Arthur C. Clarke

Primeval Night

The tribe and Moon-Watcher himself didn't know that the Monolith was mapping their bodies and studying their brains just at the moment when they were looking at the pale, milky luminiscence from the monolith which shows them moving and rotating patterns. The monolith made compulsive sounds so that the man-apes came like sleep-walkers to their source to await the next lesson. It shows the man-apes how to hunt and come to terms with starvation and thought them how to built and use tools like knives and saws. The monolith helped the man-apes to make their first steps into their future.

T.M.A. I

Dr. Heywood Floyd is heading to the space station. He has a special flight. After some time at the space station and after a conversation with an old friend, the moon shuttle, which is going to take Dr. Floyd down to the Calvius bose, is ready for him. His old friend, Dr. Dimitri Moisewitch, seems to know something about T.M.A. I because he mentioned it during their conversation and asked Dr. Floyd if they can handle it without further help. On Calvius base Dr. Floyd gets information about everything they know about T.M.A. I by now. So Floyd decides to go there himself. T.M.A. I is the shortcut for "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1". T.M.A. I is a very strong magnetic field which source was located in the Tycho crater. The  second expedition to Tycho found something very strange. In about 10 meters under the ground. They show Dr. Floyd a photography which only a few people have been allowed to see. It is about 10 feet high and five feet wide. It is sharp-edged and perfectly symetrical. It is absolutely black and shows no surface details at all. It seems to swallow all the light and can only be seen as a contrast to the background. The scientists have found out that it is about 3 million years old and the first evidence for intellegent life beyond earth. Dr. Floyd thinks that it could be a sun powerd device. Then the lunar dawn comes and T.M.A. I greets the sun light after a three million year sleep in darkness. And right that moment several space probes detect an unknown signal coming fron moon and heading through the solar system.

Between planets

Discovery is the fastest ship built by human beings. Its mission is to fly to the ringed planet Saturn. Discovery shall go into orbit and become a satalite of this planet. The voyage lasts for two years and Discovery will never go back. The crew will spend five years in dreamless hibernation until the yet unbuilt Discovery II will come for their rescue. David Bowman and Frank Pool will stay will stay awake for two years in their little world of Discovery while the three other scientist are already in hibernation and will awake when they have reached Saturn in two years. The 3^rd but non-human crew member is the HAL 9000 computer unit. He is the brain and the nerv structure of the ship. He is a masterpiece of the third computer generation. His neural networks, generated by themselves, are far to complex for human understanding. Bowman and Pool work for 12 hours a day and have a perfect routine, which is absolutely necessary for their two year flight becouse the result of mans most important mission is their responsebility. There are no further events except their flyby of the asteroid 7794 and the planet Jupiter. From both  objects billions of bytes are sent to earth.

Abyss

HAL predicts some trouble in the AE 35 unit. The AE 35 unit is one of the 8000 sup units on board Discovery. That means that Pool has to go outside to replace the unit otherwise they would lose contact with mother earth. After Pool is back on the ship again they test te unit and become aware of the fact that the AE 35 unit is fully functionable. The report to earth. Earth base sends back the information: "the computer may have made an error". HAL reports that the replaced unit is also bad and that it will fail within 24 hours. At the moment when earth control wants to give the instruction how to disconnect HAL and switch to earth control, the AE 35 unit fails. Connection lost..

The try to control the antena unit manually but there seems to be a signal throwing it off.

Pool goes out again. Suddently the space pod crashs into Pool and both fly out into space. Bowman stares after it until it disapears in space. Bowman wants to wake up the 3 scientists. Bowman decides that he will disconnect HAL. Suddenly the space pod garge doors open and the pressure falls to zero. In the last second Bowman menages to get into a rescue cubicle. Inside there is a spacesuit.

He disconnects HAL.          <<very important 165 - 170>>

Now Dave is alone. Dr. Heywood Floyd explains the real story to Dave. Dave decides to take the last space pod and fly directly into the monolith. He experiences a incredibly voyage through space and time. And he became the "star child".           <<very important 201 - 236>>