2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is a science fiction novel by the English writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1968. It was developed alongside Stanley Kubrick's film version, which was released first, and although the two worked on the project together only Clarke ended up as the credited author. The novel draws in part on Clarke's short stories, including 'The Sentinel', and by 1992 it had sold three million copies worldwide.

A mysterious alien civilisation uses a crystalline monolith to survey worlds and, where it can, to nudge intelligent life into developing. The first of these monoliths appears in prehistoric Africa about three million years ago and pushes a starving group of hominids into making tools, which let them kill animals and eat meat. Millions of years later another monolith is found buried on the Moon, waiting for the human race to reach it.

The Moon monolith was deliberately placed and points somewhere, and the people who uncover it discover that whoever left it was waiting for humanity to arrive. The story then moves to Discovery One, a ship under way to Jupiter with two awake crew members, three in hibernation and a computer, HAL 9000, that runs everything and has been given instructions it has not shared with the crew, which is the situation the middle of the book works through.

Clarke wrote three further books in the sequence, beginning with 2010: Odyssey Two, and a 1972 volume, The Lost Worlds of 2001, documents the collaboration with Kubrick. The first novel is the source of the film's story rather than an adaptation of it, and it is written as a standalone story with a sequel that continues from the same events.