May Wrap-Up

Well, one of our moderators was quite surprised at how the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" failed to be enjoyed by the attendees of our May "What's Better: the Book or the Movie? - "The Sentinel" / "2001: A Space Odyssey" meeting. This moderator will admit that "2001" is one of her favorite science fiction movies and felt a bit hurt that my friends could hold such wrongheaded beliefs (just kidding! :))

We had a fair amount of divisiveness but that made for an excellent series of discussions and debates. Overall, while there was general acknowledgment about the "2001" playing a key role in the evolution of science fiction on film, it was frequently considered to be slow and confusing and Tim was firm in his belief that the Ape Prologue went on too long and was truly unneeded as the link between the monoliths on Earth - Moon & Jupiter was tenuous, he wanted more information on the purpose of the monoliths and the entities which created them.

In this instance, most participants favored the uncertainty of the short story's ending and "The Sentinel"'s concern about what the creator of the pyramid (the story version of the monolith) intends for Earth. Our narrator was a mystery to us, but this didn't seem to bother our attendees as much as the blandness of the "2001" human characters did. On the matter of HAL, we had a lively spirited debate over AI and to what extent HAL is responsible for the actions that he took; though all agreed that he was more "human" than the bland astronauts that he was ferrying around.

Overall, this discussion did not go the way that this moderator expected, but all "What's Better: the Book or the Movie" are never ordinary. Thanks to everyone who read/watched/attended!

-Moderators Jess & Beth