There’s more to the “terrific look” than special effects. Red Planets has better special effects, yet it does not evoke any feeling of awe and wonder the way 2001 does.
Whether it has an actual “plot” depends on what your definition of a plot is. It’s not so much a linear plot as a group of images that contribute to the same theme.
Forget the shitty movie and instead read Marvel’s 2001 comic by Jack Kirby. It’s some of Kirby’s Kirbiest work ever.
How many issues are there? It looks good on e-bay, for my son, but I can’t tell what a full set is.
If it’s not too much trouble, would someone mind posting very briefly what happened in the two follow-on novels?
Haj
It’s been awhile since I’ve read the books, but I think I can recall the important plot points.
2010:
[spoiler]Dr. Heywood Floyd goes on a joint American-Russian mission on the Leonov to Jupiter, where they will attempt to salvage the Discovery, find out what happened to Bowman and co., and investigate TMA-2 (the monolith).
Along the way, the Chinese launch their own mission to Jupiter, race to Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons), and land to refuel. Turns out they’ve got a water-propelled ship, and can use Europa - an ice-planet - as a cosmic fueling station. However, their lights attract a seaweed-like thing, which pulls the spaceship under the ice, killing all but one crewmemeber. The sole survivor uses the transmitter on his spacesuit to beam a distress call to the Leonov to tell everyone the bad news about his ship, and that there is life on Europa.
Meanwhile, Bowman-as-star-child travels around, eventually coming back to Jupiter. He finds primitive life on Europa, where lava creates oases under the ice. When the lava cools, entire mini-civilizations are wiped out. On Jupiter, there is also primitive life, but everything floats or flys. The pressure is so great on the planet that nothing can survive. In fact, the pressure is so great that the core of Jupiter is a huge diamond about the size of Earth.
The Leonov finally reaches the Discovery, and the crew re-educates HAL with the help of HAL’s creator (also a crew member). A couple weeks before they’re really ready to leave, Floyd gets a message from Dave Bowman stating they must leave in a couple weeks. The Leonov piggybacks on the Discovery to boost away from Jupiter, then cuts free. The Discovery will eventually drift back to Earth - along with HAL’s creator, who snuck over to the Discovery to be with her “child.”
As they are leaving, TMA-2 disappears. Oooh, spooky. Then someone notices a black dot on Jupiter’s surface. The spot is growing, and it turns out it’s composed of monoliths. In a few days, the completely cover Jupiter, and start sucking up all the gas on the planet. HAL starts broadcasting a message to Earth (on Bowman’s orders), stating that the moons of Jupiter are “yours”, except Europa, so don’t try to land there. Jupiter explodes, the Discovery is vaporized, and there’s a bright, shiny Sun where Jupiter used to be.
This new Sun, Lucifer, melts the ice on Europa and enables evolution there. As the life on Jupiter could never live on the surface, they could never achieve real evolution, so they were sacrificed to give Europa a chance.
[/spoiler]
I was much less impressed by 2061, the third book, so I remember a lot less about it. The short and skinny is:
[spoiler]Dr. Floyd is exploring Haley’s Comet when his ship gets a distress call. A ship has been hijacked and crash landed on - you guessed it - Europa. His grandson just happens to be on board. Why would anyone hijack a spaceship and force it down on Europa? Becuase there is a giant diamond mountain on it - a fragment of Jupiter’s core.
Dr. Floyd hightails it over to Europa, beaming a message around the cosmos asking Bowman’s pardon for having to land there. They land, rescue the crew members, check out the diamond mountain, and investigate a nearby monolith. At the foot of the monolith is a village of (absent) amphibians. Floyd’s grandson is greeted by the ghost-like image of Floyd, who was somehow copied into the monolith (the real Floyd knows nothing about it). After they leave, Dave and HAL-as-star-child (having been copied in the previous book) talk with Floyd-as-start-child about. . .something. Obviously, it’s not too important, because I can’t remember it.
[/spoiler]
10 issues, but it’s not a continuing story so much as a series of Kirby’s ruminations on the film and setting. The first issue tells essentially a story parallel to the film with different characters: a primitive human encounters a Monolith and becomes more sophisticated than his fellows; millennia later, an astronaut encounters another Monolith and becomes a Star Child (called in the comic a New Seed). Similar stories show others going through similar experiences in #2-6. Each one- or two-issue story is essentially standalone. Issue 7 follows a newly-created New Seed as he explores the universe.
Issues 8-10 are better seen as precursors to Kirby’s Machine Man series. In #8, robot X-51 encounters a Monolith which apparently gives it self-awareness and a self-preservation instinct. That’s the last we see of the Monoliths, as X-51 (aka Mister Machine and, later, Machine Man) spends issue 9 & 10 running from his pursuers; that leads into his solo series.
2001 is an awesome comic, in some ways Kirby’s most imaginative work, freed as he was from superhero soap-opera (albeit for only 7 issues), but the lack of any continuing story or, like the film, any concrete explanation of how or why this is happening means that your kid probably isn’t going to like it any more than you liked the movie. That said, since there’s no real continuing narrative, there’s no need to concern yourself with getting a full run – just try not to break up any of the multi-issue stories (3-4, 5-6, and 8-10).
I’d urge anyone who liked the film to take a look at the comic, though, if you can find it. I think it fits very well with the ideas of the series as discussed in this thread, and the visual presentation is powerful and dynamic. The language is awfully purple – very different from the staid presentation in the film – which is an acquired taste, but I for one love Kirby’s overwrought prose.
Kirby also directly adapted the movie itself into a large-format “Treasury Edition” comic which I haven’t read.
–Cliffy
What Cliffy said!
Wasn’t there also a 3001 novel, where a deep space mission finds Poole’s frozen corpse and he is reanimated in order to make contact with the Bowman-entity?
[Monty Python’s Meaning of Life]
CEO: What was that first one again?
Executive: “People aren’t wearing enough hats.”
[/Monty Python’s Meaning of Life]
Actually, The Chinese ship has a fusion reactor, which apparently can use pretty much anything as fuel. Water isn’t particulary effiecent, but if you have enough of it, why the hell not?
It’s mentioned that the discovery has a similar reactor.
Yeah, but it’s not worth reading. It’s pretty much Clarke ranting about how Horrible the 20th century is in the eyes of people in 3001, and how horrible religion is, etc.
After a while, some inkling of a plot emerges(with a rather badly done resolution), but you have to slog through Clarke’s diatribe to get to it. I don’t know if he’s getting senile or what, but If I want to hear about how barbaric people in the 20th century were, I can watch “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.
I didn’t have much of a problem with the rant, much more of a problem how he contradicts everything in the original book. If you want a miserable rant, try Asimov’s last Foundation book. I can just imagine Asimov totally fed up with New York and transferring his rage to Trantor.
Late Heinlein actually looks good by comparison.
Well, the “weeding” comment was made in the first book, written in 1966 or 1967. The transformation of Jupiter into Lucifer didn’t happen until 2010: Odyssey Two.