Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #886180 in Books
• Published on: 1972-09-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

2001: Clarke's story
This is one of Clarke's lesser known works, and probably pretty hard to come by these days (outside of libraries). It tells the story, from Clarke's point of view, of how 2001: A Space Odyssey came to be, and it includes a lot of material from earlier versions of the novel, written during the no less than four years that Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were occupied with the project. Interspersed among the chapters from the early versions are personal comments, anecdotes, and musings by Clarke.
This book is only interesting if you have a particular interest in 2001, or in Clarke's career as a writer. It is intriguing to see some of the early versions, and how the story gradually developed and came more and more to resemble the final end product. It is also easy to see why these early versions were discarded, but, as Clarke says, they had to be developed so that they could be thrown away, otherwise Clarke and Kubrick would never have arrived at the final story. Clarke himself was close to giving up in despair on more than one occasion (or so he says), but in the end his perseverance, and Kubrick's relentless drive for perfection, paid off quite handsomely.