But remember that 2001 the book is actually a novelization based on the already-completed screenplay. Some details changed in production — the props crew, f’rex, had a devil of a time trying to make the monolith a perfectly transparent crystal-clear slab as specified in the screenplay, so they went for a featureless matte black slab instead. But the transparent slab still survives in the novelization. (-:
The original source for 2001:A Space Odyssey was Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel, which tells the same basic story as the “Tycho Base” section of the film — the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon’s surface, and the consequences of disturbing it (SPOILER: It’s a tripwire alarm! Now they know we’re here. Whoever they are…)
