2001: A Space Odyssey

2001:A Space Odyssey

Bart Leahy wasn't as impressed with the novel, though. He heavily criticized it for its lack of characters with character and finished his review with the statement, "Just because 2001 is a 'classic' doesn't mean you have to like it."He gave the book 2 stars.

ǝʌɐp 'ʎɹɹos ɯ,I

The beginning of the book is about an ancient human ancestor's encounter with a mysterious black obelisk that appeared in the wild inexplicably. This find, an obelisk, is mirrored millions of years later by astronauts on the moon in the year 2001. It, too, had mysterious qualities, such as its reaction to being exposed to open air after millenia of being buried under moondust; it sent off a signal into the deep solar system onto a similarly strange moon of Saturn called Japetus. This prompted the Americans to send a mission to Saturn's system with five passengers (three of whom are planned to be asleep for the majority of the mission) and a computer called HAL to investigate. The bulk of the remaining novel tells the story of this mission, including the death of four of the five human astronauts and the disconnection of an increasingly harmful HAL by the only surviving astronaut, Dave.

*No notable credentials.*Not a single source.*No incentive for accuracy.*Informal, not scholarly.*No need for accuracy.

Hal is a dynamic character in the book. He starts out as an essential part of the mission to Saturn but he eventually becomes the major antagonist instead of a protagonist when he starts killing the astronauts.

Dirk Grobbelaar on goodreads.com had some words of praise in his five star review of 2001; he called it a "landmark of science fiction" and said that the novel gave him a sense of wonder as he read through it.