2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey is the 1968 science fiction written by Arthur C. Clarke and the directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is a part of Clarke's "Space Odyssey" series. Both the novel and the film are partially based on Clarke's 1948 short story "The Sentinel", an entry in a BBC short story competition, and "Encounter in the Dawn", published in 1953 in the magazine "Amazing Stories". After deciding on Clarke's 1948 short story "The Sentinel" as the starting point, and with the themes of man's relationship with the universe in mind, Clarke sold Kubrick five more
2001: A Space Odyssey (film) artist.") John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. This film is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines ... and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans ... "2001", for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, is a kind of space-"Spartacus" and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story." Eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film "morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control". In a 2001 review the BBC said that its slow pacing often alienates modern audiences more than it did upon