By Arthur C. Clarke

I bought this for a couple of bucks at a used book store on the coast, thinking it contained the original published 2001 plus additional material. This was an attempt to complete the series in random order. It turns out that this did not contain the text I was looking for and as of this writing, I am yet to complete the series. That is all well and good but my friend has pressured me into reading Sapiens, even going so far as to buy me a copy; so now I must take a break and come back to the Odyssey at a later date. Meanwhile, a stack of unread books on my desk grows larger and larger; a truly 1st world problem. If everyone on earth could only have such problems…

The Lost Worlds… was probably a dream come true for hard core 2001 fans in 1971.  And maybe also too for people interested in the processes of writing, collaborating, and film making; not so much for someone looking for a continuous story. It is full of unused ideas, outtakes and deleted scenes to use YouTube parlance. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of Clarke and his collaboration with Stanly Kubrick which ultimately led to the film classic we know and revear today. Some portions bear almost no resemblance to the final project but are beautifully written and a fascinating read.

Clarke also describes some of the film making process and shares from a timeline of sorts, laid out with excerpts from  his journals. Also included are Clarke’s original short story, The Sentinel that inspired Kubrick’s vision of what the film would become. Finally Clarke presents a few alternate endings that were written as the ideas developed for the now famously enigmatic final movie scenes. Each is presented to the reader, almost like a vision of infinite parallel universes. Ultimately I feel Kubrick made the right choices by cutting much of this, but I have found enjoyment and value in seeing in some ways how Arthur C. Clarke develops his ideas. The theme that runs throughout his pieces is the idea of a benevolent super intelligence looking after and infantile human children. Sapiens, here I come.