View source for Kubrick's 2001: A Triple Allegory

Wheat, Leonard F.  ''Kubrick's '2001': A Triple Allegory''.  Lanham, MD: Scarecrow P, 2000. 

Emphatically on [[2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film)]], with only minimal reference to Clarke's novel.  The three allegories are "The Odysseus Allegory,"  "The Man-Machine Symbiosis Allegory," and "The Zarathustra Allegory."  In the "Man-Machine" allegory, "The next species (after man) to evolve is humanoid machines, symbolized by Hal-Discovery.  Hal […] is the spaceship's brain and central nervous system, a remarkably humanoid computer; ''Discovery'' is the suspiciously skeletal spaceship in whose skull-like head Hal is ensconced" (66 [although HAL's CPU is not in the section with artificial gravity—RDE]).  In the Friedrich Nietzschean allegory, Hal-Discovery is God, made, as Nietzsche insists in ''Also Sprach Zarathustra'', by man in the image of man.  CAUTION: ''Triple Allegory'' is a provocative and often useful study but also an ingenious—which is not a compliment—and eccentric book.  LFW uses little of Clarke's canon and misses the relevance for ''2001'' of Clarke's ''[[Childhood's End]]'' (1953) and other works showing Clarke's combinations of hard science and mysticism.  LFW also had the opportunity to read but may miss the significance of Clarke's log for the making of ''2001'' in his ''Lost Worlds of 2001'', and the ''Harvard Crimson'''s rev. of ''2001'' in J. Agel's ''[[The Making of Kubrick's 2001]]''.

Rev. Andrew Gordon, "Kubrick's 2001," ''SFRA Review'' #249 (Nov./Dec. 2000): 12-13 (as of 9 August 2023, not available [for free] on line).   

CAUTION: LFW missed or ignored Erlich's essay on ''2001'': "Strange Odyssey: From Dart to Ardrey to Kubrick and Clarke," ''Extrapolation'' 17 (1976): 118-24, and Erlich wrote this citation. 


RDE, 28/05/01; finishing, 9Aug23

[[Category:Literary Criticism]]
[[Category: Drama Criticism]]