Book Babble: 2001 The Space Odyssey

Ini summary sebenarnya untuk nambahin point CPD system di kantor gw, makanya pake bahasa inggris. Tapi ditolak karena buku yang dibaca novel padahal kan maksud gw, english-nya itu poinnya. *sedih* Jadi ya udah, gw masukin kesini aja.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a 1968 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. This novel is a joined project between Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke wrote the novel, while Kubrick made the film and both became extremely popular.

The interesting part that caught my attention at first is the word “Odyssey” on the title. It reminds me of a hero in Greek mythology, Odysseus. The resemblance between those two words is quite striking for me. Later it’s become explainable, as I found out that the word “Odyssey” is originally from the ancient Greek poem which tell the story about Odysseus’s home journey after Trojan War. Then the word Odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage. 

The book starts in the prehistoric age (3 million years B.C) where the ape-man is the only intelligence creature on the earth. An ancient and unseen alien race uses a device with appearance of Monolith to encourage the development of those intelligence. Flash forward, at 1999 human is discover same Monolith things beneath surface of the moon. After sunlight falls upon it for the first time in three million years, it sent out a radio transmission to one of the moon of Saturn, Iapetus. A mission that launched to investigate the purpose of those signal, turn into an epic space expedition.

There are many interesting mayor themes in this book, when 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is written, mankind not yet develop such high technology like light-speed space craft and artificial intelligence even less set foot on the moon. The book offers one such vision, like a glimpse of what space exploration will look like one day. The details about experience on space travel and the technologies encountered is filling up large sections of the novel with very great scientific accuracy make it so real and live.

Overall, it’s a good novel. Not very lengthy like other usual novel but yet it’s entertaining with quite deep conflict and climax on it. The best (and famous) quote and somehow I found quite comical is when Iapetus monolith open up and pulls the main character in, just before he vanishes, he is shouting, “….oh my God! — it's full of stars!".