AE-35 Unit
The AE-35 unit is the dingus that stops working because Hal has a glitch. It's the technical gizmo that controls Discovery's communication with earth. With it, the astronauts can get info from miss...
Diana Halvorsen
Diana Halvorsen is the four-year old daughter of Ralph Halvorsen, the moon administrator. She's hardly in the novel; she walks on for just a page or two. But she's symbolically important. She was b...
Hibernating Astronauts
Hibernation allows the astronauts on the Discovery to travel through time. They freeze, move through space, and end up way out there by Saturn. It's similar to what happens to David Bowman when he...
The Others
The Others are the rival tribe; the man-apes who scream at Moon-Watchers man-apes down by the river every day. The Others and the man-apes don't fight most of the time, they just shout at each othe...
The Slab
The alien slab, the big sometimes transparent, sometimes black rectangular doohickey that turns man-apes into men and men into space babies—what is it doing there, all rectangular and ominous and...