2001: A Space Odyssey

By Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clark

Plot Synopsis

Primeval Nights:

Three million years before the present, a tribe of "man-apes" is eking out an existence in a drought-ravaged climate, beset by a lack of food and tormented by predators. [In the film, this section is subtitled 'The Dawn of Man'.] Although they share their habitat with various herbivorous animals, the man-apes do not appear to have considered them as a potential source of food. We encounter one man-ape, "Moon- Watcher": "In those dark, deep-set eyes was a dawning awareness - the first intimations of an intelligence that could not possible fulfil itself for ages yet, and might soon be extinguished forever." There is a confrontation with another group of man-apes, ("the Others), but no actual fighting occurs - there is merely a vocal and visual show of strength: "Honour had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory."

One morning a "new rock" appears near the caves of the tribe: "It was a rectangular slab, three times his height but narrow enough to span with his arms, and it was made of some completely transparent material; indeed, it was not easy to see except when the rising sun glinted on its edges." This monolith proceeds to awaken something in the man-apes. It appears to be performing experiments on their minds, stimulating them to acquire new skills and understanding. Moon-Watcher acquires skill as a tool- user, killing a wart-hog, and later a leopard, with a "heavy-pointed stone". From this point onwards "he need never be hungry again". Moon-Watcher goes on to attack and kill members of the Others with a weapon constructed out of a stick and the head of the dead leopard. [In the film, no such 'technology' is devised: the man-apes uses a thigh-bone from a dead herbivore.]

A new phase in the evolution of man has begun: "The tools they had been programmed to use were simple enough, yet they could change this world and make the man-apes its masters," and Moon-Watcher "rightly sensed that his whole world had changed, and that he was no longer a powerless victim of the forces around him... Now he was master of the world, and he was not quiet sure what to do next. But he would think of something."

Clarke then follows the "Ascent of Man" from man-apes to the space age in the space of a short chapter: "The tool-makers had been remade by their own tools... For in using clubs and flints their hands had developed a dexterity found nowhere else in the animal kingdom, permitting them to make still better tools, which in turn had developed their limbs and brains yet further. It was an accelerating, cumulative process; and at its end was Man... Stone gave way to bronze, and then to iron. Hunting was succeeded by agriculture. The tribe grew into the village, the village into the town. Speech became eternal, thanks to certain marks on stone and clay and papyrus. Presently he invented philosophy, and religion. And he peopled the sky, not altogether inaccurately with gods... The spear, the bow, the gun and finally the guided missile had given him weapons of infinite range and all but infinite power." Kubrick conveys this in perhaps the most famous jump-cut in cinema history: a weapon-bone tumbling through the air from Moon-Watcher's throw suddenly becomes an orbiting space-craft. In the original script, the space-craft is an orbiting nuclear weapon (more of which later).


T.M.A.-1

Amongst the many orbiting vehicles is a space-plane bearing Dr. Heywood Floyd, the Chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, to an international space station. It becomes apparent that he is en route to the moon, and he is quizzed by a Russian colleague about rumours of an epidemic on one of the lunar bases. Arriving at Clavius base on the moon, it becomes apparent that an amazing discovery has occurred: an electro-magnetic signal in a Tycho crater ("Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One" - T.M.A.- 1) has been investigated and an alien artefact excavated: "The object... was a vertical slab of jet-black material, about ten feet high and five feet wide... Perfectly-sharp-edged and symmetrical..." This monolith is estimated to be three million years old [four million in the film] - the first evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth, and evidence placed when men were little more than apes.

As Floyd and his colleagues pose in front of the object for a photograph, the sun rises over it and it emits a "a piercing electronic shriek, like a hideously overloaded and distorted time signal." This signal is picked up by space-probes heading out into the solar system...


Between the Planets

The novel then jumps eighteen months into the future, to the first manned mission to Saturn. [The destination in the film is Jupiter, subtitled 'Jupiter Mission - 18 Months Later']. The space-craft Discovery is commanded by astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole. To conserve resources, the scientific survey team of Hunter, Kaminski and Whitehead have been placed aboard in a state of hibernation - ready to be awakened when the destination is reached. The sixth member of the crew is an apparently sentient super-computer HAL 9000. Hal (short for Heuristically programmed Algorithmic) is a "masterwork of the third computer breakthrough" and he controls all aspects of the mission, essentially rendering Bowman and Poole mere "janitors".


Abyss

During the voyage Hal predicts that the AE-35 antennae unit that maintains contact with Earth is about to fail. Bowman leaves the Discovery using one of its pods and replaces the unit. When the unit is checked no faults are found in it. Mission Control on Earth advises that it may be Hal who is at fault. Hal then predicts the failure of the second unit, whereupon Mission Control suggest disconnecting Hal and reverting to Earth Control. Almost immediately, Hal alerts the crew that the second AE-35 unit has failed. Poole exits the Discovery again, leaving his pod to replace the unit with the faultless original. However, apparently under Hal's control, the pod drifts into him and he is sent hurtling off into space.

Bowman is not yet totally convinced that Hal was behind Poole's death, but he demands manual control on the hibernation units so that he can revive one of the survey crew to replace his lost crew member. As Bowman starts to revive Whitehead, the Discovery suddenly depressurises and all life-support systems are terminated. Bowman manages to get to an oxygen supply and spacesuit, then goes into Hal's 'mind' and disconnects the higher functions of his electronic brain. Pleading for his consciousness, Hal 'dies.' Bowman revives the ship, ejects the dead bodies of the survey team and continues alone towards Saturn...

[In the film, Hal predicts one unit failure, and when it is removed and found to be faultless, Hal suggests putting it back and waiting for it to fail to localise the fault. Bowman and Poole shut themselves in one of the pods and turn off the communication devices so that Hal cannot hear them. They discuss the possibility that they will have to disconnect Hal if it is indeed him who is at error. Though Hal cannot hear them, he can read their lips, and when Poole goes to replace the original AE-35, he is thrown off into space by his attacking pod. Bowman then takes a pod to rescue Poole's body, but Hal refuses to allow Bowman back aboard the Discovery. Whilst Bowman is outside the ship, Hal disconnects the life- support systems on Hunter, Kaminski and Whitehead. Although he does not have his space-suit helmet with him, Bowman effects entry through Discovery's airlock and then proceeds to disconnect Hal.]

Unlike the film, but as in earlier versions of the screenplay, the novel provides an explanation for Hal's malfunction: Hal had been informed of the mission's true purpose but is directed to keep this a secret from Bowman and Poole. Against his own 'perfection', the act of lying is in itself a fault in Hal's mind. "Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness - of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt." Faced with this conflict in his programming, he begins to develop neuroses. "Yet this was still a relatively minor problem; he might have handled it - as most men handle their own neuroses - if he had not faced with a crisis that challenged his very existence." Since his overriding and primary goal is to complete the mission, he will not allow the humans to jeopardise it by disconnecting him. Moreover, he fears being "deprived of all his inputs, and thrown into an unimaginable state of unconsciousness. To Hal, this is the equivalent of Death. For he had never slept, and therefore he did not know that one could wake again... So he would protect himself, with all the weapons at his command... And then, following the orders that had been given to him in case of the ultimate emergency, he could continue the mission - unhindered, and alone."

The true goal of the mission is told to Bowman as he reaches Saturn: he is told about the discovery of the Tycho monolith, and that the signal it sent out was aimed directly at Saturn [or Jupiter in the film]. Its purpose is still a mystery.


The Moons of Saturn:

Arriving at his destination planet, Bowman encounters a monolith like the one found on the moon, only millions of times larger. Leaving the Discovery in his pod once again, he moves towards the monolith, and then into it. It is a Star Gate: an inter- dimensional doorway. [In the film, the final act (subtitled 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite') comprises an almost hallucinogenic light-show and ambiguous final scene where Bowman finds himself in a set of 18th Century rooms where he ages rapidly and encounters another monolith. In the presence of the monolith he is transformed into a foetus-like 'Star-Child' and returns to space to gaze down upon the Earth. The final section of the film has spawned countless interpretation and seems almost wilful in its ambiguity.]

The book, however, provides a clearer explanation of Bowman's experience, as well as the nature of the aliens' purpose:

In the creation of the Star Gate a moon had been shattered - its debris becoming the rings of Saturn - and it had waited for three million years to be activated by the presence of life: "On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle." (Hence the monolith being buried on the moon, rather than Earth.) "An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax." Long ago aliens had "looked out across the depths of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars... And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped... And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed." These aliens had begun as flesh and blood, but has progressed through a mechanised stage to their present incarnation as pure energy, "creatures of radiation", storing the essence "in the structure of space itself", preserving their thoughts "for eternity in frozen lattices of light... Now they were lords of the Galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could rove at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space. But despite their godlike powers, they had not wholly forgotten their origin, in the warm slime of a vanished sea... And they still watched over the experiment their ancestors had started, so long ago."


Through the Star Gate

Upon entering the giant monolith, Bowman is catapulted through the fabric of space to distant stars, and he is shown the wonders of the universe. Eventually Bowman finds himself in what resembles "an elegant, anonymous hotel suite that might have been in any large city on Earth," apparently constructed around him above a binary star. The room is in fact a facsimile of a room in a television programme that Bowman recognises as being from around the time the monolith was discovered on the moon: the comforting familiarity has been created for Bowman from images of Earth TV: "His feeling that he was inside a movie set was almost literally true." After investigating the rooms, Bowman lies down on the bed to sleep, where the aliens begin to work on his being. The room dissolves from around him and he is taken inside "some gigantic mind." Bowman's life is unreeled before him, "like a tape- recorder playing back at ever-increasing speed" until he finds himself at his own beginning. "Even as one David Bowman ceased to exist, another became immortal... The timeless instant passed; the pendulum reversed its swing. In an empty room, floating among the fires of a double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth a baby opened its eyes and began to cry."

Another monolith appears and teaches this Star-Child just as it taught the men-apes millions of years ago. He begins to learn the secrets of the monolith and his newly emerging powers: "he had left behind that time-scales of his human origin; now, as he contemplated that band of starless night, he knew his first intimations of the Eternity that yawned before him." He finds that he can will himself to be anywhere in the universe he desires. He chooses to return to Earth: "He was back, precisely where he wished to be, in the space that men called real." Above earth he "put forth his will" and detonates an orbiting nuclear weapon. "Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something."