I think it is clear from 2010 that Dave only returned 9 years later. In the book one of the Russian astronauts is killed, accidentally, when Dave emerges from TMA 2 on the way back.
As for HAL - this is one of the first new questions about 2001 I’ve seen in decades. Outstanding!
HAL would no doubt have completed the mission to the best of his ability, totally convinced that it was the best result possible. I’m not at all sure if he would have gone through the Stargate, though.
While it was 9 years later, HAL had been switched off for most of that time, so he wouldn’t have developed much. My reading was that Dave brought HAL with him to the next stage in recognition that HAL was already an intelligent non-life form. I didn’t get any sense that Dave or the aliens modfied him in any way. Dave, in his advanced form, saved both the crew of the Leonov (or rather gave them the warning they needed) and saved HAL.
I’d overlooked this earlier. Nice! 
Aw, how can you not work a quote from HAL into conversation? He has got to be the most *courteous *mass murderer in fiction. Customer service, that’s what it’s all about!
It’s also heartening to read actual sympathy for ol’ Red Eye.
So, whaddya think; HAL; Mac or PC?
Clarke’s explanation in 2010 was basically that HAL was a perfect reasoning machine, and it was only the logic bomb embedded the orders that made “him” go “mad”. But HAL requires human beings to give him direction, and humans being imperfect beings HAL going mad is always an possibility. But combine HAL with the ultra-evolutionized perfected Bowman/Starchild being, and you’ve got a match made in heaven. I think Clarke thought that in the end HAL was too good for us mere mortals.
And so, had HAL encountered the monolith alone in 2001 I think the Monolith would have recognized HAL as a flawed but worthy being to evolutionize. But it would have made for a dull movie and/or novel. 
My reading of 2010 was that even though Dave was far beyond humanity, he was still far behind the Monolith intelligence. Igniting Jupiter was not Bowman’s call. He was along for the ride and was given a tour under the ice of Europa and the atmosphere of Jupiter so that he could see why Jupiter was going to be sacrificed for the Europans, but the decision had already been made. Still, I think a question Clarke chose not to cover is why did the ignition happen when it did. Where they waiting for humans to come back to turn on HAL? Why couldn’t they switch HAL back on? Did they want humans to witness the power of the Monolith at a close distance? Was it simply a matter of Bowman’s “training” taking 9 years?
For that matter, what was Dave supposed to be doing? I agree that he didn’t make the decision about Europa. I suspect however that the timing comes from TMA 2 being switched on by the signal coming from TMA 1, which got switched on after being dug up. Perhaps Bowman was supposed to be supervising in some way.
In 2001 it is made clear that the makers of the monoliths had a goal of stimulating intelligence, kind of like the way the Overlords had a goal of bringing races into the Overmind in Childhood’s End. But 3001 seemed to invalidate all of this, and the Baxter/Clarke books kind of followed that theme. Did Clarke have second thoughts?
But would it press the button to detonate the ring of bombs?
I think the Wikipedia entry for 3001 gives a pretty good explanation that the series isn’t meant to be entirely self-consistent and Clarke used different books to explore different themes.
I don’t recall 3001 that well, though; does anyone remember the reasoning (if there was one) behind the “kill order” received from the monoliths’ masters?
[SPOILER] (sorry, I have no idea how to do the nifty “spoiler” feature with a hidden text box, I’m quite tech illiterate)
If I remember correctly, it was because the masters considered humans to be very dangerous and a risk to other intelligent life in the galaxy, due to the nuclear bomb, etc. even though this was all obsolete by 3001. [/spoiler]
Hi SweetLucy, you can put spoiler tags around a section of text by typing “[spoiller]” at the beginning and “[/spoiller]” at the end (use the correct spelling and it will work).
In the novel what really causes HAL’s flipping out was the threat of disconnection. The reason for the AE35 antenna fiasco was that he wanted to break contact with Earth because he was making small mistakes and mission control was aware of it because of telemetry, HAL became more and more paranoid. Clarke states he probably could have handled the conflicting orders but once threatened by Dave & Frank’s actions to “harm” him HAL had no choice but to eliminate the humans and continue the mission unhampered by conflicting programs.
If you want to get really geeky (and who doesn’t), the first abberant act was HAL’s chess game at the begining with Poole.
“HAL: I’m sorry, Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three. Bishop takes Queen. Knight takes Bishop. Mate.”
While it’s true that in this game, all roads lead to checkmate, there were alternative lines which would have prolonged the game another move or two. HAL lied (or just misrepresented) to get the game over with sooner. One wonders why HAL would even bother anyway seeing as he’s “just” a computer and should have had infinite patience for the game he was playing. Unless…he wasn’t. DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUHHHHH
Hmmm. I’d never heard that about HAL’s and Poole’s chess game before. Similarly, Spock realized that all was not well with the Enterprise’s computer when he beat it in chess in the episode “Court Martial.”