What grabbed your attention first:
    Well, I think that the part that really griped me is when Dr.Rolf van
der Berg had discovered that a Monolith (a huge black rectangle made of an
unknown material) had just appeared on Europa (one of the moons of
Jupiter).

Summary:

    Dr.Heywood Floyd was sitting in the space station Pasture when he saw
Haley's comet and decided to actually land on the surface (by convincing
T'sung Corporation that it would be good advertising). So off go Dr.Floyd,
Dr.Chant, Clifford Greenberg and the Universe's crew to haley's comet.

    Dr.Rolf van der Berg was called to his office at 5:00 in the morning to
find that on Europa There was a new mountain three times the size of
Everest had appeared and that a thousand kilometres away from the mountain
a monolith about five hundred kilometres wide and a thousand two hundred
kilometres long.

    When Universe landed The passengers were allowed on to the surface but
only if they had some body with them so that if something went wrong they
could help each other out. Floyd found some caves and decided to
investigate it but came back empty handed. After The universe dropped the
passengers back off at the moon base the universe was assigned to go pick
up a ship that had crash landed on Europa. Universe went to pick up the
people when it was hijacked by Universe's stewardess and was forced to land
when Universe had landed The Hijacker killed her self by shooting herself
in the head. after the ship had land the landing pads had sunk into the
ground and the hijacker must have thought that they were stranded. After
the event with the hijacker the crew decided to explore the mysterious
mountain while picking up the survivors. When they got to the mountain they
realised that it was infact a diamond three times the size as Everett.
Dr.Chant took some "samples" and picked up the survivors. When they were
flying back they noticed some thing on the ground it was a small village
but no body was there. The universe landed and looked around and found no
one then Floyd saw David Bowman, David said "The people here have fled to
there waters and will be back once your poison has gone." and then he
vanished. Floyd wondered about this for a moment and remembered that when
an oxygen producing planet had been created it killed off all the other
planet's, and that was what there exhaust was or at least mostly. The
universe left and headed home once again. Year: 3000 The Monolith that was
discovered on the moon is sitting in a museum now just sitting there when
suddenly something happened after 4 million years it reawakens!.

Bibliography:
Aurther C.Clarke published 1987 by Del Ray Books