Some of the imagined technologies in this book seem dated, and the dates for events in the story have passed, but this is still an interesting and chilling sci-fi read.
Though developed in tandem with the screenplay for the movie, this story differs slightly from what you see in the film.
We start with our hominid progenitors and their discovery of tools (and a taste for destruction), then jump to a time of routine space travel by humans and the discovery of a great slab made by an alien intelligence many millennia ago.
From there, the story details a scientist's mission to travel out to the outer reaches of space to discover more about the slab and its makers. Hal, the magnificent computer designed to assist in running the ship, has gone rogue. Hal continually maintains that he is "committed to the mission", but apparently at all costs, including the lives of his human colleagues.
audio: 6 hours
print: 256 pages
