2001: The Lost Science

Adam K Johnson's book 2001: The Lost Science - The Science & Technology Of The Most Important & Influential Film Ever Made is a guide to the various model spaceships from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick's 2001 is a masterpiece, and it's my favourite film, though even I wouldn't go so far as to call it "The Most Important & Influential Film Ever Made", as Johnson's subtitle does.

The book contains blueprints, photographs, and correspondence from the Fred Ordway archive, and a documentary on an accompanying DVD. (Criterion's CAV laserdisc, released in 1988, also includes material "from Ordway's personal collection.") Ordway was Kubrick's scientific advisor on the film, and his archive includes a handful of previously unpublished photographs of Kubrick, though the bulk of the book consists of detailed drawings and photographs of the model spaceships featured in the film. These are of limited interested to Kubrick fans, though there is a thriving community of model-builders who are presumably the book's target market.

Piers Bizony's book 2001: Filming The Future also contained a chapter on the models, in addition to more general behind-the-scenes information about the making of the film. Jerome Agel's The Making Of Kubrick's 2001, now out of print, was an authorised account of the film's production. Anthony Frewin's Are We Alone? also features production materials from the film, as do Alison Castle's The Stanley Kubrick Archives and the Kubrick exhibition catalogue.