Arthur C. Clarke: Themes and Ideas to Perfection

Written by Onesto Amodei, Onesto1@aol.com

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is an example of the author's compulsion to return to the same materials until he has dealt with them in a fully satisfying manner. Especially evident in this novel, is his use of the monolith image and the subject of man's place in the universe. The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey is the successful culmination of themes established in his earlier works.

Similar to other works by Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey deals with the concept of first contact but none "significantly modified the philosophical stance presented in the encounter between an alien astronaut and prehistoric man in "Expedition to Earth" (1953)" (Clareson 69). In this short story, superior aliens land on earth at the dawn of primate development and leave tools with the hope that this gift will induce the evolution of intelligence. Despite the references in Clarke's "nonfiction to a possible meeting during some period in the past," he did not rework the plot until 2001 (69). In the first section of 2001, "Primeval Night", the visiting astronaut is replaced by the featureless monolith. The monolith plants ideas in the members of the men-apes. This is especially successful in Moon-Watcher. He learns to use basic tools and fashions them into weapons which change his life. Compared to the intervention in "Expedition to Earth", the monolith is "much more obviously spiritual and the resulting evolution is much more explicit" (Rabkin 38). "The toolmakers had been remade by their tools" (Clarke, 2001 30). A consequence of this transformation is intelligence and the most significant technology of all, speech.

"The Sentinel" and "Expedition to Earth" both give early discussion to ideas central in 2001. In the short story "The Sentinel" (1951), a lunar explorer discovers an obviously ancient and alien artificial crystalline pyramid on the moon. The artifact can be considered and early prototype of the monolith. The pyramid, a machine of some sort and untarnished by the millions of years of lunar exposure, is impenetrable. It is returned to earth and eventually destroyed as it is explored, through the use of a nuclear device. Whatever its function, the scientists had now disrupted it, disclosing to its makers that it had been found and "setting off the alarm that humanity is on the move" (Rabkin 63). Clarke explains why the crystal monolith was set on the Moon and not on Earth:

Its builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery. They would be interested in our civilization only if we proved our fitness to survive - by crossing space and so escaping from the Earth, our cradle. That is the challenge that all intelligent races must meet, sooner or later…we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait (Making 22).

This plot is reworked in the second section of 2001: A Space Odyssey, "TMA-1", as again an ancient alien monolith is found on the moon. Whereas, the pyramid in "The Sentinel" is a passive device, in that the "alarm" is silence, the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey "shrieks" out mans arrival on the moon.

The monolith, in one form or another, is a haunting image for Clarke and appears in novels and stories written before and after 2001. In The Lion of Commare (1968), people live in high rise cities and Clarke describes the homes of scientists as white pylons rising out of the ocean (Rabkin 40). Here again, the monolith image symbolizes knowledge and intelligence. In Against the Fall of the Night (1953), it appears as "a great column of white stone…twenty times the height of man," featureless and once marked the reference point of all astronomical measurements" (42). Again in The City and the Stars, it is presented as a great column of white stone, more "an artifact of the spirit" than an instrument of science (42). The monolith image in this story is a shrine with no inscriptions and again featureless.

In each of these works the monolith is never central and combines the idea of power and communication. It is only in 2001: A Space Odyssey that it assumes not only an emblem of communication and power but also a spiritual characteristic and a symbol of evolution and indeed procreation. It is by the operation of the monolith that the Star-Child is born. The procreation theme is repeated in 1979 in the Imperial Earth in which the monolith is the causal factor in the re-birth of a dead friend through cloning. Having resolved the monolith issue, Clarke returns it to a symbol of communication and transformation. In Rendezvous With Rama (1973) it appears as the propulsion system for an artificial planet and as a "Space Elevator" in The Fountains of Paradise (1979). Further evidence that Clarke has elaborated adequately on the monolith is his return to focusing on astronauts in the short story "Farewell to Earth" (1972). Again the theme of "Expedition to Earth" is repeated as the narrative tells of the arrival of a census team on earth. The astronauts encounter a small group of men-apes who posses no tools and living "always on the edge of hunger" (qtd. in Clareson 69). Left to themselves, the creatures had little chance of survival and so the visitors taught them how to hunt with clubs. As the astronauts departed, they left a signaling device on the moon to alert them when the descendants of these creatures reached the Moon. Clearly, the monolith (signaling device) has been relinquished once again to a communication device and stripped of the significance as an instrument of change presented fully developed in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Although it is generally acknowledged that 2001: A Space Odyssey is based on "The Sentinel", according to Clarke, it "is a gross oversimplification; the two bear much the same relationship as an acorn and an oak tree" (2001 x). The movie and the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey needed a lot more material. In addition to "Expedition to Earth", the novel drew on material from four other stories.

HAL, the central computer on the spaceship Discovery, had been "weakly foreshadowed by Max in Clarke's "Cosmic Casanova" (OSS, 1958) and by OSCAR in Dolphin Island." (Rabkin 38). Clarke also had created an insane computer in The City and the Stars, but HAL is much more important than those early prototypes and is a more central character to the story.

A number of Clarke's stories put "man's evolution in perspective, placing human history as a tiny fragment of the past of the universe"(Brigg 35). In "The Sentinel" man's development is influenced at the dawn of time by extraterrestrial. In "Expedition to Earth" the theme is presented with a twist as the alien visitors are forced from earth denying man the leap forward that was planned for him. Man's future evolution is also the theme of Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, various short stories such as "The Possessed" and "Transcience" and of course 2001: A Space Odyssey . The characteristics of Clarke's metaphysical speculations are open-ended. They offer no conclusion to the situations they present causing the reader to speculate and arrive at his own conclusion.

That 2001: A Space Odyssey, in both book and movie form, is a masterpiece is widely accepted. Betsy Harfst writes that "structurally…2001: A Space Odyssey, seems a veritable "cosmic junk heap" of ideas from previous short stories" (Harfst 103). Clarke, however, has managed in 2001: A Space Odyssey to "reconcile and synthesize universal ideas common to all times and cultures" (120). In each successive work, Clarke has refined and made clearer a continuing theme and touched core questions and dilemmas that face contemporary man.

Another theme repeated and addressed in one way or another is Clarke's cosmic loneliness. Since the turn of the century, science has "told man that he dwelt alone in an alien universe" (Clareson 68). That is why first contact with extraterrestrial is so important to Clarke. In the short story "Expedition to Earth" (1950) an astronaut visiting Earth in prehistoric times muses:

…In a hundred thousand of your years, the light of those funeral pyres will reach your world and set its people wondering. By then, perhaps, your race will be reaching for the stars…. One day, perhaps, your ships will go searching among the stars as we have done, and they may come upon the ruins of our worlds and wonder who we were. But they will never know that we met here by this river when your race was very young (qtd. in Clareson 69).

In this passage, Clarke dramatizes the vastness of space and time. An encounter with extraterrestrial life is not only contingent on advanced technology but also on the coincidence of time. He also communicates the loneliness felt by the astronauts whose race would not be remembered by the predecessors of man. Clarke resolves this issue in "The Sentinel". The story gives evidence of other life in the universe, in the form of the crystalline pyramid, assuring man that he is not alone. The pyramid also serves to tell its makers, if they still exist, that man knows of their presence in the universe, relieving them of their cosmic loneliness.

2001: A Space Odyssey unites and resolves all of Clarke's themes. First contact is satisfied in the first section, "Primeval Night" . Also addressed, through the monolith, is the transformation of life to the next evolutionary level. The alarm triggered in "The Sentinel" can be found in the second section, TMA-1. Cosmic loneliness is represented by the third section, titled the "Abyss". Finally section six, "Through the Stargate", describes the transformation of man and his "uniting… with the cosmic Overmind" a theme first introduced in Childhood's End (56). In the final section, Clarke establishes the monolith's procreative characteristics in the birth of the Star Child. Clarke's themes are also repeated in his nonfiction works. Clareson writes that:

…his nonfiction has a special value for the student of his fiction because in it one can trace the persistence and evolution of his themes as he continually explores and reworks ideas and situations which inform his short stories and novels (qtd. in Clareson 52).

Clarke began to establish the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1950 with the publishing of the short story "Expedition to Earth." He continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s to re-examine and refine fundamental principles at the core of his works culminating in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke's work which is noted for its exact scientific detail and solid scientific knowledge, is also associated with mysticism, mythology, theological speculation, and cosmic loneliness.

Many believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey is based on "The Sentinel." This short story, however, is only the seed for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The novel is actually an integration of themes and ideas from other works such as "Expedition to Earth", Against the Fall of Night, and The City and the Stars. Clarke repeatedly returns to the same materials until he has dealt with them in a fully satisfying manner. Although 2001: A Space Odyssey is a unity of all these concepts, Clarke returns to these subjects after this work, and again deals with them individually.

Works Cited

Brigg, Peter. "Three Styles of Arthur C. Clarke: The Projector, The Wit, and the Mystic." Olander 7-51.

Clareson, Thomas D. "The Cosmic Loneliness of Arthur C. Clarke." Olander 52-71.

Clarke, Arthur Charles. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1993.

Clarke, Arthur C. " The Sentinel." The Making of Kubrick's 2001. Ed. Jerome Agel. New York: The New American Library, 1970.

Harfst, Betsy. "Of Myths and Polyominoes: Mythological Content in Clarke's Fiction." Olander 87-120.

Olander, Joseph D., and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1977.

Rabkin, Eric S. Arthur C. Clark. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1980.