Rating: 
Summary: Great Story, Poorly Structured
Review: Its the year 3001. A spacecraft has found Frank Poole and he is revived. After exploring the new world he lives in, Frank encounters the entities that used to be Dave Bowmman and the HAL 9000 computer who have become tools for the mysterious Monolith. They have disturbing news. The Monolith sent a message out to its higher headquaters back in 2001 and is now getting a response. The response does not look good. Mankind must act quickly or possibly face annhilation.
I was really disappointed with this book. The story line is excellent, but Clarke squanders what could have been a great ending to an awesome tale. The first 3/4 of the book is devoted to Frank Poole getting acquainted with mankind in the year 3001. His discoveries are certainly very interesting and often thought provoking. But theres a major disconnect. Just as the pages are getting short, Clarke drops a bombshell on you. The Monolith might be about to blow up the solar system. Even more shocking, mankind may be able to stop this!!!
Huh??!!??? Take on the Monolith??? For decades weve looked on the Monolith as being invincible and the author has the Discovery crew (and a few others) take on the old enigma in a mere 36 pages! While I found these final pages interesting, I feel Clarke should have spent more time here.
Also, this book has major timing problems. Theres a minor entry regarding Frank Poole's childhood that would have made him less than 10 years old for the Jupiter mission! And heres a biggie. "2010" has an exerpt showing the year 10,001 AD that hints at the Monolith still guarding Europa. How can this be???
I found this book dissapointing. It certainly had some awesome potential, but the inconsistencies are just too much.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: This book gets 2 stars only because I was able to finish it, not because of its content. It does not compare to the literary quality of the first 2 books in the series. Good science fiction should be both imaginative in its exploration of the future and intellectually stimulating in its exploration of ethical dilemmas. This book is neither. There was only one lame chapter toward the end of the book that dealt with the religion issue and how 31st century science had impacted it. And what happened to Frank when he landed on Europa and was supposedly reunited with Dave after a millenia? And Hal, the epitome and representation of evil, now a "good guy" or at least benevolent? I agree with the other reviewers that said some things should be left to the imagination and that this book should be read only to complete the series.
By the way, someone who has been writing for as long as Clarke has should not misuse the word "myriad" as often as he does.
Rating:
Summary: Clarke shoulda quit with his third
Review: This book starts out badly, and then gets worse. Clarke, not content to rest on his laurels after completing his original 2001 trilogy, decided to make a great leap forward a full 1,000 years to show us his vision of what our human society would look like at the start of the Fourth Millennium. This he does by resurrecting astronaut Frank Poole, previously notable mainly for being HAL 9000's first victim, after he'd been found adrift in deep space, and then plopping him right smack in the world of 3001 and letting us see it through Poole's eyes. This is, at best, the stuff of cheap pulp science fiction, and a man of Clarke's scientific knowledge should have been embarrassed to use it as a key plot device. This is, after all, the man who gave us the notion of putting astronauts in hibernation for long duration space flight, an idea that, though technically challenging, at least sounded reasonably plausible. In contrast, re-animating a corpse that's been dead for a thousand years is just absurd. Anyway, it starts from there, and quickly heads downhill. A common critique of science fiction is that it's often heavy on the science and light on the fiction. Putting aside Poole's magical, er, 'revival', the rest of the science is quite good. And it is also the only part of the book that is genuinely imaginative and interesting. Clarke's 3001 does sound eminently plausible, there have been great strides in space travel, for instance, and yet there's still been no star voyages, no discovery of "hyper drive" or "warp drive", for instance. But once he veers away from his vision of futuristic science and technology, the train starts to leave the rails. There is little sense that people had advanced artistically, culturally, morally, spiritually or in any other way besides technologically. True, there's less crime, for example, but that's only because every person is outfitted with an electronic device that plugs directly into their brain, thus allowing potential criminals and other forms of deviancy to be monitored and dealt with. As a result of developments such as these, future life is generally safe, healthy, and pleasurable, but also generally bland and seemingly lacking in any higher sense of purpose. It is, not coincidentally, also lacking in religious faith and values, which also makes for the most controversial (and, in my opinion, poorly handled) part of the book. Clarke isn't exactly subtle in his views on the subject. Early on, Poole finds that whenever he utters the word "God", even as a mere figure of speech, people react as if he's just used a dirty word. It seems in the future, religion, while apparently not outright illegal, appears to be strongly discouraged. Clarke dredges up the usual arguments, most notably the case of the Inquisition, to try to portray all religion as a sham at best, and a form of insanity at worst, but ultimately they fall flat. This is probably due to the fact that Clarke seems to have made only the shallowest and most rudimentary efforts to understand the subject of religion, having, for instance, one character pompously proclaim that religion was simply the byproduct of fear, it obviously never occurring to him that it might also be the byproduct of hope, even love. And, finally, it is interesting to note that, while the 2001 series makes for an entertaining creation myth to explain mankind's evolution from ape to thinking human, there's a moral to be derived from the fact that the mysterious monolith brings us only intelligence, but not wisdom or virtue.
Rating: 
Summary: How does anyone get away with...
Review: Yes, the plot is thin. Yes, the characterization is feeble at best. Yes, his philosophical and social commentary is hardly argued. I can deal with all that. Too many hours of television can lower anyone's standards. But the reason I read books (especially science fiction) is to be lost and believe in a grand mysterious worlds. I want to see the monoliths. I want to hear the conversations between Poole and Hall/Dave. I want feel it once as if I'm there. And that, above all it's faults is where this book has gone tragically wrong. How Arthur C. Clarke has managed to transform possibly FACINATING scenes and descriptions into unbearably weak second hand accounts is beyond me. Half of the book reads as a series of half-hearted e-mails, and the other is utterly void of energy or lyricism. This is more a book synopsis than a book itself. The cardinal rule of writing is "Show. Don't Tell", but in this fizzle of a sci-fi legacy Clarke reduces the mystery of the star child to a yawn enducing radio treatment. Juse because he's written a lot of good books in the past, shouldn't allow him to get so sloppy.
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