"2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke

Spanning across three million years, "2001" tells the story of humankind's meeting with an advanced extra-terrestrial race that visits us early in our evolution and leaves a buried artefact on the moon allowing our contemporary space-faring society (or at least the society of the near future) to make contact. The book is composed of three subsequent story-lines. In the first story-line an advanced extra-terrestrial race visits early hominoids three million years ago on the plains of Africa and imbues the struggling and nearly-extinct "man-apes" with the subconscious knowledge needed for our successful development as a species. The visitors provide a local tribe leader "Moon-Watcher" with the inspiration to use stone tools to hunt for food, fend off predators and conquer an opposing tribe. In the second story-line, three million years later in the year 1999, Dr. Heywood Floyd, chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, is heading to Clavius base on Earth's moon to visit a recently uncovered and highly secret artefact. The artefact is a large black monolith with side-lengths at a perfect ratio of 1:4:9, buried under geologically ancient moondust and therefore believed to be very old and of alien origin. The artefact has only recently been dug-up and coincidental to Dr. Floyd's arrival, the monolith is exposed to sunlight for the first time in three millions years, triggering a powerful radio signal to be broadcast out of the artefact to the deep reaches of the solar system.

In the third (and largest story-line) a manned space mission is sent to Saturn with the secret objective of tracking the calculated destination of the radio signal. The ship is co-piloted by David Bowman and Frank Poole, with three other crew members in suspended animation, due to be awakened when the ship arrives in the Saturnian system. During the trip, the ship's computer and artificial intelligence, HAL-9000, malfunctions through the reaction to a philosophical dilemma faced with concealing the secret about the mission from the ship's two awakened crew (who for security reasons were only to be told about the true purpose of the mission when the ship arrived at Saturn). HAL falsely reports that a component on the external region of the ship's hull is faulty, requiring Frank to perform an EVA to replace the part. When it is discovered that the component is working correctly, HAL fears that his crew mates will disconnect him. HAL informs Dave and Frank that the replaced unit has also malfunctioned and when Frank goes on a second EVA to replace the unit again HAL pilots an EVA pod into him at high speed, killing him and making the incident look like an accident. When Dave tries to re-animate the other crew members, HAL attempts to murder him by opening the pod bay doors and de-pressurising the ship's hull. Dave manages to survive by reaching an emergency vacuum-proof shelter in time, and proceeds to de-activate HAL, continuing with the mission with manual control of the ship and alone, after the sleeping crew members were killed during de-pressurisation.

When the ship arrives at Saturn, Dave pilots an EVA pod down to the surface of the moon of Japetus after discovering a second and much larger monolith. The monolith is a star gate that transports Dave across far reaches of the universe to what appears to be an automated outpost left behind by the same extra-terrestrial intelligence that visited early humans three million years ago. Dave is transformed into an being of pure energy, a star-child, and travels back to Earth deciding to eliminate the Earth's entire arsenal of orbiting nuclear weapons. The act appears to be a somewhat optimistic gesture that the threat of humanity destroying itself through nuclear war has been diffused.

Overall I really enjoyed this one. I thought it was much better than, for example, Childhood's End which tried to be a lot more epic, but ended up being a little bit dull for the most part. I just realised that all three of Clarke's books I've got on my list essentially deal with the same theme (humanity's encounter with extra-terrestrial intelligence). Although I did find this theme, and the bit of the book that dealt with it directly, very interesting, the bit that really drew me in was the scenes surrounding HAL's malfunction. I guess I just have a soft spot for stories of dangerous malfunctioning robots. I think I just liked the dramatic suspense, the feeling of claustrophobia and isolation from Earth and help, through the time delay of radio transmissions, although I think the suspense was drawn out better in the slightly different version of events in the movie (i.e. I really like the bit where David Bowman has to jump into the open airlock without a helmet, a nice man vs. machine moment).

Clarke draws such a vivid picture of the technological state of the future world (i.e. space planes, the operation of the ship etc.). I really appreciate the technical imagination that has gone in here, even though I guess it's a bit dated from the apollo moon mission-era. I guess Clarke was a true "futurist". I've never really got with the notion of "hard sci-fi" but I guess this is probably what it is; Clarke's books definitely have a certain charm in this area. It's also interesting how, like Childhood's End, the story presents an almost metaphysical experience by the central character in the presence of the utterly incomprehensible extra-terrestrial intelligence and explores the ultimate evolutionary end of humanity. I'm wondering if this theme runs through all other books of Clarke's, or if it's just coincidental.