Book Review: '2001: A Space Odyssey' - Chapters 11-12: "Anomaly," "Journey by Earthlight"

Moon excavation of the TMA-1 monolith from the film. Source

 Now we know what TMA-1 stands for! As for what it is...well, I can't say.

Chapter 11: "Anomaly"

Dr. Floyd and Halvorsen enter a large rectangular room where forty or fifty people are waiting for them. Floyd tells him that he would like to say something before the briefing begins. Halvorsen introduces the crowd to Floyd. 

Floyd stands on the podium in the room amid applause. He starts by saying he is aware that his audience are anxious about the coverup being revealed to the general public and that they must be sure they have the facts down because they may not have a second chance. 

Floyd walks back to his seat, and Halvorsen calls Dr. Michaels up to the stand. The lights fade out, and a slideshow begins as he talks over it. The first image to be shown is the Tycho crater. The next image is a map similar to a contour map that shows magnetic activity on the moon, taken from a satellite; there is significant activity in the area over the crater. On the bottom of the image are the words "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-One (TMA-1)." On the top right is the word "Classified."

Dr. Michaels explains that scientists dug under the Tycho crater for two weeks until they found the object. The screen changes, and the image shown is an astronaut standing in front of the monolith itself. Michaels says that at first the excavation crew thought that the object was from the Chinese who went to the moon in 1998. However, that is not the case at all. The monolith is not from the Chinese, nor even from the human race--it is about three million years old and the first evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth (dun dun duuuuuuuun!).

Chapter 12: "Journey by Earthlight"

Dr. Floyd and some others board a mobile lab that is taking them to the Tycho crater to see TMA-1. Floyd sits next to Halvorsen and Michaels under the driver's area. Floyd thinks over what he had learned at the briefing: the realization that humankind is not the only intelligent life in the universe. The three men speculate about what the creatures who placed the monolith in the crater were like. 

Afterward, Floyd wonders about the origin of the monolith. He knows it can't be from the moon itself, since whoever may have lived there became extinct when craters were hitting the surface regularly. It can't be Earth since humans would have found evidence of an advanced civilization there long before going to space. And as far as the Solar System is concerned, no other planets in it can hold life other than Earth and Mars; the inner planets are too hot, and the outer planets are too cold (reminds me of the Goldilocks Theory). Therefore, Dr. Floyd concludes, the only other place that the creatures could have come from is beyond the Solar System.

After descending down a steep slope, the vehicle eventually makes it to the Tycho crater. And there, in the interior part of the crater, stands TMA-1 (pictured above). The figure, similar to the monolith from the first part of the book, is black, so black that it looks like a silhouette. Even the lights surrounding the object seem to be absorbed into its surface. Dr. Floyd wonders what the thing is, and what lies inside it.