Frank Poole is a fictional character from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series. He and David Bowman were the principal crewmembers aboard the space vessel Discovery One.



Poole is an astronaut murdered by the computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The computer effected the murder by remote control, using Poole's EVA pod to sever the air tube of his spacesuit. Poole was in the process of replacing the AE-35 electronic unit that HAL had mistakenly predicted would fail. That mistaken failure prediction was the first indication that HAL was capable of error, leading Poole and Bowman to consider disconnecting HAL. In an act resembling the human response of survival, HAL killed Poole and tried to do the same to Bowman after his attempt to rescue the doomed Poole. Poole was portrayed in the film by Gary Lockwood.

Poole played a chess game against HAL in the movie.

In the novel 3001: The Final Odyssey Poole's body is discovered after drifting in space for a millennium. Given Poole's exposure to vacuum (he was flash-frozen so his body was fully intact after 1,000 years), the advanced medical technology of the time is able to revive him and Poole is brought back to life. Poole must then contend with the trio of Monoliths that hold sway over our solar system, and what Bowman has become. He also marries a woman named Indra Wallace and has two children, Dawn and Martin.