2010: Odyssey Two - Arthur C. Clarke

First thing to mention about 2010 is that it treats the 2001 movie as its predecessor, not the book. Which is somewhat a cosmetic matter of having the Monolith Dave Bowman entered be floating near Jupiter's moon Io, rather than sitting on the surface of Saturn's moon Iapetus. Also of adding in that in the original events, Bowman left the Discovery initially to try and rescue Frank Poole, only to find HAL wouldn't let him back in.

I do wonder how Clarke might have changed this book if he'd followed up on the book, rather than the film. Would the story taking place much further from the Sun, around a smaller planet, on less geologically active worlds have made a difference? Although he'd have Titan and its dense methane atmosphere to work with, rather than Europa and its water beneath the icy surface.

The Russians and Americans agree to work together to travel to Discovery and see if they can a) figure out what happened with HAL, b) what happened to Dave Bowman, and c) examine that Monolith some more. An attempt by a Chinese vessel to get there first introduces some new variables, one in particular becomes more important when Dave Bowman, in his new form as the Star Child comes zipping out of the Monolith. Bowman's an incredibly powerful being now, but one also being used by the ones who changed him for a purpose of their own, and it's one that puts the crews out near Jupiter in a bind. They need to be on their way soon, but that relies on the reconstructed HAL being cooperative.

When I finished the book, I felt unfulfilled. The book itself zipped along - I read it in parts of two nights - but there's a sense the book was mostly about moving a few pieces around to set things up for the subsequent books. It feels as though not much resolved, just nudged along the next step on the path. Which seems to go along with humanity being constantly tested. Their ancestors were the subjects of experiments, but there were no guarantees those would succeed; other subjects on other worlds died out. Humans had to reach the Moon, find the Monolith, track its signal, reach the outer planets, survive their own creation cracking under the pressure. Now more challenges, more tests, either a possible ally, or a competitor. Existence, progress, is a series of challenges, that ends for humanity only when humanity dies.

Dr. Chandrasegarampillai, or Chandra as he's mostly referred to in the book, might argue there was one resolution, with regards to HAL. Chandra is the one responsible for rebuilding HAL's personality and higher functions after Bowman removed most of them. He's an expert in his field, most comfortable alone or conversing with HAL. Ultimately, he is proven correct that the best approach to dealing with HAL is to be upfront about what's going on and why they need him to do certain things. Proven correct in that one instance, anyway.

Still, he insists on defending HAL as having not murdered Frank Poole, and argues if Bowman had tried reasoning with HAL, he wouldn't have needed to shut down HAL's higher functions. Essentially, that it's Bowman's fault things reached that point. Which may be tiring to the crew, but is extremely irritating to me as someone who read the first book and knows damn well HAL did murder Frank Poole. He may have been breaking down under the strain of being forced to keep the truth of the mission from Frank and Dave, but they weren't responsible for that. And since Dave didn't know that was the problem, because he didn't know he was in the dark about the mission, how was he going to reason convincingly with HAL, who did know exactly how in the dark Bowman was?

Plus, HAL had already tried to kill him by locking him outside the ship, and then by removing all the oxygen from the interior and killing the other crew members as they hibernated. Was Dave supposed to stand there chatting amicably while HAL devised other methods of killing him?

Clarke writes the Americans and Soviets as having reached an amicable truce. They keep secrets from each other, and each tries to ferret out the other's secrets, but it's almost with a wink and a grin. Perhaps that's just among the scientists and astronauts, though. He's very focused on the idea of China as this mysterious super-power, where no one knows what they're up to and they don't work with any other country. It's mentioned China went through a second Great Cultural Revolution in the early 2000s. The book was originally published in 1982, so by then I thought things were a little better between the U.S. and China. I guess Clarke didn't think that would persist. Maybe because the U.S. and Russians were getting along better, and China felt surrounded? The famine issues he mentioned in 2001 hitting the most populous nation on Earth especially hard? He doesn't say. I'm curious to see if that persists through the next two books.

Misgivings and annoyances aside, I am still looking forward to rereading the remaining two books. I don't remember much of anything from them, so I'm excited to see how the things Clarke's set up actually play out.