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Synopsis
In the background to the story in the book, an ancient and unseen alien race uses a mechanism with the appearance of a large black monolith to investigate worlds all across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent life (these monoliiths being Von Neumann probes, although the segment explaining this was cut from the film). The film shows one such monolith appearing briefly in ancient Africa, three million B.C.E., where it influences a group of our hominid ancestors, causing them to learn how to use weapons. The film jump-cuts to the year 2001, showing humans travelling to the Moon and investigating a magnetic anomaly in the Tycho crater, dubbed TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly #1). When excavations there uncover a second monolith and expose it to sunlight, it emits a powerful signal toward the outer solar system. The movie then focuses on a subsequent manned mission to a moon of Jupiter to investigate the signal's receiver.
(The book version instead details a trip to Iapetus-a moon of Saturn-by way of Jupiter, using an interplanetary navigation technique known as a gravitational slingshot. According to Clarke in the foreword to the 30th anniversary edition of 2001, this storyline was removed from the movie version because Kubrick felt the special effects created to depict Saturn and its rings were not realistic enough. Special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull would re-use much of this early work in his 1972 film Silent Running.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey
This brings back memories. The book version of 2001 went to Saturn and the movie went to Jupiter. But when Clarke wrote the sequel, 2010, he opted to continue the movie's destination and had the mission to Jupiter. No, not confusing at all.
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Ian Skinner
Web Programmer
BloodSource
www.BloodSource.org
Sacramento, CA
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