Talk:2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)

Saturn/Jupiter
Ought to mention somewhere that in the film and in the subsequent books, they replace Saturn with Jupiter.
 * Added this info to Trivia. --Bruce1ee 10:33, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Themes
I think there is a theme missing in the article: The aggressiveness of humans. In the book it shown to be an important topic, shown directly in the actions of Moon Watcher (when he kills the other leader). It is also shown that "mankind is living on borrowed time" (sorry if I missed the quote, can't find my copy right now) because of nuclear weapons, not because of the weapons themselves, but because they are so powerful that enabled humankind to destroy the world. The result of this tendency is clearly seen at the end of the novel.

Although the Man-Apes clearly demonstrated that they were agressive in Encounter at the Dawn segment, there was nothing apart from the transitional "chapter 6" to link the novel with this theme. The theme of man's agression would not play any significant role in the novel aprat from this area. Peter Hayms utilized this theme in his movie of 2010.

PS -- who are you?

Also, aren't there Nietzschean themes in the book?

-- Jason Palpatine 01:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding 'themes'. The theme of 'evolution' is listed (correctly) in the article. But it is not fleshed out to properly explain how Clarke veiws evolution (as told thru this story). The plot-synopsis fails to state that the first and third part of the book end with EXACTLY THE SAME WORDS. When talking about the ape and the star-child, Clarke writes (and I paraphrase) "He knew he had all the power in the world in his hands.  He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it, but he knew he would think of something." What Clarke is saying to us is that there is NO DIFFERENCE between the ape and the star-child. They both posess 'mind'. Clarke seems to veiw evolution as a path....and in his story, he brings together characters (ape, modern-man, star-child) who are at very different points on that same path. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.67.104.4 (talk) 18:56, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Citation from Chapter 6, "Ascent of Man": "Without those weapons, often though he had used them against himself, Man would never have conquered his world. Into them he had put his heart and soul, and for ages they had served him well. But now, as long as they existed, he was living on borrowed time." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.27.1 (talk) 18:27, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Iapetus/Japetus
Somebody AGAIN changed the spelling of the Saturnian moon in the article from the british spelling to the American spelling. Will someone please pay attention to the facts. Arthur Clarke used the british spelling in the novel. It was spelled with a "J" instead of an "I." Whoever is doing this clealy did not read the book. -- Jason Palpatine 01:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Is that a British/American thing ? Or just a quirk of Clarke's ? -- Beardo 14:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe Iapetus is the Latin-related spelling, because the J and I were slightly interchangeable


 * This is correct, and either is considered correct usage. For purposes of this article, though, I think it makes sense to use the spelling that Clarke used in the book, hence: Japetus. Saturn 5 23:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * In chapter 19 of The Lost Worlds of 2001, Clarke states that he caught the German spelling from Willy Ley's The Conquest of Space. Bo Lindbergh (talk) 00:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

In French, the name is spelled Japet, for what it worths — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.227.102.29 (talk) 07:58, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

User:Angr rm image: not fair use in this article
Today User:Angr "rm image: not fair use in this article."

Ok. Explain. It's 2001. The image is 2001. How, exactly, is this not fair use.? A pic on my talk page, I can understand. But a pic pertaining directly (or indirectly, as in this case) to the subject matter of the article would appear to be fair use. So, what's the deal? I'm not about to rush in and just do a revert. Oh, the temptation!  So, how about something in the way of an explanation? -- Jason Palpatine 19:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC) speak your mind

Sales
Would anyone be able to add information about book sales, not only for 2001, but for the entire series? -- Benji — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.47.120.130 (talk • contribs) 16:03, 18 May 2006
 * This article is about the novel and not the series. Locus Magazine offers a hint on sales for 2001 and 2010 on http://www.locusmag.com/index/b99.htm#A1265 and http://www.locusmag.com/index/b100.htm. That web site rebuilds its database from time to time and as part of that reassigns the web page names. Thus, while at present Arthur C. Clarke's listing spans pages b99 and b100 in the future the listing likely will get pushed onto page b100 or later as more authors and their stories get added in the alphabet before "Clarke".  That said, the sales for '2001' as reported by Signet/NAL are:
 * January 1984: 30th printing of 2001 with "over 2.8 million copies in print".
 * January 1984: First printing of 2010 with "One of the 1983 top bestsellers (300,000 hardcover copies, 1.75 million first paperback printing)."
 * December 1984: 36th printing of 2001 with "over 2.6 million copies in print". (There's no explanation on why the # of copies is lower than reported in January 1984. Possible explanations are publisher error, books remaindered by bookstores and removed from the sales total, or that the count included the hardcover and that the 2.6 million was paperback only.)
 * Locus gives two dates for each of their entries. For example, the entry for 2010 is dated "Feb ’84 [Jan ’84]". The first date is the publisher's publication date.  For that edition of 2010 it's reported as a February 1984 book. The second date is the date that Locus Magazine received either a copy of the book or the publisher's announcement about the book.  In the list above I used the latter date on the theory that it would better reflect the date at which the publisher made the claims about the number of copies in print.


 * I updated the Release details section of this article to add the book sales though only used January's numbers. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 19:56, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Differences with film article
I just read the article for the film and it is very similar to this article. There is even trivia that is specific to the film. I know that the book and film were made at the same time so it will be dificult to seperate the two, so perhaps they should be merged. Signed in 10:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but that would be unadvisable. The main article of 2001 had become oversized and had been recomended for splitting, to reduce size.  -- Jason Palpatine 22:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

"The film is far more enigmatic about the reason for HAL's failure, while the novel spells out that HAL is caught up in an internal conflict because he is ordered to lie about the purpose of the mission."

In the novel technically HAL never really tells a lie, Clarke has it (chapter 27, Need to Know) that HAL equates 'withholding information' with 'imperfection' and HAL was conflicted by this. Clarke never gives any deeper explanation than this, even Clarke's elaboration in 2010 about the "Hofstadter-Moebius loop" is somewhat mysterious. Kubrick seemed to have had in mind a real artificial intelligence, for HAL, that went beyond HAL being just a 'programmed machine' leaving HAL's behavior as problem for the viewer to solve.--aajacksoniv (talk) 12:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This statement is made in 'Differences with film article' :

"Unused footage of Saturn for this film appeared in a film directed by Trumbull called Silent Running." Is there a citation for this? There is no evidence anywhere, that I know of, that Kubrick ever let anyone have even one frame of the original footage, out takes, or the edited footage. The article about Silent Running even notes that Trumbull finally solved the FX problem with Saturn somewhere between 1968 and 1972. That is he created new special effects for his film not using (would not have been allowed to) any outtakes or test footage from Kubrick's film.--aajacksoniv (talk) 16:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Either is possible, but if Trumbull recycled footage from his days working for Kubrick it would have been test shots not outtakes. Trumbull was interviewed extensively about his work on this film in "StarLog" magazine in the late 1970s so back issues from that era would be the place to look. --WickerGuy (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course Trumbull would had that dry run, but Kubrick was so exacting in keeping film footage, I doubt he would have let even Trumbull keep test footage. In any case it is kind of moot by the time of Silent Running making Trumbull could have made the FX work from scratch, he was a grand master by then. Maybe somebody can check it, there is also Cinefantastique as a possibility also, but I unless Trumbull explicitly stated it somewhere I doubt there is any citation for this assertion.--aajacksoniv (talk) 22:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Change from one of Saturn's moons to one of Jupiter's moons
Is there a citation for the previous note that Kubrick was unhappy with how Saturn's rings were rendered? In the book 2010, Clarke says that the planets were switched because of possible name confusion. Banaticus 12:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * No, it was not name confusion. Kubrick made the change on account of Special Effects limitations. The effects they were comming up with for depicting Saturn's Rings on film were unsatisfactory as far a Kubrick was concerned.  He decided to switch to Jupiter.  --Jason Palpatine 02:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In the 1990 edition of 2001 by Legend, Clarke says in the Foreword: "Why the change from Saturn to Jupter? Well, it made a more straightforward storyline . and more, important, the special effects department couldn't produce a Saturn that Stanley found convincing. If it had done so, the movie would be (sic) now have been badly dated, since the Voyager missions showed Saturn's rings to be far more implausible than anyone had ever dreamed." -- Anon, Thu Nov 17 19:34:30 CET 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.27.1 (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Plot summary
Kreachure "created [a] conclusion" for this novel, which goes like this:

"The Star Child then returns to our Solar System and looks over Earth. He sees atomic bombs flying through the planet's sky. He sets forth his will to make the bombs detonate silently in mid-air, wondering afterwards (exactly how the man-ape once did) what he should do next with his new power as master of the world."

I deleted this paragraph since I have read the book earlier and have noticed nothing about bombs. ( User •  Talk ) 17:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

It says "A thousands miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible to menace him; but he preferred a cleaner sky. He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief, false dawn to half the slepping globe."

A lot of things like "megatons" and "cargo of death" makes one guess it is a nuclear bomb, or weapon. But it doesn't specifically say so. --62.131.194.170 21:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * sorry to revive this discussion but it is mentioned as an "orbiting bomb", the article shouldn't say that one side launched it against the other they just sent it into orbit and quite frankly the pov could be adjusted as well describing bowman's irresponsibile and heinous action of making many people permanently blind. 24.17.211.150 (talk) 04:04, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Reading comprehension in 2011 has become lost art. "He had returned in time. Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies – and history as men knew it would be drawing to a close. A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit...." What does this tell us? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.27.1 (talk) 18:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Plot misunderstood
Plot summary follows popular belief

I believe I can prove that the popular beliefs about the technology in this movie are wrong. Some of the evidence comes from Clarke's early work in space radar and radio, and in his article about meteorites. Copies of two of his articles can be found on my web site at www.geocities.com/gregu10/geek/geek.htm Later in life Clarke became an expert in two other areas of space exploration, predicting how the astronaut will behave, and predicting when radio signals can be corrected for errors. All of these obscure technologies add up to a better explanation for the pods behavior, for the AE-35, and for HAL not letting Dave back in the ship.

The first issue I have is the pod. Clarke's 1940s paper on meteorites concluded that a large space ship in the asteroid belt would not be nimble enough to dodge meteorites, nor powerful enough to destroy them. In the movie we see meteorites just before the fatal scene. Then the pod warning light turn on, then we see the severed air hose and the dead astronaut cross in front of us followed by the pod. The pod crossed the astronauts path after his death. The pod was trying to save the astronaut from a meteorite. This scene might be a pre-view of what happened to Apollo 13. That would be true if we could prove that Apollo 13 was hit by a meteorite and then the oxygen bottle failed. Similarly the accident on Columbia happened not because the wing failed, but because the wing had been hit by ice, and was the part of the wing most likely to fail if it got too hot.

The second issue is the AE-35. Using filtering techniques such as the Viterbi algorithm for radio communications was well known in 1968. Viterbi developed his algorithm for the Venus spacecraft, and prior to that Wiener and Kalman had developed filtering algorithms used in television screens for radar applications. Hal never says the AE-35 failed. He predicted when it was going to fail, in the future. This is possible when using error correcting algorithms. Hal does not understand why the astronauts are so upset about his prediction. Despite something like 76,000 systems on board, Hal expects the astronauts to know all about the AE-35 unit at the base of the microwave. Hal has never seen anything quite like it. Hal suggests putting it back, and waiting for it to fail!

The question is why does Clarke know it will fail. His 1947 article on radio range to Jupiter shows clearly that power and range are available for communicating to earth. Furthermore, Clarke showed that none of the other radio problems such as Doppler, ranging or tracking will create any unsolvable problems. So why was Hal waiting for the AE-35 to start error correcting? Why did Hal think the astronauts would want to know as soon as Hal knew? Was there some fact of radio that Clarke missed back in 1947? The answer is yes - Clarke failed to consider that a spaceship near Jupiter would accelerate to 35,000 mph or more, causing relativistic changes in wavelengths of the radio nearly one part in a million. This relatavistic change is the reason the AE-35 unit started doing error correction, and led to the prediction of the failure of all microwave communications in a few days. But the AE-35 never did fail. They turned it off. In the 1960s book Making of 2001 Clarke is quoted saying the computer was perfectly correct, it was ground control who messed up. Ground control was not travelling 35,000MPH!!!

At this point Hal knows that Dave is a threat to the ship. If you read the 1962 US Navy study about conflict resolution on my website by Mesarovic you will see the prediction that crew performance will decline rapidly if the two crewman talk to each other. This is what happened, and Hal was well aware of the fact - he observed their lips moving while they were together in the pod - talking paranoia about Hal. Early NASA studies such as the NASA 1962 University Symposium have simpler mathematical models for astronauts and test pilots. It was Mesarovic who worked out the case of two astronauts on a ship being controlled by the ground with a seven hour communication delay.

As Clarke said, "Watch the movie, read the book. Repeat as necessary." Frizb 02:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This article is about the book -- not the movie. Everything you are citing is from the movie.  The novel follows only the basic plot points of the story.  The execution in the narrative is completely different than Kubrick's film.  This is especially true of parts 3-6.  The differences are too numerous to list, such as the never occuring discussion in the pod and Bowman's two EVAs.
 * For example, the message from ground control to Discovery telling them that they believed HAL was "in error predicting the fault," was viewed by both astronauts in the film. In the novel, Poole was on watch on the Command deck when it came in just after Bowman had woken up.  He then broke routine and went into the centrifuge to talk to him – a sign of impending trouble.
 * The AE-35 did not fail in the film. The AE-35 did not fail in the book either.  Hal informed them that it had failed and was interfering with the antenna system to break the link with Earth.  This happened in Chapter 24 – “Broken Circuit.”  Hal had reported that the second unit was going to fail.  Ground Control then sent a message informing them that Hal was malfunctioning and instructing them to disconnect him.  Hal broke the communication in med reception.  Bowman was unable to reestablish the link with Earth and Poole then went outside to retrieve the failed unit.  The rest we know.  Jason Palpatine 07:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The statement is made at the end of the plot summary : "He is brought to what appears to be a nice hotel suite, carefully constructed from monitored television transmissions..." However in Clarke's novel, chapter 44, Clarke has a mix of explanations, there is the implication that the Monolith Makers extracted knowledge of hotel rooms Dave Bowman had stayed at in Washington D.C. plus some information the Monolith Makers had about television transmissions , so not just a single source for the room. Clarke also makes it clear the room was a real tangible thing not just some kind of 'dream' construct in Dave's head by the Monolith Makers.--aajacksoniv (talk) 11:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg
Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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Narration is not a theme.
In the article someone has "third person omniscient narration" under the theme category. This is not a theme/plot device. Omniscient narration is a writing style.

Chess game (small change)
The following is the rationale for information changing in the article. The trivial fact about the Chess game played by HAL in the movie is that he did not make an illegal move, but rather said that the game was "checkmate in two moves". While the human player had lost the game (assuming HAL made no mistakes), the mating process could be drawn out for more moves. Anyone wishing to find a source might find this useful as a starting point. Cheers, Ardent &dagger;alk &isin;  07:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Have you ever read Murry Campbell's long article about the chess game in the MIT book HAL's Legacy, on line at this site

http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap5/five1.html ? --aajacksoniv 13:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aajacksoniv (talk • contribs)

Publication History
I've altered the details in the infobox per the US edition. I have two references (also added) that list the US edition as 1st.--Rtrace (talk) 04:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg
Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 08:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg
Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg
Image:ArthurCClarke 2001ASpaceOdyssey.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Section on the Writing
I'd like to add a section that would provide a very brief (say, one sentence) overview of how both the novel and film were written somewhat collaboratively by Clarke and Kubrick, along with a "See also" or "See main article" link to the extended discussion at 2001: A Space Odyssey (film). Unfortunately, I can't figure out the proper template to use for a "See also" or "See main article" for linking to a section within an article. Can anyone help with that? GCL (talk) 00:28, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The alien monolith
The plot summary on this page says it is "a large metal monolith", but in the book (my copy at least) it says it is a "...crystalline monolith...", and later says "A simple, maddeningly repetitious vibration, it pulsed out from the crystal, and hypnotized all who came within its spell" and still later, "...the crystal began to glow" and yet still later, "...there was a new image in the crystal slab".

So wouldn't it be more accurate to say it is a "large crystalline monolith" as it is referred to in the book? Or is this changed in some edit of the book? Zell65 (talk) 23:55, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Material of the monolith
In the book, the monolith is noted as almost black, hardly reflecting any light. In the movie it looks like black glass reflecting light. Shouldn't that be noted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Multimotyl (talk • contribs) 13:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Correction: In the book, the earthside monolith is translucent, a crytal. The moonside monolith is described as totally black, sucking up all light. Heywood Floyd couldn't detect his own shadow on it. "Floyd decided to try a simple experiment; he stood between the monolith and the sun, and looked for his own shadow on the smooth black sheet. There was no trace of it. At least ten kilowatts of raw heat must be falling on the slab; if there was anything inside, it must be rapidly cooking." In the movie they tried to get it as dark as possible, but there are limits of what one can do with real objects... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.115.27.1 (talk) 18:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Differences from film
I believe this line from the film wikiproject content guideline is just as apt for the source material: "Creating a section that merely lists the differences [between film and source work] is especially discouraged." The current section is a selective list of trivial details/differences between the book and the movie, and contain no citations to third-party commentary about the real-world significance of these differences. Other than the line about the film and book being developed simultaneously, I believe this section should be axed (with that one line migrated elsewhere, e.g. the lede). Can someone offer a compelling reason to retain this trivia? --EEMIV (talk) 19:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The switch of the destination planet from Saturn to Jupiter strikes me as non-trivial especially as the sequel novel follows the film rather than the first novel and so uses the planet Jupiter- that seems a "real world" significance. The other two differences discussed pertain to either production problems (the appearance of the monolith- what photographed well) and philosophical differences between Kubrick and Clarke (the age of HAL), but don't seem overwhelmingly important to me.--WickerGuy (talk) 20:40, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I would say the discussion of HAL's breakdown could be much much less detailed. Broadly the fact that much of the arc of HAL's breakdown is quite different strikes me as non-trivial, but we probably do not need a blow-by-blow "breakdown of the breakdown" (excuse the phrase) as is given here in copious detail, but a broader declaration would suffice. A real-world significance for this is that the film sequel explains HAL's breakdown along lines similar to the original novel, plus Arthur C. Clarke really really disliked the idea of HAL being able to read lips and regarded that as cheating.

Gods
Just after Bowman finds the Stargate, the narration explains the history of the alien race that left the monoliths on Earth, the Moon and Japetus. It says that they eventually became totally robotic except for their brains. Then, they managed to replace even their brains, and "downloaded" their consiences into spaceships. In then says this: "In their ceaseless expirementing, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts in frozen lattices of light. They could become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. Into pure energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves[...]Now they were lords of the galaxy, and beyond the reach of time. They could move at will among the stars, and sink like a subtle mist through the very interstices of space." I don't see any mention of any of this anywhere in the article. Perhaps this could be mentioned in the "evolution" part of the "major themes" section.137.159.189.50 (talk) 07:20, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Realistic vs. Accurate
In this edit User:Richardcavell has changed "The novel discusses orbital mechanics and the maneuvers associated with space travel very accurately." to "....realistically" with an edit summary that reads "almost all the space travel is science fiction and impossible, so it's not 'accurate'". First there's the fact that this has not been achieved yet, but most of the space travel is in principle quite possible, if and when NASA or whoever allocates the resources. But in literature, so say something is described "realistically" means that is described within the parameters of the possible, whereas accurate means realistic in the specialized sense of with fine attention to small detail. And this is exactly what Arthur C. Clarke does. He gives us detailed explanations of space route calculations, the generation of artificial gravity through a centrifuge, the scientific reasons for each maneuver, etc. "Accurate" is a much better choice.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:49, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I have changed it to read "with great scientific accuracy". This I think addresses both Cavell's concerns and mine.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Compromise edit
 * Okay, I'm happy with that. - Richard Cavell (talk) 01:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Minor edit in Plot summary
Sorry, I accidentally pressed Enter before being able to finish my edit summary. Did a minor change because the article indicated Bowman would have been displaced to a location "far outside our galaxy". Yet this information cannot be found in the book. In fact, all Bowman himself concludes is that the Star Gate probably sent him "thousands of lightyears" (or alternatively and in Clarke's occasional wording: "lightcenturies") away from his starting point at Japetus. However, even that would in all probability have him still well within the Milky Way. Indeed, based on the fact of the multitude of stars he sees ("..and it's full of stars!") during his "transfer", and especially because of those stars' perceived (by his description unusually intense) luminosity, Bowman rather wonders whether he might not really be nearer the galactic center! The Milky Way's, that is! An idea which, by the way, I found very reasonable too. Anyway, I changed this sentence just so it better reflects the actual contents of the novel at this point. No doubt, he may well have found himself inside another galaxy, but there is no clue whatsover making this clear, nor would this necessarily have to be the case. Zero Thrust (talk) 15:51, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. Thank you WickerGuy. This is better indeed. Zero Thrust (talk) 15:54, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * /, I know this is a three year old thread but page 217 (the last sentence of chapter 45, Recapitulation) has "In an empty room, floating amid the fires of a double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes and began to cry." To give that number a sense of scale, the Solar System is 27,000 ± 1,000 light-years from the Milky Way's Galactic Center. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 21:38, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Inconsistency between the TMA-1 monolith's measurements and the 1 / 4 / 9 ratio
I'm french, I don't have access to the actual book in original english, but in all the electronic versions of the original I could find there's this sentence : “The monolith was 11 feet high, and 11/4 by 5 feet in cross-section.” And these measurements DO NOT verify the 1 : 4 : 9 ratio AT ALL ! o_O They would approximately verify it with 11/9 instead of 11/4. (The french translation is closer, surprisingly, although not nearly close enough, especially since it mistakenly adds that the measurements given in that sentence are “exact”, whereas only the ratio is said to be exact in the next sentence from the original. The french text goes : “The monolith was indeed exactly 3 meters high, by 1.50 meters wide and 35 centimeters of thickness.” That's a ratio of 1.05 / 4.50 / 9.) So, is this a factual error in the novel, or an OCR / transcript mistake ? --Abolibibelot (talk) 06:21, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

(Almost two years later...) So, nobody knows, noone has a paper edition to verify this information ?--Abolibibelot (talk) 08:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

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John Wyndham 'Survival' story 1952
Early scifi. has very similar description of the astronaut being adrift, dead. Brought back into the ship. That astronaut called Bowman. Even though it was Poole who was adrift, very possibly related, a nod to the Wyndham story. Story also had the people within spaceship wearing magnetic soled boots, walking around attached. 86.180.10.82 (talk) 13:53, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Metric ratio 1-4-9
In the Fr. version "2001 l'Odissée de l'Espace" the metric values (0,35-1,5- 3m) the ratio 1-4-9 is not corect. (so is my En.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cenec (talk • contribs) 16:27, 20 October 2019 (UTC)


 * If you look above, you'll see a comment I wrote more than two years ago mentioning this inconsistency, which is also present in e-book versions I could find of the original english text. So far, noone has replied. (By the way, your Fr. is not correct either: it's "odyssée", not "odissée" ! :^p)--Abolibibelot (talk) 02:43, 25 August 2020 (UTC)