THE MONOLITH
The Monolith
Dwarfing the parked spaceships stands a black monolith. Its sides are in the ratio 1:4:9, and it's not doing anything - yet...
This is a reference to perhaps the most famous Science Fiction film of all time - 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film is based on a short story by Arthur C Clarke called The Sentinel which can be found in various collections and anthologies.
From this short story (only 13 pages) Stanley Kubrick, the director of the film, and Arthur C Clarke worked to produce the the script of the film, and the novel of the film.
The film and novel tell the story of what happens when a monolith is found buried on the moon. Scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old... and then it beams a powerful signal off to the outer reaches of the Solar System, or even beyond. To find out what the monolith was signalling, a mission to Jupiter is diverted to Saturn to investigate; the highly trained crew are assisted by a self-aware computer, HAL 9000. But things go badly wrong and HAL turns psychotic!
The novel has spawned several sequels, which are not particularly good:
There is also a book called The Lost World of 2001 which is Clarke's account of the making of the film. It's currently out of print although Amazon.com do list it and may be able to find a second-hand copy.
A more recent book, co-written with Piers Bizony, covers the same ground:
For more books by Arthur C Clarke, see the details for The Rama Bar.
