Clarke was my favorite sci-fi author, and definitely my favorite from the Big 3, as I found Asimov too dry and academic, and Heinlein too militaristic and self-indulgent. My all-time facvorite book by Clarke is his first novel "Against the Fall of Night" even though it is not reflective of his later style that he used for the rest of his life. I read the story "The Sentinel" that was the base of Kubrick's movie, but I did not find it compelling. Until now, I haven't read this book, which was written in parallel with the movie, but differs from it.
The ape with the bone in the first part has a name in the book - "Moon-Watcher". In the second part "Discovery" is going to Japetus, a moon of Saturn, not Europa, a moon of Jupiter like in the movie. Also, the movie extends the middle part the most; the interaction with HAL 9000 and the ultimate disconnection. While the third part in the movie is a very generic sequence of images, the "Cosmic Baby" in the book is very well developed, including the voyage to the space station with a sight of hundreds of different spaceships belonging to different races (including the huge derelict) and the pure-gold space ship encountered in hyperspace.
The three parts go well together, but it is obvious they were derived from three separate short stories. This is not a bad thing, Raymond Chandler did it all the time to great success. The ideas are great, as always with Clarke. His Childhood's End is a masterpiece, both conceptually and as execution. I am not sure about the ending, as what is the "Cosmic Child" doing going back to Earth (which shoot a barrage of nuclear missiles at it)? Is it trying to destroy Earth? Or make it better? Unknown.
Anyways, the second book continues after the movie, not the first book, i.e. the "Discovery" landed on Jupiter's moon Europa and the "Cosmic Child" never came near Earth. I guess that is better, since there is more continuity.
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