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3001 The Final Odyssey

3001 The Final Odyssey

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Worthy End
Review: An excellent book and a worthy end to the odyssey series

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best in the series
Review: Those who feel that Clarke has sold out and produced a worthless piece of fiction have obviously forgotten that it is necessary to think and abstract while reading rather than randomly expecting the plot to decipher itself. Clarke is a genius

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: His Best Book
Review: Clarke, a true innovator supplies plausible instences for the future of mankind. His continuing saga of the monoliths, their Makers, and the human race makes even the most creative minds think. Clarke is not writing for money as some have previovusly stated but is writing from his heart.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great End to the 2001 series
Review: Although you can't beat the origanality of the first book, this is an engrossing, interesting novel you can easly read in 2 days. From beging to end I couldn't put the book down.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The _Star Trek V_ of the Space Odyssey series
Review: 3001 is almost certainly the worst disappointment I've had from a book, because the first three novels in the series are among my all-time favourites.

I've read more convincing and deep plots in those pulp Star Wars and Star Trek novels, as well as more believable characters. But the real issue for me is that 3001 lacks any of the sweeping grandeur and mystery of its predecessors.

Replacing it is something resembling a rough-draft screenplay for a direct-to-video B sci-fi movie. There is no real continuity between significant events, and new plot elements pop out of the blue in that painfully bad "What IS this vault you just mentioned?" way.

As others have commented, the bulk of the book is basically a bunch of ideas of how the solar system might look in 3001. Aside from the fact that I read novels for the stories, not the gadgets, my problem with this is not that the technologies are too far-fetched, but that they fall far short of any sort of realistic vision (except perhaps in the scale of the constructions). Terabyte data cartridges? Having to shave your head for a direct mental interface? Bleh. In a thousand years, that sort of thing will be lucky to get a full page in a history text.

The anti-religious sentiments in 3001 wouldn't have irritated me so much if Clarke hadn't brought them up again. and again. and again. And not even in an interesting way. But he did.

The actual new monolith-related material (not rehashed from previous volumes, of which there is more than a fair share) went by so quickly I hardly noticed it, and was so unimaginative that it cheapens my memory of 2001, 2010, and 2061. I vastly prefer the monolith's previous incarnations to the sputtering antique computer terminal of 3001. Sometimes it's better to leave things as a mystery - the "revelations" about the monolith are about as convincing and interesting as the Mitichlorians in Star Wars: Episode I.

As others have also mentioned, the length of 3001 is woefully short - or rather, it would be if the story were of higher quality. I finished the entire novel in two days, and found the preview of another author's novel at the end to be more engrossing than any part of the actual book. The appearance of normal novel-length is caused by the inclusion of entire chapters from the previous books in the series, a very lengthy afterward, and the aforementioned preview.

Some of you may need to read 3001 in order to convince yourselves of its low quality, but my suggestion is to get it from the library so you won't regret the purchase cost.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best of all time.
Review: Arthur C., one of the greatest minds of all time, manages to outdue himself with this literary jewel. He takes a plausible, optomistic view of our future and lets you enter that universe.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Is that it???
Review: A true example of a "non-story." The beginning had potential but it went nowhere. At the end, I kept thinking I had missed something. A virus??? How many stories not to mention big-hit sci-fi movies, have ended that way? Potential point s of drama were missed. It really felt like a book written to deadline for money. "2001" and "2010" deserved far better.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A grave, and unecessary finale.
Review: I read the entire 2001 trilogy, and liked 2010 the most. 2061 lost me a little, but it was still marvellous. (They should do a movie of this one.) But 3001 was a totally unnecessary ending. Much of it is implausible, even for the next, next millennium. The resolution for the Monolith plot thread seems far too convenient, and the black enigmas were best left a mystery. The future of mankind was good enough in 2001-2061, but it is depressing here. And a ring around the planet? Even for 3001, this is a bit too much. I still respect Clarke though, but he failed to finish the story in a good way. The ending, to me, is best left to 2061.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wake me up when Clarke stops writing for money
Review: I really enjoyed the previous books in this series and I was really excited when I heard that the final installment had been written, but I was sorely disappointed with this lame and pathetic effort. I couldn't become involved with any of the characters at all. Clarke seems to have characters in the book only as an excuse to give an exposition of what he believes future technology will bring us. Actually, this entire novel, including the entire monolith portion of the story seems extraneous. It seems as if Mr. Clarke simply wanted to deliver his futuristic fantasies about technology and put a few modern dollars in his bank account. The plot was lame, the characters as featureless as the page I was reading them from, and the ending simply uninspired. This is how the devices of aliens who can transform themselves into pure energy are defeated? With a computer virus? Please.

As many loose ends are exposed as tied up here. Now we only have to fear 4001: The Final Oddessey Plus One Thousand, when the supervisor monolith responds to the message and Halman has to be exumed by Poole, who has miraculously survived another millenium only to find that his life is just as boring and emotionally dead as ever.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Left me a bit unsatisfied
Review: Don't get me wrong, this is a decent read but after 2001 and 2010, I was a bit unsatisfied. It didn't seem to be a fitting end to such a great series of books.


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