2001: a Space Odyssey starts out in the most unlikely of places, Africa, millions of years ago. Here, a diminishing tribe of apes woke up to find a black monolith outside their caves. This device, a probe, quickly, examined them, and then tried to alter the course of their evolution. This monolith enabled them to learn to use simple tools, and to be more efficient. The tribe gains strength with their new tools, and finds ways to get more food, to keep alive. The monolith disappears, and the action of the odyssey moves to the future to a man known as Heywood Floyd.
Heywood Floyd is a scientist who is sent to the moon because something there needs his investigation. Stopping along the way at Space Station One, he runs into a Russian scientist, a friend, who questions him about the quarantine on the earth base. Heywood escapes the conversation, and goes to the moon. There he is brought to a dig site, where they have uncovered a black monolith. As the sun rises on the moon, the device emits a signal to Saturn. This brings us to the Discovery, a ship on a mission to Saturn.
The Discovery has a crew of six, three of which are working during the journey. There are three crewmembers hibernating, in order to conserve resources, two working on the controls, and the third, non-organic member, an artificial intelligence. Every part of their journey was going good until the computer reports that a component in the antenna-aiming device was going to burn out. It was replaced, and they checked it to see what is wrong, and no problem was found. To make matters worse, mission control reported back to the ship telling the crew that the computer was wrong. However, the antenna starts to change its position, so a member of the crew is sent out to fix it. When he is about ready to change the part, he is hit by his space pod traveling at full speed, killing him. Then, on board, the airlocks are opened, sucking all of the air out of the ship, and the hibernators are killed in their sleep. Luckily, the last crewmember makes it to an emergency air area, and finds a way to get to the computer. He then disconnects the computer, and fixes the ship, and learns about the true mission the ship was on.
The Discovery was being sent to one of Saturn's moons, where another monolith was. When the ship reaches the monolith, the last crewmember gets out of the ship and comes near it. It sucks him in, and brings him close to a star, but a mysterious force protects him. His mind is then turned into energy, and the body was discarded into the star. The new creature of the minds energy returns to Earth, ending the story.