In a newsgroup discussion on Helen Clark's comments about LoTR (book vs. movie) someone just said that 2001: A Space Odyssey the book came after the movie. Can anyone authoritatively confirm or deny this?

If I remember rightly, first there was Arthur C. Clarke's short story, which I think was called "The Sentinel", and then Clarke's work on the film and the novel overlapped somewhat, but the film actually came out first.

Bingley

And legend has it that Clarke knocked out the novel during a furious 2 week caffeine spree in a room at the celebrated Chelsea Hotel on W. 23rd St. in New York City where, for those two weeks, folks who knew him said he pretty much lived on coffee and cigarettes.

Among Clarke's best known work is the short story THE SENTINEL (1951) about man's contact with sentient life. In the spring of 1964, Clarke retired to Hotel Chelsea in New York and started to write a novel about a space travel. His illustrious acquaintances during this period included Arhur Miller, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Norman Mailer. Clarke's work became the basis of the novel and film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), for which Clarke wrote the script with Stanley Kubrick.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aclarke.htm

Thanks to you all for that carificaton.

I have trouble regarding Allan Ginsburg as an "illustrious" influence on Arthur Clarke. I still
chuckle at salutation he got from a highly regarded English Dame, whose name I have
forgotten. Her first words to him were "My, you do smell."

sjm, I carify for you all over the place!

If memory serves (and it always has) the confusion might stem from Clarke's 1973 story, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA which itself was inspired by the storyline of the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the 1968 collaboration of Clarke and Kubrick.

(Please don't correct me if I'm wrong, I'm happy as I exist)

If memory serves (and it always has) the confusion might stem from Clarke's 1973 story, RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA which itself was inspired by the storyline of the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the 1968 collaboration of Clarke and Kubrick.

That seems eminently likely. Thanks.

sjm>A Space Odyssey the book came after the movie. Can anyone authoritatively confirm or deny this?

I don't know if you were satisfied on this point, but Clute and Nicholls' Encyclopedia of Science Fiction confirms the sequence of short story (The Sentinel), the movie script (with Kubrick), and lastly the novelization.