2001: A Space Odyssey

Three million years ago, a mysterious black monolith appears among a tribe of starving man-apes and sets them on the path to intelligence. In the year 2001, a second monolith is unearthed beneath the surface of the Moon — buried deliberately millions of years before — and when sunlight first touches it, it fires a signal out toward Saturn.

The spacecraft Discovery One is sent to follow that signal. Aboard are astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole, three scientists in hibernation, and HAL 9000, the near-infallible computer that runs the ship. When HAL begins to make mistakes — and then to kill — Bowman is left alone to complete a journey that will carry him beyond Saturn, beyond the infinite, and beyond humanity itself.

Written in tandem with Stanley Kubrick's film, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a cornerstone of hard science fiction: a coolly rational yet awe-struck meditation on evolution, machine intelligence, and the possibility that humankind is not alone.