55 pages • 1 hour read
Arthur C. Clarke2001: A Space Odyssey
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence plays a prominent role in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sixth member of Discovery’s crew, and the only one not in hibernation who knows what the mission really entails, is the ship’s computer. In a novel in which the development of human intelligence is so central, this parallel but distinct technological and evolutionary process takes on particular significance.
Relatively early in the novel, Clarke establishes that the development of artificial intelligence is a source of human anxiety. Computers have developed through stages at “intervals of twenty years, and the thought that another one was now imminent already worried a great many people” (86). At the time Part 2 takes place, the line between human and artificial intelligence is increasingly blurred: “[A]rtificial brains could be grown by a process strikingly analogous to the development of the human brain” (86). “Some philosophers” prefer the word “mimic” to “reproduce” when describing artificial intelligence’s ability to undertake “most of the activities of the human brain” (86). Presumably, this anxiety stems partly from fears of what an artificially intelligent being might do to those it ostensibly “serves.” However, the semantic hairsplitting suggests less practical concerns, such as a fear that artificial intelligence undercuts human uniqueness or even the idea of the soul.
Hal’s introduction foregrounds these tensions, as he has many anthropomorphic attributes. His speech is naturalistic and friendly: Though the narrator calls David Bowman “Bowman,” Hal always calls him “Dave.” He also begins clearing his voice before speaking, much as some people do. This ability to develop attributes and ideas spontaneously plays out most significantly in the guilt that he was not programmed to feel, but which emerges from an internal conflict. Finally, when Hal is being deactivated by Bowman, he begins to sing a song that was taught to him by his first instructor: “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Made for Two).” Hal’s memory and his ability to sing make him seem human, and this reversion to his “childhood” while his mind is being destroyed creates an image of a suffering intelligence confronting death.
As human as Hal is, however, the human characters struggle to understand him. This raises the issue of extraterrestrial intelligence; if humans misunderstood Hal, a being of their own creation, it’s doubtful whether they can realistically hope to understand creatures from beyond Earth. The novel does not fully resolve these questions of humanity’s relationship to nonhuman intelligences, but Bowman’s speculations about evolution and his experiences after going through the Star Gate hint at a possible “answer.” The novel suggests that human intelligence evolved thanks to the intervention of extraterrestrial intelligence, which has since evolved itself, progressing through an “artificial” stage and ultimately reaching a spiritual or godlike stage. Humans will develop similarly, becoming machines and finally nonmaterial. The novel thus recasts the human versus artificial/extraterrestrial intelligence dichotomy as a spectrum or process.
Violence and Technology Fueling Development
In Clarke’s novel, the development of the human species as an intelligent lifeform is strongly connected with the development of weapons. Evolution hinges on the development of tools, and the tools that the “man-apes” develop are weapons. These tools are developed as their intelligence increases but also trigger changes that are both physiological and cognitive: “[T]he toolmakers had been remade by their own tools” (27).
The first monolith teaches the “man-apes” to be envious and to use weapons to kill. Moon-Watcher selects the first tool from the ground and uses it to kill a young pig: “It was a heavy, pointed stone about six inches long, and though it did not fit his hand perfectly, it would do. As he swung his hand around, puzzled by its suddenly increased weight, he felt a pleasing sense of power and authority” (15). Weapons give power and mastery, and the use of violence to procure food or to defend oneself from predators soon escalates into the murder of another “man-ape.” This marks a watershed moment in Moon-Watcher’s evolution: “Now he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do next” (25). Violence similarly characterizes Hal’s “evolution,” presenting a new twist on the theme: Here, the “tool” is not simply the instrument of violence but its perpetrator.
The Cold War context is important here. The Cold War brought the fear of nuclear destruction, but it also powered the Space Race. The idea that human ingenuity could bring about humanity’s downfall is integral to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is perhaps significant that 2001: A Space Odyssey was Kubrick’s first movie after Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, a dark comedy that satirized fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States). The failure of international cooperation is a thread that runs through this novel: “With the need for international co-operation more urgent than ever, there were still as many frontiers as in any earlier age. In a million years the human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts” (33).
The ending of 2001 deals directly with this context, with Bowman detonating a nuclear weapon above Earth to prevent it from wiping out life on the planet. As Bowman has by this point evolved into the Star Child, this may hint that humanity will eventually develop beyond violence. However, the oblique and open-ended nature of the ending does not provide any easy answers.
The Need to Evolve
The evolution of the human race is the overarching subject and meta plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey; Clarke traces this evolutionary development from pre-human apes learning to use tools for the first time, through modern humans venturing out into space exploration, arriving at the “birth” of a Star Child. The novel also likens the development of artificial intelligence to evolution. Hal’s guilt is not the product of human design but something that has arisen spontaneously.
Clarke insists that the “man-apes” are not merely a simpler, earlier version of modern humans. Rather, there are fundamental human qualities that they do not possess. For instance, Moon-Watcher doesn’t feel emotionally attached to his father, he has little concept of past or present, and before the intervention of the monolith, he has no desires beyond survival. The idea of adaptation is prominent in the “man-ape” segment of the novel, which describes the success of a “more adaptable specimen” (11), warns that “the man-apes must adapt, or they must die” (15), and notes that the leopard has “superbly night-adapted eyes” (22). Later, this language of adaptation appears in relation to space travel—e.g., the need to become “properly adapted to lunar living” (54), or the fact that Bowman has “adapted” to “his solitary way of life” (173). Throughout this novel, creatures change with their circumstances. This is continual and ongoing. On the Moon, Floyd is struck by the children born there, who grow fast and have a distinctive bone structure in the low-gravity environment. He reflects on “the first generation of the Spaceborn” as a source of both sadness and hope (57), recognizing that such humans have perhaps evolved beyond Earth, but that in doing so they have opened up new frontiers.
This ongoing process excludes the idea of utopia from Clarke’s science fictional universe. The idea is raised twice, once with the blunt and unambiguous statement that “no Utopia is perfect” and later with the statement that it would be “terribly dull” (19). Evolution, in Clarke’s terms, means ongoing development—not perfectibility. That the aliens who kickstarted human evolution have undergone their own evolutionary changes underscores this point: Even a species far more advanced than humanity must still grow and change.
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