One reason for the success of Stanley Kubrick's film and Arthur Clarke's novel was their timing, which coincided with the achievement of Apollo 11. Both film and novel offer a tour of human origins in Africa, of settlements in space stations and on the Moon, and of a sizable part of the solar system; unhampered by the limits of special effects, Clarke extends the tour from Jupiter to Saturn. Since contemporary science fiction seldom allows itself to be so openly didactic, the novel enjoyed its chance to show where the Apollo program might lead. Clarke and Kubrick's private title for their first outlines was appropriate; "How the Solar System Was Won." In its first year of publication over a million copies of the paperback were in print.

The novel is also oddly flattering in its view of the territorial imperative.

Against the background of debates in paleontology...