Student Question
Who is David Bowman in 2010: Odyssey Two and why is he important?
Quick answer:
David Bowman in 2010: Odyssey Two is a missing scientist. The main character in the previous installments of the series, Bowman has gone missing, and it's up to a joint Soviet-American crew to try to track him down. Bowman is important because he holds the key to understanding why the original Discovery One mission failed.
Dr. David Bowman is the central character in the Space Odyssey series of books by Arthur C. Clarke. He is the main protagonist in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the is the mission commander of the Discovery 1. He is also the sole survivor of the disaster that happened on board ship.
The ship's computer, HAL-9000, malfunctioned, killing all members of the crew except Bowman. Though this certainly wasn't for want of trying, as HAL-9000 tried to kill Bowman by refusing him reentry into the pod bay. Bowman is able to survive by getting inside and disconnecting HAL, which prevents the computer from causing any more damage.
Bowman shows up in 2010: Discovery Two as a non-corporeal entity. Even so, he remains a significant character in the story. A joint US-Soviet mission has been sent into space in order to find out what happened to Bowman. If the men...
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of the joint mission can somehow track Bowman down—assuming, of course, that he's still alive—then they'll be in a position to find out exactly why the Discovery 1 mission ended so catastrophically.
Bowman holds the key to what happened. He can also perhaps shed some light on what current and future generations of space explorers need to do if they are to enlarge our knowledge of the cosmos.
Who is David Bowman in 2010: Odyssey Two, and how has he changed?
Since the catastrophic failure of the original Discovery 1 mission, David Bowman has undergone something of a transformation. No longer an embodied human being he's now a non-corporeal, energy-based life-form. This makes him much like the aliens who control the monoliths.
In his new guise Bowman is able to travel to Earth and make contact with significant people from his past. He visits his mother and brushes her hair shortly before she passes away. He also appears to his former girlfriend on her television screen. Bowman is being used by the aliens who control the monoliths as a probe to learn more about humankind.
After visiting Earth Bowman then heads off to the Jupiter system, where he explores beneath the ice of Europa. There, he finds aquatic life-forms. Under the clouds of Europa he also finds gaseous life-forms. Both the forms of life discovered by Bowman are quite primitive, but the aliens using him see him as having great evolutionary potential.
Later on in the story, Bowman will get the aliens to remove HAL-9000's artificial intelligence from the computer core of the Discovery and transform HAL into the same life-form as himself, the non-corporeal, energy-based life-form that he now is. This will enable HAL to become Bowman's companion.