<P> Stanley Kubrick was less inclined to cite the book as a definitive interpretation of the film, but he also frequently refused to discuss any possible deeper meanings during interviews . During an interview with Joseph Gelmis in 1969 Kubrick explained: </P> <P> It's a totally different kind of experience, of course, and there are a number of differences between the book and the movie . The novel, for example, attempts to explain things much more explicitly than the film does, which is inevitable in a verbal medium . The novel came about after we did a 130 - page prose treatment of the film at the very outset . This initial treatment was subsequently changed in the screenplay, and the screenplay in turn was altered during the making of the film . But Arthur took all the existing material, plus an impression of some of the rushes, and wrote the novel . As a result, there's a difference between the novel and the film...I think that the divergencies between the two works are interesting . Actually, it was an unprecedented situation for someone to do an essentially original literary work based on glimpses and segments of a film he had not yet seen in its entirety . </P> <P> Author Vincent LoBrutto, in Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, was inclined to note creative differences leading to a separation of meaning for book and film: </P> <P> The film took on its own life as it was being made, and Clarke became increasingly irrelevant . Kubrick could probably have shot 2001 from a treatment, since most of what Clarke wrote, in particular some windy voice - overs which explained the level of intelligence reached by the ape men, the geological state of the world at the dawn of man, the problems of life on the Discovery and much more, was discarded during the last days of editing, along with the explanation of HAL's breakdown ." </P>

What happens at the end of space odyssey 2001