Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time and money!
Review: The odysey series takes its final downhill twist.This plot is hardly sufficient for a short story, the characters areshallow and there is no human conflict to be found. Besides the inertialess drive there is no any other idea in the book to bite into, and this morsel by itself is far too tiny and irrelevant to the story to carry the weight of this too long and boring book. Judging by past performance Mr. Clarke certainly knows how to produce better reading than that. The grade is not lower only due to the appendix which tries to justify the fiction by science.
Rating: 
Summary: What a mess....
Review: Now what?...3001 makes it clear that Clarke is writing onreputation alone now. The story does nothing to further the "adventures" of HAL and Bowman--just the inflated ego of the author. Clarke has managed to give us no answers, while leaving the story no where to go. Incredible...
Rating:
Summary: The Master has Forgotten How to Learn
Review: Not a novel, but an anthology of essays... Driven to speak hismind, we get a hodgepodge, little story, no characters.Good premise, some great stuff, as usual, but little new. The independently written "Independence Day" ending is nothing more than an update of the classic "Monkey Wrench" story, or Spock having a computer calculate pi to the last digit. Very disappointing. More like "3001 Tales from the White Hart". Mainly I wanted to say that I don't mind Clarke's "arrogant" trashing of religion -- there's a place for that in SF. What disturbs me is that his arguments are so shallow, so old, so uninformed... He seems to have learned about religion from reading Carl Sagan books. If religion is to be judged by the Spanish Inquisition and medieval witch-hunts, than astronomy must be judged by ancient astrologers who saught power by generating superstition. Clarke and Sagan seem to think science represents the only pinnacle of human thinking, but they are oblivious to the other half of their brains (which for Clarke dominates his best books), to non-discursive thought, to symbolic knowledge, etc. I could go on. I love you, Sir Clarke, but please, round it out before rushing to publication.
Rating: 
Summary: An enjoyable book made more fun by Clarke's "prophecies".
Review: "3001" wraps up the plot lines of the previous three works inthis series spanning one thousand years. Mr. Clarke reports on thedevelopements not only in space science and technology but also in other fields including health science, theology and international (and inter-planet!) relations. He includes delightful footnotes to document his science inspirations. I read science ficition for fun, and Arthur C. Clarke is one of my favorite writers. When I learned of "3001" I realized I'd not read any in this series since "2001". I checked out "2010" and "2061" from the library so I could get to "3001" in the proper sequence. While "3001" could be read alone, I think readers' enjoyment will be enhanced by reading the other three first.
Rating: 
Summary: Expectations met, unfortunately...
Review: Even a mediocre Clarke book, which this is, contains far moreentertainment material than the average book. It also contains morescience and thought-provoking ideas than the average science fiction novel. That being said, it is unfortunate that this conclusion to the Odyssey isn't more exciting. Clarke never handled dialogue very well, and one exchange goes on for over two pages without identifying who is saying what. If your characters have different speech cadences this isn't a problem, but as others have noted, his characters all sound alike to our ears. I enjoyed Clarke's speculations as to how far science would advance (and also where it would find limitations). Paradoxically, even though I wasn't sure where the story was going, I was never really surprised when it got there! Summary: an enjoyable treat, more like reading a letter from an old friend than an exciting, twisting novel. We know how he writes, we know his shortcomings, but it is still with a smile that we receive his latest work.
Rating:
Summary: Can you say Shallow?
Review: Has ACC, the greatest SF writer in history forgotten how to develop characters. Most of the main characters in the book - Chandler, Khan, Indra showed such promise, but were simply cast out before they even became interesting. This book is so full of "non-answers" that ACC needs to write another book (3002 maybe)to fix all the problems (maybe Gentry Lee should help this time.) I felt like whole chapters were missing. The "climax" of 3001, if you call it that, was so weak that it makes you think ACC wanted you to get through it fast so he could pat himself on the back for the last twenty pages. And, did I miss something, or didn't Bowman mention something about a higher power than the Monoliths. ACC threw this out and then blew it off like everything else, like further explaining the Monoliths. They are certainly more than just a Super-computer. Also, wouldn't Poole have even tried to find out what happened to his family, friends, etc. a thousand years back (Yea, I know info. was lost, but you gotta try) When an author apologizes for a book before it starts and after its finished, you know there are problems. I hope ACC straightens this out. It certainly does not end the mystery.
Rating:
Summary: Great author in decline is sad to see...
Review: While I read all the Sci-Fi giants as a teenager, Clarke was myfavorite. His early collections were some of the best Sci-Fi everdone. So it was a great disappointment reading 3001, to see how far he has fallen. 3001 seemed to be vehicle for Clarke to trot all of his "inventions", such as the space elevator/orbital ring, exploration of the solar system, and various colonies throughout the solar system. I did like the bringing back of Frank Poole, but having the artifact of a race a million years ahead of laid low by a computer virus? Preposterous! The book was at best anticlimatic, almost none of the big questions were answered. Sad.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book could not put it down.
Review: It is by far the best one in the series. It answers a lot ofquestions about what had happended to Dave, Hal and others. I justcould not pu it down. I read it in one sitting.
Rating:
Summary: Totally limp...
Review: If reading the Odyssey series was compared to having sex, wemight say that the foreplay was great but the climax was ruined by asudden case of impotence. A total let down.
Rating:
Summary: What Frank Poole did upon his Summer thaw
Review: Clarke's prose moves with calculated efficiency, in strikingresemblance to the monolith's makers. Unfortunately, we are given thetiniest taste of what the makers have in store for the Sol system, and the story abruptly ends.
It is nice to see one view of how humankind goes about the 'mundane' business of tugging comets about, in a dance of celestial showing-off, but not enough detail was given to the answers to the questions as advertised on the back cover. As a staunch supporter of Clarke, as any user of technology should be, I found no qualms with a "Godless" universe. But in the same way Stanley Kubrick forces our eyes to be distant, I found the characters of 3001 to be adrift in a cold, calculating universe. . . with HALman as the new God. Still, a must-read for Clarke fans worldwide
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