When Clarke first visited Kubrick in 1964 to work on a science fiction film, the director believed that they should together write a novel upon which it would be based; they would be forced to detail the background of the world that would be filmed. Both processes, novel-writing and filmmaking, occurred in tandem, so that the relation between novel and film is intricate.

Some differences flowed from the nature of the media; since Kubrick's special-effects could not depict satisfactory Rings of Saturn, the film had to end its odyssey at Jupiter.

Other dissimilarities highlight the different thematic concerns of novelist and director. There is little in Clarke of Kubrick's brilliant treatment of the mechanization of human relations; Clarke gives Floyd and Bowman interior lives. Nor is Hal, in Clarke, the Frankenstein's monster of countless films; much more resembling Mary Shelley's original creature, Hal is a victim of the divided...