi greats.

I'm not disagreeing with you. The "Hero's Journey" is one of the oldest tropes for a reason. All I'm saying is that the set pieces in sci-fi work very differently than they do in fantasy settings.