Rating: 
Summary: Where have all the flowers gone?
Review: Well here we are again with the last installment of a once promising series that lost its way and descended into ennui. Who could forget the fantabulous 2001 or the almost as good 2010. Somehow the literary aspects of the series seem to decline as the plot advances. Gone is the initial sense of wonder and mystery; never present is interesting character development. This last gasp seems to try but the old spark is gone. Clark again tries to give us his vision of a glorious future rampant with technology and neat doohickies. But the real story is the tale of the monoliths and how we must desperately tell the makers of same that we are not the backwards race they may have originally considered us to be. Otherwise they might do bad things to us. Which begs the question - why in the world would an intelligent lifeform send the monoliths to uncivilized worlds and expect a progressive civilization of harmony and peace? That question, like many others, is never raised much less answered. All in all, I am glad Clarke wrote the series but a more visionary 2061 and a more literal 3001 would have been a major accomplishment.
Rating: 
Summary: A meander down memory lane
Review: As usual for Clarke, the science is pretty good. Unfortunately, there's so much time spent dropping names of famous scientists, events, etc, that it's distracting. By analogy, could we discern between the important people at the end of the 10th century as opposed to those in the 9th or 11th? Of course, not, unless you're a professor of history specialising in that time period. There is such a character in 3001, but it seems tacked on. More interesting is the subplot with the monolith and the contact with Dave/Hal. Sure, there are incosistencies, as pointed out by others, but none so major as the Saturn/Jupiter shift between 2001 and 2010 (i.e. 2010 is a sequel to 2001 the movie, not 2001 the book), but, like Asimov, Clarke never lets a little thing like continuity get in the way of writing a story the way he thinks it should be written at the time he's writing it. That he's forthcoming and honest about it makes me tend to ignore it. Looking at the total of the story at the end, you can't help but feel a little nostalgia for this particular little universe Clarke has created. While not up to the standards of 2001 and 2010, I don't think it would suffer a comparison with 2061. It really is time for this storyline to terminate, and I am encouraged that he's called this one the Final Odyssey.
Rating: 
Summary: It wasn't the best, but it was still good.
Review: It explained alot and I liked it.
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: Clarke told us too much... still not completely horrible
Review: The most wonderful thing about 2001 was that there was so much we didn't know. It blew my mind. I enjoyed not knowing so much. In 2010, he didn't answer questions, he just continued the leagacy, also making it a great book (not quite as good as 2001 but still very good). In 2061, only few more questions were answered, making it okay but not great. But now... in 3001, Clarke has revealed the answers to these questions, almost ruining the classic 2001. Also, the fact that Frank Poole is still alive makes HAL seem less evil, which kind of defeats the point if you ask me. 2001 was great because we didn't know what the monoliths were, we didn't know who made them, and we didn't know about the future of David Bowman.
However, in 3001, all these questions are given answers. In my opinion... I ENJOYED NOT KNOWING!
Rating:
Summary: Engaging in places, but overall a major letdown
Review: "The Lost Worlds of 2001", is filled with intriguing scenarios--the book is a collection of story elements that Clarke developed at the behest of Stanley kubrick, which were discarded or modified in the development of the film 2001. But "Lost Worlds", as well as the novelization of "2001", pale in comparison to Stanley Kubrick's film version. The film realizes all the potential of the sci fi genre. It is one of a mere handful of sci fi works that can also be certified as high art. Meanwhile, Clarke's books, though brilliant in parts, reveal many of the foibles and pratfalls into which the genre can lapse. The novelization of "2001" spells out, often comically, what is left unspoken or ambiguous in the film. "2010" is built around an intriguing premise, and indeed has turned out to be almost prophetic in many ways, particularly in Clarke's speculations about the moon Europa. But the book also further demystifies the monolith and the civilization behind it. Furthermore, the plot is held together by a string of frankly hard-to-swallow coincidences, e.g., the arrival of the U.S./Russian mission at Jupiter at the precise time when the TMA-aliens have decided to turn the planet into a "mini-sun"--let's remember, they've supposedly been in the solar system for 4 million years. I would have thought "2061" represented the final chapter in the deconstruction of the film's mythic enigma, but then along comes "3001", bringing the series to a new low. The book comes off as a conceptual grab-bag: petabytes, terabytes, atheism, clitorodectomy, space elevators. Clarke is entitled to his religious position, of course, but his atheist agenda often drags down his work. Like many an atheist, Clarke isn't committed to the position as a result of some profound spiritual struggle; rather, he wears his contempt for religion like a sort-of hipper-than-thou, haute-couture garment. Give it a rest already. The almost propagandistic injection of atheism into his work was already tiresome in 1986's "Songs of Distant Earth". Thankfully, Clarke writes short books, which can be read in a few sittings; so in spite of the fact that this book completely trashes the legacy of the original 2001, it may be of some interest to hardcore sci-fi fans who are in the mood for some literary "junk food". As is the case with many a mediocre sci-fi novel, there are certainly more than enough half-baked ideas here to at least paw at the mind.
Rating:
Summary: Critique
Review: First, Clarke does not even know when a millennium begins. His would begin Jan. 1, 3001, but he thinks it begins a year earlier. A lot of his scientific thinking has been outdated by now (2003). It is interesting, but a bit scientifically sophomoric. -F.M. Sturtevant, Ph.D.
Rating:
Summary: Ok it wasn't the Greatest
Review: this book was what i call junk i can't belive he wrote a book on this some part were ok but what the heck were you thinking.you ruined your self on the third so never make another and people don't read this if you don't like stuff that is so mixed up you can hardly read it but hey in the end it was preaty good.
Rating:
Summary: lame conclusion to a great saga
Review: A millennia later, man is still baffled by the mystery of the monoliths. First introduced in "2001", the monoliths - enigmatic stones built by an advanced race - provided guidance to the first generations of prehistoric hominids (in the prolog to "2001", we meet a tribe of ape-men, just descended to the savannah's, and hovering over extinction. A monolith educates the hominids as to how to fight off marauding predators, and that fattened wildebeests can be as nutritious as a tree full of berries). If not for the monoliths, man might have gone the way of countless extinct species. Later on, at the end of the 20th century, another monolith is discovered in the moon. The implication is that while the first device was meant to educate man, the second was meant to alert its creators as to his technological achievements. An expedition to the moons of Jupiter to trace the signal left by the moon-monolith ends in apparent tragedy. Most of the crew - kept in suspended animation - are killed off by HAL-9000, the ship's computer. Another crew member, astronaut Frank Poole, was apparently killed by the computer while repairing a faulty antenna outside of their ship. Only Dave Bowman survived long enough to complete the mission and reach the moons of Jupiter...where he disappeared. In the first sequel, "2010", we learnt that Bowman was found by alien intelligence and evolved into some hyper-sentient being with responsibility of continuing the work begin by the first monoliths - an epic program to evolve life on the frozen moon of Europa. Turning Jupiter into a min-sun, and its moons into miniature worlds, the minds behind the monolith nurse the possibility of burgeoning non-human life-forms within our solar system as a possible replacement for us. Clarke continued the saga in "2061", more of an afterthought or an oversized novella than a novel, in which he broaches the possibility that the monoliths, for their seeming divine powers, are still just machines which can be knocked on their sides. Unfortunately, Clarke did little to enhance the premise with a slim story involving Heywood Floyd (now an aged retiree looking to guild his sunset years with a trip to Haley's comet), his grandson, South African expatriates, an unauthorized landing on Europa (the one moon man was not permitted to explore) and a diamond the size of a mountain. In "3001", Clarke promises to take us further, but doesn't. He returns Frank Poole - who wasn't killed when he floated off into space near Saturn, but merely fell into suspended animation. Much of the first half of "3001" has Poole learning of man's technical feats (brain caps, towers that stretch from Earth into orbit) before returning him to space. In fact "3001" takes an insufferable amount of time telling us how cool the future is before it gets around to telling us what the story is actually about. That wouldn't be much of a problem if Clarke's vision of the future was all that compelling. Instead, it's pretty much a hyper-advanced version of what we have today - replacing desktop PC's and the internet with brain-caps (an optimistic version of the sinister "capping" devices of Christopher "Tripods" trilogy?). Computing, Clarke assures us, is much more advanced - though it's still a matter of numbers (petabytes and terabytes over megabytes and gigabytes; what's actually done with all of this capacity is never really explained. Clarke's futurism requires that this new age be more enlightened than our own, though it just as likely gave us more websites devoted to entertainment news and sports). Near the end, we get an idea of what "3001" is about - the monoliths return. Unfortunately, Clarke's futurism kicks in - the monoliths are a threat because their observations of Earth were based on Earth's medieval past (actually our present) before the world became host to a truly civilized age. Poole must now find a way to sabotage the monolith before it can inform its creators as to the evils of our own age. "3001" represents a branch of sci-fi/fantasy epitomized by C.S. Lewis as the "snobbery of chronology", in which technology is not the only advance futuristic humans will have achieved over their backward ancestors (futurism takes moral and cultural superiority of the future as a given and seldom explains how or why Buck Rogers or Jean Luc Picard never sullied their minds with infomercials or talk-shows; typically, some catastrophic event, like a nuclear war, intervened between our horrid era and the golden age). In that respect, "3001" is so close to form, that it's the least genuinely futuristic or compelling entries in the "Odyssey" saga. Instead, pick up either of the first 2 books.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-Written, Fun Read
Review: This was my first Arthur C. Clarke novel. Like a lot of people I've seen the Kubrick movie several times and I've known _of_ Clarke, but I had never read any of Clarke's novels. Though this is the last book in a trilogy, I had no trouble getting into the story. A body is found floating out in space, and when a space tug Goliath hauls it in we find it is Frank Poole, who has been presumed dead or missing for 1000 years. Due to the deep freeze of space, Poole is able to be revived and is amazed to discover 1000 years has passed. All the people he knows are dead, the life that he knew is long since gone, but curiously he is the subject of much attention, as he is a historical curiosity. People want to meet him and talk with him, and he becomes a kind of a celebrity. Part of the fun of the novel comes with Clarke's showing how a person suddenly tranferred 1000 years into the future would have to deal with all the changes that have happened to society, and Clarke's wit and charm shine very brightly in a lot of these instances. My favorite of the changes was the Five Towers that have been erected over every continent on Earth that act as a sort of giant elevator from ground level up into space. This was a very vivid image and Clarke seemed to have fun with it. Conversely, I thought the Dragon Scene was a little off course. It just didn't make sense in the natural progression of a realistically-told sci-fi novel to introduce a woman flying on the back of a dragon, even if it turns out to be a technological device. But Clarke recovers nicely and moves his plot moves on to more recognizable things like the Europa monolith, Hal, and the voice of Poole's old shipmate Dave Bowman. Poole acts a messenger sent to communicate with the monolith which has integrated Dave Bowman into itself. We learn more about the monolith, its origins and its purpose, and the novel builds to an exciting ending wherein the course of human evolution may be altered forever. 3001: The Final Odyssey was great fun to read. It is a story by a master of the genre. I do see how that if you are a regular sci-fi reader, this novel might be a bit slow for you, and a number of other customer reviews have touched on that. Clarke seems to be writing science fiction for a mainstream audience. But if you're just looking for a well-written, fun read to spend a few hours away from the hum-drum world we all have to live in 3001: The Final Odyssey is a great place to begin. Sincerely yours, Stacey
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