The novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” is the story of a spaceflight to Saturn in search of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. The novel is written with Clarke’s characteristic brilliance of technical fantasy.
The central theme of “2001”—contact with an alien civilization—is now of interest not only to science-fiction writers but also to scientists. Clarke addresses it not for the first time. In essence, this novel (and the earlier screenplay) develops and continues an idea first expressed in Clarke’s long-ago story “The Sentinel”: it tells of a mysterious pyramid left on the Moon by representatives of an ancient space civilization, meant to signal to the distant stars from which they came—telling humanity that on Earth a new intelligent race has emerged and has gone out into space.