Category: Books

Min­utes ago I fin­ished read­ing Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is, undoubt­ed­ly, one of the best sci­ence fic­tion nov­els I have ever perused. It makes no bones about its sta­tus as alle­go­ry [which I, like Tolkien, have cor­dial­ly dis­liked for some time]. But it does not strike me as an alle­go­ry about human­i­ty as much as it is for human­i­ty. The sto­ry is about uni­ver­sal poten­tial. It also works as a good accom­pa­ni­ment to the film.

Sir Arthur deserves his knight­hood for Con­tri­bu­tions to Lit­er­a­ture from this book alone. The writ­ing is superb, con­cise, and poignant. He is able to keep a theme run­ning for over three mil­lion years by the use of a sim­ple sym­bol and a remark­able grasp on basic human impuls­es. Per­haps hard­est to ful­ly appre­ci­ate is Clarke’s inti­ma­tion that an extra­so­lar enti­ty is respon­si­ble for the the suc­cess of human­i­ty. Although it could very well seem insult­ing to stan­dard man-ape that we are mere­ly an exper­i­ment, Clarke some­how man­ages to con­vince the read­er to be proud that we are an exper­i­ment — most­ly because we are a suc­cess­ful one.

This is def­i­nite­ly a book I plan on pur­chas­ing at the next avail­able oppor­tu­ni­ty.