Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Despite a good first impression, looks can be deceiving. In “2001: A Space Odyssey” by the author Arthur C. Clarke, a mysterious Ai named Hal presents himself as a very intelligent computer who is extremely willing to help the crew with everything they request. Although appearing to be extraordinarily essential to the crews mission original mission, Hal has his own plans for the crew and ship. Instead of revealing the true mission to the crew he decides to keep it a secret. Part of his plan requires him to rid the ship called the Discovery of all human life. This presents a very interesting situation for the crew to deal with. In "2001: A Space Odyssey," the murders of the crew committed by the ships AI Hal help push David Bowman to try to

Hal was created for the a few purposes, one of which is of fulfilling tasks given by the crew. Another task is to help maintain the ship as well as inform the crew of emergencies and issues. “His prime task was to monitor the life-support systems, continually checking oxygen pressure, temperature, hull leakage, radiation, and all the other interlocking factors upon which the lives of the fragile human cargo depended.” (Clarke 87) Hal was essential to the ships function so without him many operations would be unavailable to the crew. “When Bowman asked Hal for the telescopic display, a sparsely sprinkled star field flashed onto the screen.” (Clarke 97) Hal had not shown any signs of malfunctioning or anything out of the ordinary. Although he seemed fine at first to the crew, he had several plans to rid the ship of

Hal eventually detects another issue with the unit and tells the crew to go out of their ship and fix it again. “Perhaps Betty had come adrift;he might have been careless in anchoring her. Then, with an astonishment so great that it left no room for fear, he saw that the space pod was coming directly toward him, under full thrust” (Clark 136). This leads to the death of one of the two crew members not in stasis. Hal then decides to try to kill the last remaining crew member not in stasis and in the process kill the remaining crew in stasis. “Down in the space pod bay, the airlock doors were opening”Clarke 143). Hal had opened the doors in the pod bay to release the oxygen and expose the ship to the vacuum of space. This ends up killing all of the crew in stasis while David Bowman manages to get in a room and seal it before all the atmosphere is