While the movie is quite impressive visually considering when it was made, I was restless and bored through the first thirty minutes, and left a little bewildered at the ending. This impression left me with little enthusiasm to read the book, and I mostly picked it up as a means to help interpret the meaning.
I didn’t realize, until reading the afterword, that the book and the movie were written together. Clarke and Kubrick more or less collaborated on many of the ideas. While Kubrick made a few changes to better suit the format and constraints of the film, the two work well together and tell much the same story.
From the start, the book does a better job explaining what is happening in the first part, though Kubrick’s efforts to show this without the use of words is commendable. I would say the trade-off is that HAL 9000 doesn’t quite come off as chilling as he does in the movie, but the sense and scope of isolation for the protagonist is retained.
Overall, I think both the book and movie work well together, and separately. The ideas as told in the book seem more fully baked than in the movie, which is again understandable considering the differences between the two mediums. I’m interested in reading more of this series despite the fact that Clarke claims he never intended to write any sequels for this work.