2001 A Space Odyssey
             Like so many fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke always tries to offer the audience a few suspenseful moments in his novel. The key for such success lies in the human's perpetual appetite for mystery. It doesn't take long for a writer to create an enigma, but it does take a long time to create a suspense that the human race has never experienced in reality. In Chapter 26 "Dialogue with Hal", Clarke has masterly used a simple narrative voice to present a controversial scene where our own product, the robot, tries to overpower its Creator.
             In the previous chapter the audiences are shocked to discover that Frank Poole is dead. Now, they are encountering a more sophisticated Hal and a nervous Bowman. The readers notice the first change in Bowman's attitude toward Hal through his slightly angry tone "What do you expect?". Bowman's friendly relation with Hal has certainly changed. Clarke mentions the word "computer-time" to foreshadow the advance of Earth's future technology. It is amazing that Clarke's prediction is very accurate considering the fact that computer was very primitive in the year 1968. Yet, "computer-time" is not used only to bring up awe, it stresses that Hal is just a computer. In the next paragraph, the readers are confronted with Bowman's two consecutive questions: " Could it have been an accident... Or was it a mistake...?". The author allows the audience to investigate and interact with Bowman's thought. The audiences, like Bowman, "could not believe" Hal "capable of murder" because they cannot imagine that a robot could be capable of forming its own scheme without previous programming. However, nobody knows how far artificial intelligence can go.
             The climax is fully built when Hal refuses to give Bowman the manual hibernation. Clarke has carefully used dialogue t...