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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:The mysteries of the monoliths are revealed in this inspired conclusion to the Hugo Award�winning Space Odyssey series�"there are marvels aplenty" (The New York Times). On an ill-fated mission to Jupiter in 2001, the mutinous supercomputer HAL sent crewmembers David Bowman and Frank Poole into the frozen void of space. Bowman's strange transformation into a Star Child is traced through the novels 2010 and 2061. But now, a thousand years after his death, Frank Poole is brought back to life�and thrust into a world far more technically advanced than the one he left behind. Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness�and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths' mysterious creators. "3001 is not just a page-turner, plugged in to the great icons of HAL and the monoliths, but a book of wisdom too, pithy and provocative." �New Scientist.… (more)
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3001 is the best of the sequels, as it shows the difficulty of someone removed from their time and forced into a new one. Astronaut Frank Poole ('killed' in 2001 by the computer HAL in 2001)is found drifting, Buck Rogers style, in an orbit out near Neptune. He is rescued by a comet wrangler, out nudging icy comets towards the sun to harvest their water in a project to terraform Venus, and resuscitated a thousand years after his 'death'. The story is rather humdrum, but Clarke always has an interesting idea working, even if it doesn't make for the most gripping of stories.
An odd thing to quantify, how to phrase a recommendation of the series. They are good stories from a great imagination, but if SF isn't your cup of tea then the sequels are honestly best left at the bookstore. They are simply a vehicle for his idea of a future world of space faring and space living humans, really.
However, if you are a fan of this 2001, 2010, and 2064, you might want to read this just
At one point Poole's birthdate is specifically given as 1996 (199), which would have made him only five years old when crewing the Discovery. This sort of retroactive discontinuity is common to the Odyssey Sequence, which Clarke called "variations on the same theme ... not necessarily happening in the same universe" (261, quoting 2061).
The interactions with Poole's previously monolith-integrated colleagues were a little disappointing. In particular, Heywood Floyd went missing altogether, while Dave Bowman and HAL were collapsed into a character called "Halman." This element of the plot is focused on a threat posed by the monolith network, and defeated by human ingenuity. Clarke later rather sadly noted that his narrative resolution here was notably similar to that already used in the film Independence Day, which "contains every known science-fiction cliche since Melies' Trip to the Moon (1903)" (253).
There is a certain irony in the book's extensive criticisms of religion and metaphysical thought generally, while the Prologue and Epilogue construe the "Firstborn" creators of the monoliths as basically divine entities who may yet judge and sentence humanity. Perhaps inspired by the then-recent (in 1997) Aum Shinrikyo attacks, Clarke makes religiously-motivated terrorism responsible for biological and informational attacks that lead to greater global cooperation among governments in the early twenty-first century (216).
The book includes two pieces of interesting end matter. The Sources and Acknowledgements provide a chapter-by-chapter review of scientific justifications for the speculative technological elements of the novel and references to relevant current events. The Valediction is an author's retrospective on the full Odyssey Sequence. In it, Clarke protests too much perhaps that "it's all [his] own fiction" (262), disclaiming any co-authorship for the four books, but thus downplaying the significant contributions of Stanley Kubrick to the development of 2001 from "The Sentinel" and the features of the cinematic narrative later retrofitted to the not-sequels.
This story follows Frank Poole, murdered by the omnipresent HAL in "2001", found preserved and alive after floating in the cold vacuum of space for 1000 years. It's through Frank's eyes, mind and mouth that Clarke exposes his views on the future. Religion is no more; and technology is the new religion. And while technological advancement has skyrocketed beyond Poole's own age, one character comments that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Poole doesn't understand it, but has faith enough to accept it.
In connecting this story to the previous three novels, Clarke writes in a couple 'guest appearances' by David Bowman and HAL - now a single entity called Halman. They appear, literally and figuratively, as mere shadows of their former selves. Poole's character, and the smattering of future humans he interacts with, are not nearly enough to carry the story itself, however.
In tying up loose ends, we learn more about the entities that sent the Monolith's to earth as well. Much of this is speculated in the previous novels so don't really count as 'spoilers':
"And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everhwere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed."
"For years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on land and in the seeas. But which of their experiments would bear fruit, they could not know for a least a million years. They were patient."
The last two novels in the "Space Odyssey" series are weak; are really no more than long novellas (about 200 pages) and do little to build on the mythology started in "2001". Unless you feel compelled to 'complete' the Clarke's quadrility, you miss out on little by reading only "2001" and it's very strong sequel "2010".
Unfortunately it's not good as a stand-alone novel.
MB 14-vi-2013
Here we find Frank Poole, that guy in the yellow spacesuit that HAL 9000 murdered in the first book floating out in the Kuiper Belt. His corpse is rescued by a deep space mining ship (nice touch) and revitalized after a thousand years by advanced medicine. Through Poole we see how humanity has advanced and expanded through the solar system. Many things I found interesting, such as superstructure of spaceports surrounding the earth, tethered at the Equator by four space elevators. Most people have a chunky human-brain interface implanted in the scalp which I found rather clunky in light of nanotechnology developments. The best parts of Final Odyssey is when we emphasize with Poole’s cognitive vertigo when he comes to grips with being 1,000 years out of touch with his species.
There is a plot about the creators of the Monoliths making judgments about which species they advance being worthy and which need extermination so they don’t become a violence menace, much of which contradicts previous information on how fast the Monoliths can communicate with one another; but the suspense plot seems a bit mechanical and a token offering in comparison to Poole’s journey. Even his reuniting with HALMAN, the HAL 9000/David Bowman hybrid entity is a bit of a distraction. Everything works out in the end and then wump, the ride comes to a stop the bar lifts off your shoulders and it’s time to exit your seat. The Space Odyssey is over.
A superb book!
Because he resurrected a dead Poole (sorry, couldn't resist, though I don't read comics)he spent a lot of time trying to acclimate the reader through Poole to his imagined future. The first part of the book seemed to be a What's What of Clarke's Bucket Wish List for what he hoped would happen to humanity. Because he was tied to an alternate past and (I'm guessing) wanted to connect the reader to his future, he dropped a lot of 20th century anchors that really hurt in a cliche way that was beneath Clarke. Star Trek? please. I'm sure Roddenberry would be flattered that space captains 1,000 years from now would not only know what Star Trek was, but had watched it. A thousand years from now??!! That's where Clarke really stooped to an early Stephen King level...product placement is unbecoming to a grandmaster.
And language... We're to believe that someone awakened from a 1,000 year frozen death would only have a marginal difficulty understanding the language? 400 year old English has numerous differences from modern English and 1,0000 years ago, English was in the waning years of Old English, making its way into Middle English, which is pretty unintelligible to us. Ray Kurzweil has had limited luck predicting technological advances more than 10 years out (unless you ask him...he thinks 60-80%) - I would think rather than trying to nail 1,000 years down the road it would be easier to just not try to connect with current technologies.
I'm not even going to go into the Independence Day bit (that came out three years before this did...did he not know?), and I thought the hat tip to Asimov cute (Susan Calvin...).
So, it's not worth picking all the low hanging fruit on this one. It was just okay and a sad conclusion to an okay series.
NO sense of wonder! Of all the books I would have loved to see convey a sense of wonder over the mysteries of the universe, this would be