2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. It was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick's film version and published after the release of the film. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the book together, but eventually only Clarke ended up as the official author. An elaboration of Clarke and Kubrick's collaborative work on this project was made in the 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001.

The story is based in part on various short stories by Clarke, including "The Sentinel" (written in 1948 for a BBC competition, but first published in 1951 under the title "Sentinel of Eternity"). The first part of the novel, in which aliens influence the primitive ancestors of humans, is similar to the plot of Clarke's 1953 short story "Encounter in the Dawn".

By 1992, the novel had sold three million copies worldwide.

Plot summary A mysterious alien civilization uses a tool with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life. The book shows one such monolith appearing in prehistoric Africa, three million years ago, where it inspires a starving group of hominids to develop tools. The hominids use their tools to kill animals and eat meat, ending their starvation. They then use the tools to kill a leopard preying on them; the next day, the main ape character, Moon-Watcher, uses a club to kill the leader of a rival tribe.

In AD 1999, Dr. Heywood Floyd travels to the Moon's Clavius Base, where a scientist explains that they have found an electromagnetic disturbance, designated Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One (or TMA-1), near the crater Tycho. Excavation has revealed a large black slab, precisely fashioned to a ratio of 1:4:9 (or 12:22:32) and therefore believed the work of intelligence. Visiting TMA-1, Floyd and others arrive just as sunlight falls upon it for the first time since it was uncovered; it emits a piercing radio transmission which the scientists determine is directed at Iapetus, a moon of Saturn.

A mission, Discovery One, is sent to Iapetus. En route, Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole are the only conscious humans aboard; their three colleagues are in suspended animation, to be awakened near Saturn. The HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent computer addressed as "Hal", maintains the ship. The first stages of the mission are achieved as planned and on schedule.

While Poole is receiving a birthday message from his family on Earth, Hal tells Bowman that the AE-35 communication unit of the ship is going to malfunction. Poole takes one of the extra-vehicular pods and swaps the AE-35 unit; but when Bowman conducts tests on the removed AE-35 unit, he determines that there was never anything wrong with it. Poole and Bowman become suspicious at Hal's refusal to admit that his diagnosis was mistaken.

As Poole is replacing the unit, he is killed when his pod accelerates into him, crushing him. Bowman, uncertain of Hal's role therein, decides to wake the other three astronauts, and therefore quarrels with Hal, with Hal refusing to obey his orders. Bowman threatens to disconnect him if his orders are not obeyed, and Hal relents. As Bowman begins to awaken his colleagues, he hears Hal open both airlocks into space, releasing the ship's internal atmosphere. From a sealed emergency shelter, Bowman gains a spacesuit and re-enters the ship, where he shuts down Hal's consciousness, leaving intact only his autonomic functions, and manually re-establishes contact with Earth. He then learns that his mission is to explore Iapetus,See #Iapetus versus Japetus in the hope of contacting the society that buried the monolith on the Moon. Bowman learns that Hal had begun to feel guilty at keeping the purpose of the mission from him and Poole, against his stated mission of gathering information and reporting it fully; and when threatened with disconnection, he panicked and defended himself out of a belief that his very existence was at stake, having no concept of sleep and that one may waken from it. Hal had feared that his disconnection meant death.

Bowman spends months on the ship alone, slowly approaching Iapetus. During his approach, he gradually notices a small black spot on the surface of Iapetus, and later finds it identical in shape to TMA-1, only much larger. The scientists on Earth name this monolith "TMA-2", which Bowman identifies as a double misnomer because it is not in the Tycho crater and gives off no magnetic anomaly. When Bowman approaches the monolith, it opens and pulls in Bowman's pod. Before he vanishes, Mission Control hears him proclaim: "The thing's hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it's full of stars!"See p. 254 of paperback edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Bowman is transported via the monolith to an unknown star system, through a large interstellar switching station, and sees other species' spaceships going on other routes. Bowman is given a wide variety of sights, from the wreckage of ancient civilizations to what appear to be life-forms, living on the surface of a red giant star. He is brought to what appears a pleasant hotel suite, carefully designed to make him feel at ease, and falls asleep, whereupon he becomes an immortal "Star-Child" that can live and travel in space. The Star-Child then returns to Earth, where he intercepts an orbiting nuclear weapon and safely detonates it outside the atmosphere before it can reach its intended target.

Characters

Main characters

Moon-Watcher: An Australopithecus africanusRice, Stanley A. (2007). Encyclopedia of Evolution. Infobase Publishing. p. 32. . "...it was at first thought that A. africanus was a hunter...the image presented by writer Robert Ardrey, upon which writer Arthur C. Clarke based the opening of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. man-ape who lived in dry equatorial Africa, circa 3,000,000 BC. He, his tribe, and his species were faced with extinction, but for the intervention of a monolith which imbued him and his fellows with the beginnings of higher intelligence. Evolution then took its course. Dr. Heywood Floyd: Astronomer and chairman of the "National Council of Astronautics", who is flown from the Earth to the Moon on a secret mission concerning the Tycho monolith, or TMA-1, a second monolith which has been discovered on the Moon, and excavated by an American geological survey team from Clavius Base. In Floyd's presence, the Tycho monolith, being struck by sunlight for the first time in three million years, sends an extremely powerful energy burst in the direction of Saturn. David Bowman/Star-Child: First Captain of the Discovery, an American spacecraft which had previously been intended to visit the Jupiter system, but which has recently instead been charged with exploring Saturn. Unbeknownst to Bowman and his deputy Frank Poole, the true objective of the mission is reconnaissance of Saturn space, implicated by the above energy signal direction, where it is thought that further clues to the aliens' intent may be found. Bowman becomes the Star Child after entering the Iapetus monolith (TMA-2). Frank Poole: Bowman's deputy. Bowman and Poole routinely toggle shifts and roles in order to maintain a continuous, waking presence on board the Discovery. Poole is attacked and seemingly killed by HAL while performing EVA maintenance. HAL 9000: The Discovery's intelligent, on board ship's computer, capable of monitoring all ship functions, and holding conversations and maintaining relationships with human beings. HAL malfunctions, killing all crew members with the exception of Bowman; this was a result both of HAL being entrusted with the true objective of the Discovery's mission, and also of being charged with keeping it a secret until the appropriate time. These orders conflict with HAL's basic purpose, which is the accurate and complete communication of information to humans.

Minor characters Over the course of the novel, several minor characters either appear very briefly or are named only in passing, including other man-apes, spaceflight staff, lunar station security, and Discovery crew members. Among the novel's minor characters, some of the more consequential are listed below (often having direct film equivalents, or else being recurring characters in the Odyssey novel series). One-Ear: The leader of the "Others", a rival tribe of Australopithecus africanus man-apes, thus the enemy of Moon-Watcher and his tribe. Aside from his eponymic disfigurement, One-Ear is described as being the same age and size as Moon-Watcher, but in "poorer shape". Inter-tribal confrontations reveal a leadership style characterized by concealing his fear behind either screeching bravado or "exaggerated dignity". When faced with his most lethal opponent, One-Ear appears to be either "too brave or too stupid to run". None of the Others, including One-Ear, are depicted as being evaluated or transformed by a monolith. Dr. Dimitri Moisevitch: A good friend of Floyd's (and citizen of the rival U.S.S.R.), who diplomatically presses Floyd about the Americans' "outbreak" cover story (intended to keep outsiders away from the discovery of the Tycho monolith) while both are aboard Space Station One, a stopping-point between the Earth and the Moon. In the film, Moisevitch's role is carried out by a character of a different name, Dr. Andrey Smislov, while the character of Moisevitch as-such makes appearances throughout the rest of the Odyssey series and in the opening scene of the 2010 film. Moisevitch, like Floyd, is written as a cagey and worldly bureaucrat. Ralph Halvorsen: Administrator of the Southern Province and leader of Clavius Base, Halvorsen represents American interests on the Moon, and receives Floyd at Clavius to gather information about the Tycho monolith. Nick Miller: A member of Station Security at Space Station One who accompanies Dr. Floyd during his layover between Earth and the Moon. He strategically pulls Floyd away from Moisevitch, who startles Miller and Floyd by bringing up "TMA-1". Whitehead, Kaminski, and Hunter: a trio of astronauts who are put aboard the Discovery in hibernation, in order to conserve resources. In the event of the deaths of Bowman or Poole, the hibernating astronauts are to be revived in the order given. Consequently, upon Poole's presumptive death, Bowman partially revived Whitehead until HAL depressurized the Discovery, killing the three while Bowman escaped to a secure area. In the film, HAL kills the trio by simply shutting off their life support functions while Bowman is on EVA in an effort to recover Poole's body; in the film, the trio are instead styled as Kimball, Kaminsky, and Hunter. Dr. Chandra: Briefly cited by HAL during his de-activation as being his first instructor, who taught him to sing "Daisy". In the film, this initial instructor is instead named as "Mr. Langley"; however the character of Dr. Chandra features throughout the rest of the Odyssey franchise, especially in the 2010 book and film. Anna, Betty, Clara: The namesakes of the Discovery's three EVA pods. In other films and novels of the franchise, these pods are given different naming conventions. Betty is the pod which, under HAL's control, presumptively causes Poole's death.

Sequels 2010: Odyssey Two, a 1982 sequel to the book, was adapted as a motion picture in 1984. Clarke went on to write two more sequel novels: 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) and 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997). the last two novels have yet to be adapted as films.

Reception James Blish commented that while Clarke's narrative provided essential elements of the story that Kubrick ignored or glossed over, "The novel has very little of the poetry of the picture" and "lacks most of the picture's strengths", but that "it has to be read before one can understand the picture"."The Future in Books", Amazing Stories, January 1969, pp. 141-42