The Monolith and Its Influences

By Robert Castle

This new look at Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey starts with the phenomenon of the film itself. The Monolith is the main subject but the Monolith also functions as a nucleus that has many spokes coming out of it, much like the film's rotating Space Station. When picturing the book as a whole you should see the central monolith-enigma, with 12 or so variants or tangents sprouting out of it. Our minds could picture the hubs-and-spokes thing as a clock face, a clockwork monolith as it were. The variety of forms - quoted and imaginary dialogues, summaries, film-comparison, ape ventriloquism - requires readers to re-calibrate their reading parameters, just as 2001 demands viewers to adjust their cinematic expectations. In subtle ways, The Monolith and Its Influences takes on the qualities of 2001 , the book being one of those influences, suggesting ways to understand and expand upon itself.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F62R5BSB
• ISBN13: 9798300525378
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 144 Pages
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.0"