2001: a Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey Series) Mass Market Paperback – September 1, 2000

The Kindle version of this book was cleanly formatted without any noticeable typos, making this a pleasant reading experience in portrait mode. I did notice there were some issues with not allowing for columns for reading in landscape mode on my iPad, but I prefer portrait mode to reading and it was fine with that.Onto the actual book:Having seen the film 2001: A Space Odyssey many years ago and being blown away by how powerful it was, and also a bit scared by it. I loved the way it told a story without necessarily explaining everything, and really allowing one's own imagination to fill in some of the gaps. Knowing that there was also a novel, I had always wanted to read it, but never got around to it...upon seeing this Kindle version on sale, I decided to give it a go.First of all, it was very interesting reading Arthur C. Clarke's introduction at the beginning. Sometimes I don't like reading such introductions because they either somewhat spoil the book you're about to read or don't add a whole lot, but this one was an interesting read for someone who had seen the film but not yet read the novel. I didn't realize that both the screenplay and book were written at the same time...making this a very unique pair as typically one comes before the other...so although this isn't a novel that simply came before a film like many are, or a novelization of a film that had been made (which is typically not worth the time of day to read), it is a novel written by a fantastic science fiction writer inspired by the collaboration of writing the screenplay with Stanley Kubrick.Much of the book is very similar to the movie, but the way it is written adds many details without being bogged down...this is a very fast-paced read. The writing is focused on the big picture more so than the characters, but the main characters involved in each individual section get fleshed out well enough that it is very gripping to read.Being written before we'd ever even landed on the moon, it's amazing how well this story stands the test of time. I enjoy stories involving space travel and a lot of times the era something is written can occasionally take you out of the story by laughable concepts or dated science. The feeling I got from this reading was that it explained things in a way that don't date the technology being discussed in any way that ruins the overall story. Although 2001 is 14 years before the writing of this review and clearly many of the breakthroughs and events leading up to this specific story haven't taken place yet or are different than actual history, it is fascinating on some of the things that are part of our reality now...beyond that, this is full of what ifs related to our own existence within a vast universe.I definitely recommend this reading, whether or not you've seen the film and whether or not you plan to read the rest of the series. I likely will at some point, but this book is great as a stand-alone title.

I am beyond words.This book was so amazing and I am glad I didn't go for the movie first (watched it as a kid years ago, but the first scene with the apes kind of freaked me out and I never really got it)Well, started the book and couldn't put it down and to think that it was written in 1968 and it isn't even outdated at all (actually, didn't they discover a few years ago that appendix is actually useful for something after all?)I loved the theories put forward on space travel, a lot of astrophysics theories and concepts neatly summarized for us laymen. I was fascinated.I was equally fascinated by the way the book was written, there were just a few active characters, very little dialogue and yet the action and the descriptions esp. towards the end left me breathless while I read it late into the night.So iPads were predicted in 1968:“Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased.“(That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites.”And his 2001 world was far more advanced than we are even now.How is such a vision even possible.And, in one of my favorite movies, Independence Day (don't judge me), there is a scene that kind of never made sense, when Jeff Goldblum's character is about to fly to the alien mothership in the alien space ship, he opens his Mac laptop and the voice goes "Good morning, Dave." It struck me as a bit weird, I mean, that wasn't state of the art technology in 1996 (when the movie came out) - but only now do I see the joke! Only now does it make sense. Jeff Goldblum's character (David) would have loved 2001: A Space Odyssey.Anyway, I am off to read the rest of the Odyssey books.