I love space movies like Moon and 2001. Are there any good books with the same theme?

I love space movies like Moon and 2001. Are there any good books with the same theme?

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Did you LIKE 2001, the movie?
If so, you'll like the books. They go farther and describe motivations in the movie.

Did you think the 2001 movie is one of the GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF CINEMA OF ALL TIME?
Do NOT read the books. They spoon feed you things present in the movie to the astute viewer. I never made it past book 1.5.


Can't speak on Moon.

Rendezvous with Rama is good, and it was written by a guy who helped Kubrick write the script of 2001.

Solaris blyat

I've always liked 2001 as a movie (I first saw it when I was a kid of about 8 or 9) and I feel that it gets an appropriate amount of praise as a sacred cow of the cinema. Part of the pleasure of seeing the movie at such a young age was that I was "in on the joke" when, in various other media "open the pod bay doors, hal" was spoofed elsewhere.

When I was in middle school, I read the first novel just once, and I basically remembered that they go to Saturn instead of Jupiter, but apart from that (and certain details) the two treatments are much the same. I was vaguely bored by the novel on my first go-around, however, but I appreciated it more a few months ago.

Recently I've read the Odyssey series in its entirety (I don't read much fiction these days so this was a nice project) and I generally liked it. The really pleasant surprise is that 2010 is easily the best book in the entire series, and so redeems the movie (which had a really tough act to follow, admittedly). In the book, Clarke does not employ the Cold War high tensions story element which is central to the film, and takes the time to humanize his characters. The Soviets are not hostile drones, but human beings (albeit with different culture), and the people of the two countries manage to deliberate rationally. We also see a good deal further into David Bowman's Post-Ascended-Ubermensch experiences, which is only glossed in the film.

3001 is also entertaining. If there's a weak spot, it's pretty easily 2061, which is an improbable romp which also has material mistakes in its published form (a minor character is identified inconsistently by multiple names over the course of a few pages. On my first read, this did not appear to be by-design in the story, but a goof that never got corrected). I seem to remember another flub or three in the text.

The other thing that you realize when you read them all in one go is that Clarke constantly recycles passages, oftenly only very slightly tweaking them, to re-frame his basic story elements for the present iteration. The basic background story of the beings behind the monoliths is given very poetically toward the end of the first book, and re-used at least twice throughout the rest, perhaps more. Clarke in his forewords and afterwords is generally pretty good about being up-front about this recycling. The artistic choice can be valid in the sense of rhythm over the course of your story, but when you read basically the same chapter for the fourth time or so, it does drag a bit by that point.

We never actually, REALLY learn who the beings behind the monoliths, or "the firstborn" really are beyond the speculative glosses. /We never meet them/, or speak with them. Not even David Bowman really knows what they're all about. They remain a mystery which died with Clarke, and I think that's just fine. As the recent Alien movies have proven with regard to the "space jockey" and how they ruined them by explaining them, mystery is valuable

My nigga, are you me? I read 2001 a space odyssey while listening to MOON OST. Clint Mansell + Arthur C Clarke = Fucking awesome.

>Veeky Forums will never be this verbose and well-informed again

Rendezvous with Rama is exceptional. I could absolutely imagine being there.

It may be super easy, but The Martian has a fair amount of space travel. There are some really corny moments, but it was a free and easy read.

I won't dig too deep into this, but lots of what you've said here only furthers my stance that the books are surpufluous.

I think the movie says everything it set out to say. The first book (as before, admittedly the only thing I have experience with (I also didn't see the film 2010) so maybe my response is a little 0th order) had a general feeling of either being a page for shot rendition of the movie, or existing to explicitly explain plot points to less astute viewers. The shortcomings of the future books you've mentioned, plus the fact that they were clearly an afterthought (written 12+ years later) mixes with my distaste for sequels on the grounds of artistic integrity negatively.
I am also aware of the retconning of the Jupiter/Saturn plotpoint and various other differences via many world handwaving, which I find insultingly banal (or lazy w/r/t the writer).


COUNTERPOINT: I've always been a grump towards Sci-Fi lit. It's entirely possible that they're fantastic and I'm too closed minded to give them a fair shot.

Ultimately, I just feel that 2001 (the movie) has the same plot as the book AND an unparalleled aesthetic feel that completely obsoletifies (is that a real word?) the book format. One of the few times movies can do that.

I think you should gb2reddit

You should honestly do the first two books, if only to get to 2010 as a novel. Feel free to stop at that point, but the other two books aren't HORRIBLE ABORTIONS or anything, just a bit sillier. They might yet become HORRIBLE ABORTIONS if realized as films (the idea exists and is in development hell. Tom Hanks, a powerful man in Hollywood, has had an interest for many years.
One thing that I really liked about 2061 is how it uses the next re-visit of Halley's comet as a framing device, which ties in nicely with the year and explains the novel's title. I didn't know that going in.

3001 also has a pretty fedora-tier outlook on the future (the future belongs to bald atheists), but what both of these later books have in common is that they offer touch-points on European history - Halley's comet is visible on the Bayeux Tapestry, which I read about shortly afterwards, and in 3001, in the course of describing old religious barbarity, they refer to the Malleus Maleficarum, the classic textbook on how to persecute and extract confessions from witches.

Love the chatter on 2001. I think the movie beat the book probably one of the few times. Kubrick's clockwork orange also nearly as good as the book. To help OP, the forever war was pretty good, foundation, the stars my destination a few I read lately that have been good

Asimov

Brainlet here, what is the stuff that's explained in the book that's hard to pick up on in the movie?

They're not comparable, and don't need to be. They are two completely different stories with completely different themes emphasised. Kubricks film touches on themes of the evolution of consciousness whereby the monoliths act as symbol. In fact, the film is almost entirely symbolic. Whereas, the books are classic Sci Fi. Nothing wrong with either of them, but the books are not even attempting to do the same thing.

Incidentally one is not an "adaptation" of the other. They used the same set of ideas to go off in different directions in different mediums.

I would go so far as to say that Kubricks is more mystical than Sci Fi.

Contact by Sagan.

For one, why the guy turns into a colossal space baby overlooking the Earth.

In my opinion, nothing. The movie is not incapable of communicating what it wants.

Thus spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche

Yeah, if I remember it correctly the book was written concurrently as the movie was filmed.

Very funny musical reference. Are you proud?

Revelation Space is like 2001 mixed with Alien and Star Wars

>Very funny musical reference
it´s not only the musical reference.
the whole story of 2001 follows the 3 transformations described by nietzsche: lion, camel, child.
visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0013.html
4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/1

Unlike most on here, I read the book before seeing the film. Really enjoyed the book but was disappointed by the film tbqh

The 1:4:9 (first three positive squares) proportions of the monolith tie in simultaneously with the ape-man-overman theme of both Nietzsche, as well as the basic three-note arpeggio used by Ricard (not to be confused with Johann "Blue Danube") Strauss. Despite Roy Scheider and the Leonov crew explicitly discussing the monolith's proportions in the 2010 film, the big one found later, as depicted, is clearly too "thin".

The prop(s) in 2001 always looked a bit thin to me as well, but we get a good frontal facing of the object near the coda, and you can literally put up a ruler to the screen and judge that is frontal face is about right, having a "2.25:1" (that is, 9:4) aspect ratio, to put it crudely.

If you were to divide such a (properly-proportioned) monolith into a minimal number of cubes, you'd get 36 cubes, which is again a perfect square of the number 6, and is further precisely the geometric mean of 4 and 9, or: 4/6 = 6/9 (the product of the means equals the product of the extremes). 2:25:1, turned on its side, is also of course a pretty good ratio for a major motion picture, and furthermore roughly corresponds to these small, black, powerful pieces of technology which everyone carries around these days.

>visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0013.html
>2001's depiction of primitive man is in the segment "The Dawn of Man" that opens the film. This segment depicts primitive man gaining the instinct to kill
nigga what?
The scene shows him figuring out how to use a tool. That's what makes him a man. I'm pretty sure apes would already know that killing is a thing.