Star Child



The Star Child is what David Bowman becomes after his experience through the Star Gate, in the Jovian system, in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2001: A Space Odyssey
After David Bowman discovers the Jovian Monolith, he travels through a Star Gate of unknown space and time. The Star Gate brings Bowman to a replica of a Hotel Room. In this space, time seems to excel or jump toward the final days of Bowman’s life. Like a dream, he sees himself at older life stages of himself until he assumingly expires. Bowman is then reincarnated into a Star Child, who then transforms into a type of energy being.

2010: Odyssey Two
In 2010: Odyssey Two and its film adaption, the Star Child makes its second appearance, where Heywood Floyd encounters a version of Bowman on the Discovery.

3001: The Final Odyssey
After Jupiter becomes Lucifer, Bowman as an energy being merges with HAL 9000 to become Halman. Bowman’s evolutionary life cycles are glimpses of what The Firstborn (the monolith aliens) have become—reincarnating just as the Star Child, from flesh and blood beings, to energy beings, to merging with their computers, to ultimately becoming “Lords of the Galaxy”.

Marvel comics
The 2001: A Space Odyssey monthly comics by Marvel Comics featured human astronauts transformed into Star Children, referred to as New Seeds, by the Monolith. (See 2001 (Marvel))

Trivia

 * Excerpt from the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey: "In an empty room, floating amid the fires of a double star twenty thousand light-years from Earth, a baby opened its eyes..."
 * A newly discovered exoplanet, situated some 20,000 light years from Earth, was reported in the journal Nature in 2006. The planet lies in the constellation Sagittarius, close to the center of the Milky Way.
 * In an episode of the cartoon series Defenders of the Earth, the star child appears as a child with great powers that go awry.