2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
I have never been a particular fan of science fiction, either in books or in the movies, and I must be about the only person on earth to read this book without having seen the movie. I do not know whether my experience of the book would have been different if I had seen the movie first, or how the book would affect my experience of seeing the movie, were I to do so (which is not likely). As a book it strikes me as a pleasant bit of light reading. Some people have taken it to be more than that. A review quoted on the cover of the copy I got from the library calls it "a complex allegory about the history of the world." I found no hint of any such profundity. It does raise some questions like "What if we were to learn of intelligent beings that had existed for at least 3 million years before the evolution of human beings?" An intriguing questions, perhaps, but one to which, in the absence of any evidence at all, we are free to make up whatever answers we like. That happens in 2001, which I regard as a straightforward fantasy adventure story, in the same genre as She, or The Hobbit (both reviewed by me for 1001 books), or The Wizard of Oz. I recommend it as such; it would make acceptable airplane reading.