> > At the end, Dave lands on Jupiter and encounters the second monolith,
>
> Third monolith. The second monolith is in the Tycho crater on the moon. It plants the idea that
> we have to travel to jupiter post haste
>
> > also left by these unseen aliens for us to find when the arc of human learning triggered by finding
> > the first monolith progressed to the point where we could find it.
>
> Nope, that was the tycho crater.

True.

> the Jupiter crater was there to begin a new sun and new life once activated.

Not really. The Jupiter monolith was there to collect whoever came as a result of finding the Tycho monolith.

(It did become somewhat involved with the new sun thing later, but not until 2010.)

> > When Dave finds the second monolith, he is presumably raised to a new level of understanding
> > about the universe -- some level of enlightenment as foreign to us as using tools is to
> > terrestrial animals or pre-monolith ape people.
>
> nope. Dave is, to use a borg term, assimilated into the monolith and becomes sentient energy

...as part of the process of being raised to a new level of understanding and ability, as Sam said.

> The movie showed the fetus to indicate Dave was being reborn.

'Sright.

(I think Clarke suggests - in 2010, if memory serves - that the whole business with the hotel room and the Old Dave is him hallucinating wildly during the process of rebirth, which of course neither he nor we could really understand. That's Clarke's explanation, though - God knows what Kubrick thought it was about.)

> The book went further than the movie

(snip stuff about giant diamonds and Moms)

No it doesn't. It ends right where the movie does.

The bits you describe are in 2010.

> > But even then, that's a heck of a lot more of an explanation than the movie ever gives.
>
> agreed. the movie didn't do the book justice.

That's not really an appropriate thing to say, considering the circumstances under which the book and movie came about -- they were done simultaneously, with Clarke doing his take on the story, and Kubrick doing his own.

I will agree, though, that Clarke's version is somewhat more... accessible... to most people.

Paul