| The story begins with a sort of prologue, it speaks of a group of man-apes. They usually only eat plants, nuts, berries etceteras. But one day something strange happens. An object arises from the skies and settles in the ape territory. At night, the rectangle shaped object hypnotises the apes and orders them to come to it.
When all the apes have arrived it learns them how to use objects to advance their way of living, and give evolution a push. When the session is over the apes return to normal, but now they have their skill of tools. They use their skill to hunt down animals, and so gain a place on top of the food-chain. Now they don't have to be hungry again. And the evolution can take place. (Now the story goes three million years ahead). Heywood Floyd is a respected astronaut and space-expert. He is on a mission to the moon, sector Tycho. Heywood is directed through the moonbase and gets to ride a moonbus. There is something up that no one would have dared to dream of. While scanning the Tycho-environment something weird is noticed. The magnetic field in the Tycho-canyon is very strange, it is very large and abnormal, but there is no natural cause. So the team starts digging. What they find is absolutely astonishing. It is a cubicle, five feet high, made of an unknown material. The crew doesn't have a moment to overcome this remarkable happening when suddenly a burst of energy leaves the cubicle. All the sensors and electronic equipment go berserk. Later appears that all the Earth's sensors throughout the solar system recorded this blast of energy. But the most peculiar about it is that the beam points directly to Saturn. (Now the story leaves Heywood and turns over to Dave Bowman and Frank Poole.) Dave and Frank are sent on a voyage to Jupiter with their ship the Discovery. The Discovery is run by a genius computer called Hal 9000. They arrive at Jupiter and are about to perform their first roundabout. They will lose contact with Earth for an hour. When they turn face to face with Earth again something strange happens. HAL reports a failure. He says that a fragment of the radar, that can point to Earth with a precision of a thousands of a degree, is broken and needs to be fixed within seventy-two hours or contact with Earth will collapse. Frank is the extra-vehicular expert, so he will leave Discovery and fix the device. When he has replaced the broken fragment and Frank and Dave have researched the broken fragment, they get a real shock. The fragment is not broken. HAL has lied! Dave and Frank won't be able to follow HAL his orders again. But HAL says that the fault is really a fault. Although the fault is not in the fragment, it will be in the whole structure. Dave and Frank presume this is right and go on. They report HAL his strange notice to Earth and go on. But a week later HAL reports another failure in the radar system. Frank and Dave talk this strange incident over and decide to give it another check. Frank leaves Discovery again and in his space-pod he travels towards the radar. He leaves his pod to alter the radar manually. But HAL throttles the pod at full speed towards Frank and kills him. Dave is astonished and can't trust HAL again. But HAL goes on. While Dave tries to wake up his frozen colleagues from their eternal hibernation it seems that HAL has also killed them because there is no signal of life after initiating the de-hibernation sequence. Then it happens. The two doors that protect the ship from the vacuum that belongs to space open and the air, and loose objects that lie in the ship are sucked out of the ship and sent into and Jovian orbit. Dave is still in the ship and must find a way to gain oxygen or he will die. With his breath hold he finds a little cabin that is used for such emergencies. He goes in and turns on the oxygen. He thinks for a minute and decides to put on his space suit and shut down HAL. HAL tries to give Dave second thoughts, but after killing Frank, Dave can't trust HAL again. He enters HAL his control room and pulls out all his intelligence cables. Now HAL is just an ordinary computer that can't speak and think anymore. Dave returns peace on Discovery again and makes contact to Earth. After telling the story, he has to talk to Heywood Floyd. Floyd tells Dave all about the moon-trip and the rectangular object. Dave is astonished and can't think of anything else. But Floyd tells Dave that he has to go to Saturn and especially to one of its moons. Because that is where the signal went that was sent from the moon. Now on his new mission Dave will spend a couple of months to get to Saturn. When he arrives at Saturn he gets closer and closer, but contact with Earth will take six hours now, because a message at the speed of light will take three hours to get there. But when Dave gets a closer look at one of Saturns moons he discovers something new. On its surface is a second block of black material, just like on the moon. It is its Big Brother. When Dave is just a few hundred miles from the moons surface he decides to take his pod and explore the block. He isn't gonna return to Earth anyway, he has a couple of months worth of supplies and it will take the rescue ship three years to get to him. He enters the moons surface and while getting closer to the block, its perspective changes and Dave is sucked in, in some kind of strange way. What happens next is very strange. He is in a new universe, billions of light year away from our solar system. | ||
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Plot & Themes Tone of book - suspenseful (sophisticated fear) FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - science fiction story Explore/1st contact/ enviro story Yes Explore: Robots, Computers, VR Yes Robot, PC, VR Plotlets: Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book Descript. of chases or violence - 10 % planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 20 % Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 10 % Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 60 % Main Character Identity: - Male Age: - 40's-50's Main Adversary Identity: - none Setting Which planet? - Jupiter - Saturn Earth setting: - current (early 21st century) Takes place on Earth? Yes Planet outside solar system? Yes Not Earth, in Solar System? Yes Writing Style Accounts of torture and death? - no torture/death scientific jargon? (SF only) - some scientific explanation How much dialogue? - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog |
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