Since the past summer I am focused reading science fictions, and I started with the classics. This one, 2001 A Space Odissey is one of the most famouse classics, that also inspired for the creation of a movie. In this note I will make a small summary about the book and some personal opinions.

This book is divided into 5 parts (I would say).

1. It starts long long long time ago, withe era of the apes. It tries to give the answer to the question of “What could be the missing step in human evolution? How did the apes start using the mind? How did they discovered the tools?” The answer is one Monolotih that is not a human creation that gave to the apes the power to think. After that, the became hunters and not a weak specie.
2. After giving that answer, it jumps directly to the 90s, and tell the story of one astronaut that needs to go to the lunar space station becuase of an emergency. It was discovered a monolith in the moon. And no one can give an answer about his nature, about its utility, or the materials. The only answer they have is that is not human made, and is has advance technology.
3. Then it jumps to 2001, into a space mission that is going to Saturn and Jupiter. There are 3 characters, Poole, Bowman and HAL (a computer). These 3 characters are flying into space in the most advanced human technology. Their mission is to discover the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Everything is going as planned, but suddenly the Computer on board (HAL) starts giving some strange readings, that quickly turns into a death trap for its astronauts.
4. The death of Poole makes Bowman to start distrust HAL, that is trying to kill him in all the possible ways. Poole is able to disconnect the computer, and continue its mission. The team from Earth that organised the mission told him the real objective, that is not the one that Bowman thought about. The real mission is to find another monoth that is in one of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Finally Bowman finds that it looks like a monolith, he takes a space pod and travels to it.
5. What appears to be a monolith seems to be a portal to other dimension. The space is difficult to describe, it starts to be very narrow and then it is in other universe, with different suns, planets. A lot of questions started to arise, where are the aliens? Can I come back? Am I alive? Then Bowman appears in a hotel room with a lot of familiar things of humans, like a magazin, a fridge with normal food, a bed, etc. Doesnt make sense, right? The answer is that Bowman finally got the illumination and he is able to create, and destroy everything that is in his mind. He got the illumination as the apes at the dawn of the human kind.

I liked a lot the universe buuuuut I did not like how slow is the book. I dont like the stories that can be understood by removing 5 pages from the book and reading them. It makes the story to go super slow in some parts, and super fast in others. The previous points are explain in 5 different pages, it is not necesary more.

My grade would be a 7/10, but I dont have much experience to give a valuable review.