2001: A Space Odyssey

The book was written in parallel with the film, both of them before the first man stepped on the Moon, and they're both dated by this. They survive by being well crafted, but they're period pieces.

The book seems ponderous by modern standards. It tells quite an exciting story, but lingers over every detail: Clarke takes a scientist's interest in everything that's going on, and he assumes that his readers have the same interest.

It's a classic story, the encounter between the human and the superhuman, and Clarke tells it well enough, he deserves credit for it. Each stage of the story is told competently, and yet in the manner of a scientist, without flair. It's all a very odd business, because it comes to us from the late 1960s, a time of hallucinations, from a man born in 1917 who was largely immune to it all, and went his own way regardless.

I saw the film in about 1972, but I'd already read the book by then; I was surprised to discover that I no longer have it. I bought the Kindle version just recently in order to reread it. I don't seem to have read it in the last 30 or 40 years. It's not essential reading, but it seems an interesting part of the history of science fiction.