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A review by deep_in_the_reads
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
2.0
Arthur Clarke’s novel has one of the most unorthodox production histories that I know of. Space Odyssey was developed simultaneously as film and novel, largely under Stanley Kubrick’s direction. Kubrick said: “It was an unprecedented situation for someone to do an essentially original literary work based on glimpses and segments of a film (Clarke) had not yet seen in its entirety.” Clarke wrote: “I had the strange experience of revising the manuscript after viewing rushes based upon an earlier version of the story.” Clarke was sometimes frustrated by this, at one point saying he felt like “quite a minor cog in the works.” Knowing that Space Odyssey was conceived primarily as a film goes some way to explaining why the book feels oddly shallow.
Every medium has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. The novel format has its own advantages. Internal monologue could have made the nearly-robotic characters of the film much more complex, making the story much more personal. Skillful prose could have brought a different artistry to the material. Unfortunately, Clarke doesn’t often take advantage of his medium. Though he does a decent job novel-ifying the lead primate in the Dawn of Man section, he makes little attempt to apply this treatment to the humans, aside from the occasional half-hearted anecdote from a character’s past. His prose is flat and utilitarian. When comparing the film and book versions of the story, Clarke’s shortcomings are thrown into starker relief.
The enigmatic, multi-sensory experience of Kubrick’s version plays strongly to the inherent qualities of film—sequences that are visually arresting and ethereal on screen are badly hampered when translated to Clarke’s exposition-heavy prose. In addition to spoon-feeding the audience, he’s also very literal in his thinking, which robs a lot of scenes of their magic. The mind-bending finale is downgraded to a high-tech parking lot in Clarke’s treatment; HAL9000’s motivations are explicitly and repeatedly stated, and the visceral sense of dread that builds throughout the film is totally absent. The book also feels quite shallow compared to the film, stripping most of Kubrick’s multi-layered meanings in favour of obvious allusions to Homer’s Odyssey. The references to the Cold-War tensions of the space race are preserved, but are made much more overt. All this makes Clarke’s version seem like one of those cheap film novelizations that used to come out on the heels of major movie releases. The one advantage to Clarke’s version is that it expounds on the hard science involved in some scenes, even describing a space flight path which uses the gravity of passing planets to ‘slingshot’ the ship—a technique which was theoretical when the book came out, but which is now commonly used in NASA’s missions. I also enjoy some of his descriptions of inter-planetary travel. Despite the book’s shortcomings, the brilliant core concept of Space Odyssey shines through, so it’s still engaging in that sense. It just feels like a pale shadow next to the movie.
Reading about Clarke’s attitude to the Kubrick collaboration, you come away with the sense that Clarke felt somewhat hamstrung while working on the novel. Because he wasn’t writing in ideal conditions (and because I have a clear bias towards Kubrick), I won’t write him off as an author. It appears that few Clarke fans consider Space Odyssey to be his best work (“Childhood’s End” and “Songs of Distant Earth” seem to be his hits), so I plan on seeking out something else by him eventually.
Every medium has its inherent strengths and weaknesses. The novel format has its own advantages. Internal monologue could have made the nearly-robotic characters of the film much more complex, making the story much more personal. Skillful prose could have brought a different artistry to the material. Unfortunately, Clarke doesn’t often take advantage of his medium. Though he does a decent job novel-ifying the lead primate in the Dawn of Man section, he makes little attempt to apply this treatment to the humans, aside from the occasional half-hearted anecdote from a character’s past. His prose is flat and utilitarian. When comparing the film and book versions of the story, Clarke’s shortcomings are thrown into starker relief.
The enigmatic, multi-sensory experience of Kubrick’s version plays strongly to the inherent qualities of film—sequences that are visually arresting and ethereal on screen are badly hampered when translated to Clarke’s exposition-heavy prose. In addition to spoon-feeding the audience, he’s also very literal in his thinking, which robs a lot of scenes of their magic. The mind-bending finale is downgraded to a high-tech parking lot in Clarke’s treatment; HAL9000’s motivations are explicitly and repeatedly stated, and the visceral sense of dread that builds throughout the film is totally absent. The book also feels quite shallow compared to the film, stripping most of Kubrick’s multi-layered meanings in favour of obvious allusions to Homer’s Odyssey. The references to the Cold-War tensions of the space race are preserved, but are made much more overt. All this makes Clarke’s version seem like one of those cheap film novelizations that used to come out on the heels of major movie releases. The one advantage to Clarke’s version is that it expounds on the hard science involved in some scenes, even describing a space flight path which uses the gravity of passing planets to ‘slingshot’ the ship—a technique which was theoretical when the book came out, but which is now commonly used in NASA’s missions. I also enjoy some of his descriptions of inter-planetary travel. Despite the book’s shortcomings, the brilliant core concept of Space Odyssey shines through, so it’s still engaging in that sense. It just feels like a pale shadow next to the movie.
Reading about Clarke’s attitude to the Kubrick collaboration, you come away with the sense that Clarke felt somewhat hamstrung while working on the novel. Because he wasn’t writing in ideal conditions (and because I have a clear bias towards Kubrick), I won’t write him off as an author. It appears that few Clarke fans consider Space Odyssey to be his best work (“Childhood’s End” and “Songs of Distant Earth” seem to be his hits), so I plan on seeking out something else by him eventually.