Characters:

 

 

 

One-Ear: Ironically he only has one ear. He is of the same size and age as Moon-Watcher, but in poorer condition. He leads the tribe on the opposite side of the river.

 

Dr. Heywood Floyd: Scientist, Has been to mars once, to the moon three times, and to the various space stations more times then he can remember. Has been sent to the moon to discover what is happening.

 

Jim Foster: News reporter

 

Dr. Dimitri Moisevitch: Russian Scientist. Tall, slender, blond hair, 55 years old. Been working on the moon for the past 10 years, building a giant radio observatory on the far side of the moon.

 

Ralph Halvorson: The administrator to the southern provence of the moon, greets floyd on his arrival to the moon.

 

David Bowman: One of the Astranouts running Discovery on its long voage to Saturn, He was the first captain of the ship Discovery,

 

Frank Poole: The other Astranout that healed run Discovery, He and Bowman where to make sure everything is in order and that there were no flaws. Sometimes called his self "General Practitioner in space biology"

 

Whitehead: An astranout that was in hibernation until needed.

 

Kaminski: Another Astranout in hibernation.

 

Hunter: Another Astranout in Hibernation.

 

HAL: Sixth member of the crew, although he was not a human. He was a highly advanced computer, his role was the brains and nervous sytem of the ship. He Hal was for (Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer) He had a mind of his own and could respond to any question just as if he was one of the guys. He controlled everything on the ship.

 

 

Settings:

The River: Moon-Watcher and One Ear get into arguments here everyday. They never get into fights because since they are so hairy there blows do no damage what so ever.

 

Moon-Watchers cave: This is where they kill the leopard.

 

The Moon: Place in which the Space rock had been found after three million years. There were bases placed in the craters of the moon. One being Clavius which was the head quarters.

 

Clavius Base: 150 miles in diameter, second largest crater on the visible side of the moon. Place where they set up base to examine the monolith on the moon.

 

Discovery: Space Shuttle headed to Saturn, ran by a computer named Hal. Has two crew members that are on deck at all time. Others are in a Hibernaculum, which puts the crew members in a Hibernation state, shutting down all but the important organs and bringing there body temperature down to nearly freezing. In this state they could spend years before being broughten back.

 

 

Important Events

The New Rock: A rock that has fallen out of the sky and landed near Moon-Watchers tribes location. When Moon-Watcher and his tribe walk by it each night they become somewhat possed. The rock is testing each and everyone of them. When the Rock gets to Moon-Watcher he seems to learn better than the others. He is given the inteligence to save the human population, and has also been given the gift to invent things, although he has learned all of this he does not know it yet. He still doesn't realise he can think about more than one thing at a time.

 

Battle With one ear: After the passing of "The New Rock" Moon-Watcher and his tribe has invented weapons to hunt with. They then realize that they can use these against One Ear and his tribe. One morning Moon-Watcher goes down to the river where One Ear already is. One Ear does his usual screaming and hollering. Moon-Watcher does not scream back which One Ear finds this weird. Moon-Watcher and his tribe raise there weapons, Moon-Watcher is holding the head of the leopard that they had previously killed. One Ears tribe runs, but One Ear stands his ground, He either stands his ground because he is to brave, or he stands his ground because he is to stupid to realize what is happening. Moon-Watcher kills One Ear with the leopard head. Moon-Watcher thinks that the leopard is still powerful even after death. It had killed once again.

 

First Kill: Pigs and man have never really bothered each other until the day that Moon-Watcher realized that he could use these weapons to kill. He sees the pig and starts to advance on it. The pig doesn't realize what is about to happen and doesn't think that Moon-Watcher is a threat until it is to late. Moon-Watcher lands a blow on his head which knocks the pig unconscious. His tribe then picks up the bloodied weapon and take turns in beating it. They do this until they lose interest and slowly fade away. One of the nursing females licked the bloodied weapon not realizing what it was. Although the pig was there for the taking. He still even after all that he had learned did not have the mental capability to realize that he would never go hungry again.

 

The leopard: After Moon-Watcher and his tribe had killed an antelope and dragged it up to Moon-Watchers cave, they had not realized that they had left a blood trail which has a scent. The leopard follows the scent. He passes all the lower caves in search for the animal. When he finds it he finds a scene, all the cavemen had become one and began to beat the leopard. They were no longer incapable of protecting themselves. They picked up everything that they could and started landing blows. The leopard was trying to fight for his life and get out of the cave. He made the mistake of cornering himself in the back of the cave.

 

TMA-1: Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One (TMA-1) when they took photographs of the moon they foound weird magnetic feilds. There were white rings around this one place and it looked as if someone had taken a bag of flour and hurled it at the moon. The Tycho in (TMA-1) is the crater that they found these weird magnetic feilds in.

 

The Space Rock Returns: When Dr. Heywood goes out to the crater tycho. Which is the biggest crater on the moon. they say it takes up a whole hemisphere. He discovers something out of the ordinary. Scientists first believed that this distruption in the magnetic fields might have been a large nickel and iron meteorite. It is dated to be 3 million years old.

 

Piercing Electronic Shriek: Once the people on the moon unburied the monolith, it sent out a piercing shriek once the sun hit it. The shriek was sent towrd Saturn. Scientists say that this was a beacon and that in uncovering the monolith they set the beacon off. They also say that in doing so they sent a message to something or someone showing that there was life sophisticated enough to get to the moon.

 

Discovery: Space shuttle that was on its way to jupiter, once the piercing electronic shock went out they discovered that it was headed to Saturn, so there mission plan was changed and they started there trip to saturn.

 

Through the Star Gate: this is the last few chapters of the book. David Bowman who had made it to Saturn was going onto one of the moon to look at the bigger monolith, on his descent to it the top of the mononlith had opened and Bowman drifted into. Bowman had got through a space rift. When his trip from that had ended he had ended up in the grand central station of the universe. As he continued to drift along he went through another rift and ended up in what seemed to be a space depot. There were giants ships just sitting there. They were massive things, bowman could only dream of what was inside of these ships, wether it was human or extra terrestrial. His ship had landed on something solid. Upon further inspection it look as if it was a hotel room in the United States, but Bowman knew this was hocus pocus. Bowman was very cautious about inspecting the room. He found what he believed to be was food. It was blue and solid. He tried some of this food and found it to be rather tasty. At this point he had already taken off his space suit and helmet and found that he was breathing air much to his amazment. He had taken a shower and was looking for something to drink. He found a faucet and tried some of what came out. He spit out the first few sips, but all he was drink was pure distilled water. He found cloths. A four piece suit. He hung his space suit up in the closet where he had found the other cloths. He had found a television, and to his amazment it worked. It had been playing the television from Earth. The programs were about 2 year old which means from the time that TMA-1 had been unburied. David shut off the teevision and decided that it was best for him to sleep so he could indulge more in the morning. In the morning he never woke up. He had became immortal. All the thought in his mind were being sucked out.

 

Themes

 

Dont trust technology: Hal the super computer that ran everything on the ship Discovery on its way to Saturn was very untrustworthy. He was so smart he pretty much had a mind of his own. This led to the death of Frank Poole when Frank tried to fix the satellite that was sending signals to earth. Hal knew there was nothing wrong with it except he didn't want mission control to take over once they found out that Hal had a mind of his own. So in turn i guess we should never make technology smarter then us humans and give them a brain, because eventually there gonna create there own feelings and run things themselves.

 

Space Exploration: When this book was created man had not even set foot on the moon. The thought of eventually landing on the moon was well underway for the US and the USSR. The book gives a broad outlook of how space could be but in which we have not yet found it.

 

Quotes

 

"At first we thought it might be an outcrop of magnetic rock, but all the geological evidence was against it. And not even a big nickel-iron meteorite could produce a field as intense as this; so we decided to have a look."- This is the point that they had first started to realize that something had been on the moon before humans, but they didnt know what. (65)

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Background Information

 

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Questions (Ask questions about this novel below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

--Contributors to this Wiki page include:  Travis A.