Indeed, I think you may have identified something they wanted the audience to figure out. Bowman had the sense of curiosity and wonder, but no fear. He went through the transformation, and still had no fear, remember the hotel room scene? He saw himself and it was no big deal, until he was in the bed and transformed into the Star Child. I also think that that was one of the main ideas behind it, the original Clarke story was Childhood End, and one of the questions was, did the monolith make changes to the apes, so that they became capable of evolution along the lines it wanted, and then when we reached a certain level and uncovered the signal monolith, did that then mean that we were ready to "grow up". In 2010 the monolith finds life on Europa, and ignites Jupiter as a small sun to warm it and let them evolve. The Star Child was there to guide and protect, and told man that "no one could go there". There were a few more books that took the story along, but I lost the thread after 2010. I think there were 2 more books on it. Here is a good synopsis of the final book and some discussion of the whole monolith thing, which was one reason I never followed through, they get pretty psycho in the end and try to kill everyone. Not a lot of sense for something that started life on earth...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3001:_T...

I understood the plot elements you describe. I was wondering if Bowman getting sucked in symbolizes the inevitability of technology.

I liked your notion of how Bowman was like those australopithecines, or whatever they were, in his desire to touch the monolith. Those creatures couldn't resist touching it, their curiosity overpowering their visible fear. Then the monolith caused them to take a leap forward. Maybe the same thing was happening with Bowman, timidly approaching it with his pod, and being transformed into something his own species couldn't understand. One thing that was different, though, was Bowman approached it with stoicism, not with the mix of fear and wonder of ape-like creatures.

Also, I found this in Wikipedia on Heinlein:
When Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead was published, Heinlein was very favorably impressed, as quoted in "Grumbles..." and mentioned John Galt—the hero in Rand's Atlas Shrugged—as a heroic archetype in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. He was also strongly affected by the religious philosopher P. D. Ouspensky.[12] Freudianism and psychoanalysis were at the height of their influence during the peak of Heinlein's career, and stories such as Time for the Stars indulged in psychological theorizing.

Indeed true JR, and it is done in such a way as to completely obscure their intent, and people buy into it. I liken the whole Syrian refugee thing into that, there is just something not right about the whole setup.

I can see a connection between AR not liking SCI Fi then. It was sort of a counter to a lot of her basic tenants in that it was almost always using government as the vehicle for anything to be accomplished. I would have thought she would have liked Heinlein, as almost all of his stories were related to strong willed individuals who do for themselves, and in so doing, help others. Some of his quotes I think show that:


Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.
Red Planet (1949)

How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
On censorship, in The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950), p. 188; this may be the origin of a remark which in recent years has sometimes become misattributed to Mark Twain: Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

CG, I thought the motivation was very clear. The Discovery mission was prepared after the monolith on the moon sent a very strong signal to Iapetus. That was the explanation Dr Floyd made in his video that HAL never showed, that Bowman found when he went digging. The problem was HAL had psychotic programming that said he had to complete the mission at all costs. He interpreted their threat to shut him down as as threat to that mission, so he started to arrange the accidents. 2010 went a long ways in clarifying the issues when DR Chandra has his chats with HAL.When he gets there and sees this humongous monolith sitting outside, he of course, acted just like the apes did, go up to it and touch it. I think Clarke was illustrating that advanced technology had no human need for contact, while the human must have physical contact to comprehend something, illustrating the need for humans to have factual, provable, physical data before they can understand, vs the alien ability to perform and comprehend things without any contact. I saw a paper once that compared the monolith to God and the humans to Adam, although I am not sure Clarke meant it that way.

I was newly graduated from high school when this movie came out and sufficiently involved in sci-fi (having read it since before my teens, starting with Tom Swift) to immediately grasp the concepts. I was enthralled.
To continue with the thoughts on progress in the article, I fear for them. Not because they are coming about but because they will become restricted to an elite whose aim is power and dynastic rule. The rest of us are relegated to be the helots and vassals to their aspirations.

I loved the article. Now that I think about it, Bowman was all alone, barely able to keep Discovery running without HAL (according to the book). The book and the movie don't describe his motivation for going out to see the monolith, but it must have been human curiosity and boredom. Then he gets sucked in.

I wonder if it's saying that will happen to us. Whether we or not plan to integrate ourselves into machines, it will suck us in anyway.

Agreed! I saw it 3 times as a young teen when it first came put and many time on video--and occasionally on the big screen--since then. Clarke's work is always thought-provoking, perhaps one of the best things you can say about a writer. The review in the Objectivist at the time hated it. Some folks didn't get the genre and missed what Kubrick and Clarke were doing. Of interest, Kerry O'Quinn, who founded Starlog mag, knew Ayn Rand and tried to interest her in sci-fi, but it wasn't her cup of tea. But today, there's a strong synergy between Objectivists, libertarians, and the life extension/transhumanist movement.

A favorite, when I was a young lad. I was awestruck at the vision. After reading the book, there were a couple things missing, the monoliths actually did change the ape the decide to use tools, and to kill. A reverse on the Christian idea that man brought murder to himself, in this case it was a god who did it to man. As if to atone for it, the monolith then proceeds to create a god child, again a reverse. Several other books from Arthur C Clarke also toyed with the idea of just where man stopped and gods began, or if the concept of a god was just a being who was so far advanced. It was a great movie on so many levels, the first 30 minutes are still a fantastic trip in what we could have done, if we really wanted to. But between the music and vision, still is chilling.