2001 a Space Odyssey is a name given to two different works in two different media. The most well known is the movie, directed by the late
Stanley Kubrick. The only slightly less well known is the book by
Arthur C. Clarke, who may or may not be
deceased.
Both book and movie were written in a collaborative effort between their respective creators; in truth it could be said that both Clarke and Kubrick wrote both peices, the storyline anyway. Even though there is some divergence between the two forms due to the pressures of their respective media, they were written simultaneously, a very unusual circumstance.
However, despite their similar root, they are two very different works. While Clarke's story is engaging and entertaining, it does not go into the artistic depth that the film does. By using state of the art special effects combined with bizzare otherworldly settings, Kubrick manages to tell a garden of eden story in scientific terms. Here, The Monolith is The Apple, and the monkeys are mankind. In gaining the ability to use tools, man gives up his animal nature and his life plagued only by the most visceral needs, and replaces it with a world where the very instruments of convenience, the tools shown to range anywhere from bones to starships in the single cut that spans ten thousand years of seemingly, to the story, pointless evolution, end up becoming threats as great, or greater, to humanity as the things they were created to guard against -- represented in the intelligent computer, HAL 9000.
2001 is ultimately about letting go of the material world and the tools we use to manipulate it, which become crutches. This film gives no answers, but rather points to where we are going, and suggests a change of course.