1982; 285 pages. Book 2 (out of 4) in the “Space Odyssey” series. New Author? : No. Genres : Space Exploration; Hard Science
Fiction; Movie Tie-In. Overall Rating: 9½*/10.
It’s 2010, and it’s been almost a decade since
the first manned space mission to Jupiter.
That one was a disaster, due to a computer malfunction. Everyone but Dave Bowman perished, and no one
knows what happened to him. The space
vehicle Discovery was abandoned, and presumably is still orbiting around
Jupiter.
That ship is still American
property though, and now US Intelligence has just learned that the Russians are
building a spaceship to go to Jupiter and claim the Discovery as "salvage". The USA has started a crash program (no
pun intended) to build a spaceship, but there’s no way we can beat
the Russians’ projected launch date.
But aha!, we’ve got a trump card: Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai (called
‘Dr. Chandra’ for short), who programmed HAL-9000, the computer on Discovery
that caused all the trouble. He works for us, and he will be a great asset to anyone trying to get Discovery up and running again.
So let's do something unexpected—call the Russians and propose the venture to Jupiter be a joint
American-Russian mission, with Dr. Chandra as one of the American guests.
Those Russkis are probably
dumb enough to accept the offer.
What’s To Like...
2010 – Odyssey Two
is the sequel to 2001- A Space Odyssey,
both in movie and book format. I’ve seen
the 2001 movie three times, a record for my cinematic attendance. I haven’t seen the 2010 movie.
I liked the book’s premise of
Russian and American scientists cooperating with each other. 2010 – Odyssey Two was written in
1982, when the Cold War was still very much a reality. To portray a group of Russians as normal
human beings, and not the usual brainwashed Communist stereotypes, was a pleasant
change. Arthur C. Clarke also inserts a
number of Russian phrases into the text, usually without translations into English. Thank goodness for Google.
There’s a multitude of
plotlines to keep track of. It’s not a
spoiler to say that HAL-9000 is successfully reactivated, but how trustworthy will he be? Will they find out what happened
to David Bowman? Is there life of
Jupiter’s moons? What’s with those
monoliths? And why is a cryptic deadline given
for them to leave and return to Earth?
I loved the attention to
scientific details. Arthur C. Clarke
writes in a “hard science fiction genre” style.
I’m proud to say I knew what “Lagrange
points” were, but had to look up “von
Neumann machines”. The “1:4:9 Ratio” twist was sheer genius, and I
was amazed to learn that the name of the “EPCOT
center” is actually an acronym.
The pacing was similar to the 2001
storyline. There’s not a lot of action
in the first 2/3 of the book, but the reader’s interest is kept by the
interactions of the multinational and mixed-gender crew, plus the reawakened HAL. Then comes an extended and exciting ending,
which resolves some questions about the mysterious monolith-building
extraterrestrials, while posing new ones.
Presumably those will be addressed in the remaining two books in the
series. Things close with an altered
solar system, one that is both hopeful and scary.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 3,323
ratings and 410 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.95*/5,
based on 58,208 ratings and 1,601 reviews
Kewlest New Word ...
Perijove (n.) : the point in a spacecraft’s orbit
around Jupiter when it is closest to the planet.
Others: Posmotri (v., Russian).;
Lingam (n.).
Excerpts...
“You naïve Americans! We’re more realistic;
we have to be. All your
grandparents died of old age, Heywood.
Three of mine were killed in the Great Patriotic War.”
When they were alone together, Tanya always
called him Woody, never Heywood. She
must be serious. Or was she merely
testing his reactions?
“Anyway, Discovery is merely a few
billion dollars’ worth of hardware. The
ship’s not important—only the information it carries.”
“Exactly.
Information that could be copied and then erased.”
“You do get some cheerful ideas,
Tanya. Sometimes I think that all
Russians are a little paranoiac.”
“Thanks to Napoleon and Hitler, we’ve
earned every right to be.” (loc. 922)
“It’s all very well to feel grateful to
Bowman—or whatever gave that warning.
But that’s all they did.
We could still have been killed.”
“But we weren’t,” answered Tanya. “We saved ourselves—by our own efforts. And perhaps that was the whole idea. If we hadn’t—we wouldn’t have been worth
saving. You know, survival of the
fittest. Darwinian selection. Eliminating the genes for stupidity.” (loc. 3821)
Kindle Details…
2010
– Odyssey Two sells for $7.59 at Amazon, the same price as
Books 3 and 4. Book 1, 2001 – A Space Odyssey, costs $9.99.
How did one
annoy a two-kilometer-long black rectangular slab? (loc. 1764)
Profanity is almost
nonexistent in 2010 – Odyssey Two, which is
what I expected. I noted only 4 expletives in the whole book, all of which were of the “milder” variety.
The quibbles are minor. Tame, playful, intelligent dolphins are
worked into the storyline several times, and I kept waiting for them to make some sort of
impact, presumably of the “goodbye, and thanks
for all the fish” ilk. Alas,
it never happened. Maybe they play more
important roles in the remaining two books in the series.
A Chinese space team also enters into the plotline, although it sort of a cameo appearance. But theirs was an obvious fate since only one of them is even identified by name. I suspect they'll all be wearing red shirts in the movie version.
That’s all I can gripe
about. If you read 2001 – A Space
Odyssey and liked it, you’ll enjoy 2010 – Odyssey Two just as
much. Now I'm wondering how Stanley
Kubrick handled the cosmic ending in the movie version. I'll have to search the Netflix files to see
if they carry it.
9½ Stars. A brief mention of a novella by Leo Tolstoy called The Kreutzer Sonata intrigued me Wikipedia says it was published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities. Here, it is described as “Russian erotic fiction”. I never knew such a genre existed.
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