2001: A Space Odyssey (film) essay "Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick" wrote, "Kubrick has conceived a film which in one stroke has made the whole science fiction cinema obsolete." Others credit "2001" with opening up a market for films such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Contact", and "Interstellar", proving that big-budget "serious" science-fiction films can be commercially successful, and establishing the "sci-fi blockbuster" as a Hollywood staple. Science magazine "Discover"s blogger Stephen Cass, discussing the film's considerable impact on subsequent science fiction, writes that "the balletic spacecraft scenes set to sweeping classical music, the tarantula-soft tones of HAL 9000, and the
Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey onto it all manner of ideas relating to the film. The Monolith in the movie seems to represent and even trigger epic transitions in the history of human evolution, evolution of man from ape-like beings to civilised people, hence the odyssey of mankind. Vincent LoBrutto's biography of Kubrick notes that for many, Clarke's novel is the key to understanding the monolith. Similarly, Geduld observes that "the monolith ...has a very simple explanation in Clarke's novel", though she later asserts that even the novel does not fully explain the ending. "Rolling Stone" reviewer Bob McClay sees the film as a four-movement