3001 (Space Odyssey Book 4)

This book offers some explanation of the series, as well as closure. Very interesting and disturbing insights into the author's interpretation of this alternate future universe. Good points: good explanations of previous series events. Bad points: pro-communist and pro-atheistic ideals seem to be prevalent. Also the climax is summed up in about 5 pages. Everything's a prologue to that.

God I hate intellectual property law.

Why, oh why, is the 80+-yr old Clarke the only one with the legal right to write sequels to 2001?

I mean, I know at least 15 people who would have done a better job.

This book s.u.c.k.s. Pathetic. Even more pathetic that it's billed as part of the series started by 2001, one of the most mysterious and philosophical movies of all time.

Came with fast prompt delivery, after only a few days. A lot of people said it wasn't that good, but I found it to still be another Clarke great. Helped to really close out the series for me, and I enjoyed the pace it moved at.

Whilst 2001 has a certain mythical grandeur, and left the reader with a sense of awe and wonder, and is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century, Clarke's conclusion of the story one thousand years later is highly unimaginative and much more like 'standard' science fiction.

To those readers enthralled by 2001, and to some part, 2010, I strongly advise that you do not read 2061, and certainly not 3001, lest the wonderous illusion of the original story be shattered in an instant.

This is a marvellous finish to Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey tales, written in his very readable conversational style. Clarke is among the very best writers on the sci-fi scene. Like the rest of the series, it is a plausible and believable yarn.

The black monoliths of this series of books by Clarke are one of the great inventions of science fiction. They convey the utterly alien, the utterly unknowable, and the incredibly powerful. They turned Jupiter into a star. They advanced primitive man to tool-users. And they trigger the evolution of life on Europa.

Up until this book, the monoliths, and the unseen monolith makers, have been our watchers, beginning even in Clarke's original story, The Sentinel. In this book, we may have grown up, grown up enough to challenge the monoliths. We question their mission, and we try to defeat them.

There are many themes that are worth thinking about here -- species evolution, machine intelligence, the relation between religion and the drive for knowledge, between immortality and meaning, . . .

The only thing that bothered me about the book is what bothered me about the earlier book in the series, 2061. So much is devoted to reporting what has happened "off camera." Frank Poole is the perfect vehicle for Clarke's reporting what has happened since 2001. At the beginning of the book, in 3001, he's been rescued from his apparent death in 2001, with a millennium to catch up on. And catch us up on. It's only halfway through the book that Poole's new mission starts.

Still, I can't complain.
Can't wait for Google or Apple to come out with a black monolith. I'd like one for my desk.

I experienced such a heartfelt disappointment after reading most of this book that I just couldn't force myself to continue to the end. Instead, I'm going to fantasize that the Arthur C. Clarke I remember will suddenly appear in the last chapter, blowing my mind with a strange, portentious, maybe even humorous ending that will leave me in a daze. Or maybe I'll just go back and read Childhood's End, or Rendezvous with Rama(none of the sequels, though!!!) , The Fountains of Paradise, or The Songs of Distant Earth. Or any of his myriad short stories from the same era. These are the books I remember from my awkward teenage years, when the world became too much to handle, and these books provided a delicious, intelligent, exciting escape.
3001 is derivative. Bringing Frank Poole back was such a reach that I wonder if the publisher didn't write this book himself and then get Mr. Clarke's signature at the end. And the fact that the author wasted two chapters that could have been devoted to new ideas basically plaugerizing 2010 made me angry. There didn't seem to be a plot or at least any of the beautiful scenes of distant places and futures yet unseen that made the aforementioned books so amazing.I simply can't describe the disappointment I felt after reading Cradle, Garden of Rama and the others co-written with Gentry Lee. I couldn't sense Mr. Clarke's presence in those books and I can't feel him in 3001, either.
To sum up this rambling review, I would direct the reader to anything Arthur C. Clarke wrote in the Sixties and Seventies. These works are among the best, most readable science fiction ever written and, in my opinion, don't deserve to be grouped in with his later attempts.

There are certain books or movies that succeed because they are able to capture that sense of wonder that can be so appealing. Creating a sense of wonder in science fiction usually means having mysteries that are beyond the usual scope of human knowledge and experience. Clarke has created a couple masterpieces in this vein - with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama. In both cases, the sense of wonder is enhanced by the fact that we learn almost nothing about the mysteries contained within. For some, these unresolved mysteries may be a cause of frustration, but for most, it is the sense of wonder that the unresolved mysteries create that makes these books great.

Alas, there is often a desire to explain those unresolved mysteries and tie up those loose ends. By doing so, we might have answers, but we lose the wonder and the mystery. And the answers are often not what we want or expect, or more importantly when dealing with books about alien cultures and artifacts, the answers are understandable to humans when they probably shouldn't be.

If you thought 2001: A Space Odyssey was a great book, then don't go looking for answers in the sequels. You may find that answered questions and solved mysteries are not what an Odyssey is all about.

Most science fiction books have much to do with aliens and events that are not very believable. In the book 3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, the aliens and events are very believable. All of the devices used in this story are carefully thought out and described in a way that are theoretically possible. However, even though the author tells the story with such fascinating technology, the story itself lacks interest. This is the fourth book in a continuing series which take place in the far future. In this story, Frank Poole who was left out to drift in space is resurrected. He encounters new experiences and has much trouble from being "asleep" for a thousand years. As in the other books in this series, monoliths appear and cause havoc among people. Monoliths are structures that supply the main source of life and intelligence. The problem with these monoliths is that they planned to exterminate humanity from the universe. When the people discovered the monoliths intentions, they realized the need for military action. The remainder of the book is spent destroying the monoliths. However, the predictability of this story is boring. Nevertheless, the idea of the monoliths is very interesting possibility in the future. Even though this story is so predictable and lacks character development, I feel that this is a an excellent science fiction novel by the best science fiction writer of all time, Arthur C. Clarke. This book makes you want to read more books by Clarke because of his insight into technology of the future. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of Clarke's past work and anyone that was mesmerized by science fiction.

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.

This review originally appeared in White Crane Journal #35, Winter 1997

Arthur C. Clarke is arguably one of the best known and most influential people in the world. His 59 some odd books have sold a hundred million copies. His TV appearances, during the Moon landing, for instance; interviews with him about modern technology; and his own cable TV series about unexplained phenomena have reached millions of people.

Clarke may be best-known for the four novels and two movies that began with the amazing and revolutionary film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that mind-boggling movie about human evolution and “alien intervention,” Clarke created a metaphor for some sort of multi-dimensional, “transcendent reality” in the image of the monolith. This manifestation of incredible creative power was a black, stone-like slab with the dimensions 1x4x9—the first three numbers of the quadratic series. (And why,Clarke asks, would you think it stopped after only three dimensions?) According to the mythology of the Space Odyssey series, the monolith first transformed primate consciousness on Earth into human intelligence, then, after waiting beneath the surface of the moon for human astronauts to uncover it in a sure sign of technological evolution, announced to its makers—whoever or whatever they were—that the cultivation of life on Earth had been successful. And then, through another monolith near Jupiter, ingested an astronaut, transforming him into a kind of mystical/psychic Superbeing who returned to watch over the Earth as the apotheosis and final evolution of Humankind.

In the later story, 2010, the monolith reappears to oversee the cultivation of life on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter and, to this end, ignites the gas planet into a companion star for Sol to make a sun for the life evolving on Europa. The monolith obviously operates at a scale way beyond anything human. Its makers are scientific equivalents to gods in the same way that in the 1950s modern airplanes were the gods of the “cargo cults” of South Pacific Islanders who saw these strange apparitions in the sky and mythologized them.

Many of Clarke’s novels are concerned with the nature of the gods and “spiritual reality.” Pervading his work has been an understanding of the mythologization process and an effort to “explain” mysterious and unscientific-seeming events, like psychic powers, telepathy, religious visions, ghostly apparitions, etc. He does this by forcing larger the scope of scientific understanding, looking for a bigger picture from a yet higher perspective that, in fact, honors the reality of the inexplicable and the mystical while also placing it solidly in the real world that can be explained rationally (if perhaps sometimes metaphorically) when enough information is available.

Arthur C. Clarke’s best novel, many would argue, is Childhood’s End. It is the story of an extraterrestrial visitation to Earth by the benign, but technologically all-powerful, Overlords who take charge of the Earth in order to bring peace, technological marvels, and prosperity to all people. The Overlords (rather like Mr. Spock in the competing sci-fi mythological system) are scientific, rational and logical, above emotion and hysteria and mysticism. But they are fascinated with the human race’s penchant for religious and mystical phenomena. They see it as the seeds of transformation into something greater than material existence.

It turns out that they are studying how certain planets go through an evolutionary process that takes their biosphere ultimately beyond matter and space and time, becoming purely “spiritual,” and jettisoning the planet as the intelligent species which grew on it matures beyond matter to become part of a larger psychic entity called the Overmind. The Overlords have come to Earth because they know Earth is about to undergo such an apocalyptic apotheosis. They’ve come, out of a self-interested compassion, to observe the transformation of humankind and to palliate the suffering and distress of the planet’s population when the people realize they are the last adults there will ever be. It is the children in whom the effects of the transformation will occur. And to protect the children when the change begins, the Overlords quickly take all of them away from their parents.

For the children will never grow up, instead they’ll grow into a telepathic collective, super-conscious global Mind and then grow out, leaving the cocoon of Earth behind. This is a wonderful statement—in modern, scientifically acceptable metaphors—of what religion is really about: the evolution of life into God and an explanation for religious and mystical phenomena.

Clarke is now a man of 80. He lives as what English society might call a confirmed bachelor in a sort of intentional extended family in the Theravada Buddhist land of Sri Lanka. Lately he’s been debilitated by a serious bout with post-polio syndrome. But he’s still thriving. Of all the people in the world who ought to live to see the year 2001, he is certainly one.

Arthur C. Clarke is not a gay man like the post-Stonewall gay men that make up the readership of White Crane Journal. But he is certainly one of us. He gives a marvelous example of the contributing, participating life, lived free of the conventions of marriage and childrearing. And in his modern/futuristic way, he is surely a visionary and Enlightened Being, a modern scientifically-minded prophet who has foreseen, and helped bring about, the transformation of consciousness that technological advance, the discovery of the physical nature of the cosmos, and the overpopulation and ecological crises of the late 20th C. is ushering in. (You know, if the planet Jupiter ignites into a star in the year 2001, Arthur C. Clarke just might come to be worshiped as a god.)

3001: The Final Odyssey completes the story. After the monolith has launched its report of the state of life on Earth in the year 2001 (when it was uncovered on the moon in the first novel) on a five hundred light year trip to its homebase, now the response from home is about to arrive in the year 3001 in the form of the judgment that the belligerence and ecological ignorance of humankind at the close of the 20th C. was surely evidence that the experiment had failed. Now the monolith is about turn on again to scrub the experiment, wipe out the human race and start the cultivation over again. But in the thousand years it’s taken for the signal to get home and back, humankind has changed—perhaps precisely because of knowing about the monolith and its intervention in evolution—and now deserves to survive. The last test of evolutionary success then is of the capacity to realize what’s going to happen and the ability to technologically disarm the monolith. Accomplished with the modern gimmick of the computer virus, the humans of the Third Millennium prove their evolutionary success and prevent their destruction by turning off the vehicle of transcendent intervention.

Interpreting the metaphor, doesn’t this suggest the Buddhistic thought that the maturation of humankind finally entails transcending mythology and metaphor altogether, giving up reliance on outside intervention and taking responsibility for our own evolution, and “turning off” God?

This review was written in 1997. Sir Arthur did, indeed, see the year 2001—but the transfiguration of Jupiter did not happen. Clarke died March 18, 2008, at the age of 90. This reviewer had the good fortune to correspond with Arthur C. Clarke during the time this review was written. Clarke gave permission for the indirect outing of him in the review. He was quite fascinated with the contributions to culture made by homosexuals down through history—including Abraham Lincoln, who was outed by C.A. Tripp in the book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln around that time. Clarke was on the White Crane: A Journal of Gay Men's Spirituality mailing list. The so-called "Clarkives" archives which are to be released 30 years after his death are going to be full of material about gay consciousness.

By the way, the awkward ending of 3001 which other reviewers complain about was used in the blockbuster 1996 movie Independence Day. At least, Arthur C. Clarke didn't deliver the computer virus by rocket.

Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness, The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell and other novels and books

I remember 9 years ago and upon finishing reading 2061: Odyssey 3, my reaction was the whole book was Clarkes answer to the challenge of using the characters of the original novel to the last one -- in that case it was the 100+ year old Haywood Floyd.

Now Clarke has went a step beyond, he is reviving dead charaters to play along. The Author reminds us again that like the other Odyssey sequels this book takes place in a somewhat different universe than the others, Haywood is now gone - I guess that answers my question about how necessary are these sequels. And again, all the mystic traces that have made 2001 (the book and the movie) what it is have been wiped out.

The ending, oh boy! I was under the impression the makers of the monoliths would at least include a good version of ...., er, a certain utility familiar to all computer user,.... . Clarke himself seems apologetic about the silly ending in the books notes (if it is one indeed - who knows if he is considering an "Odyssey: The Next Generation" series).

I'm not gonna kid any Clarke fans, go get the book. Others will be happier watching 2001 again.

As with 2061, you'll be disappointed if you spend most of the book waiting for the monolith to appear -- Bowman/Hal/the monolith don't appear until around the last 30 pages. But in the meantime, Clarke shows a fascinating and intelligent vision of the future. I personally went back and forth with Clarke's scientific notes at the end of the books as I passed the appropriate chapters, and Clarke provides some insights into the future that few authors are knowledgable enough to invent -- and all of it is based on present day science. Concepts like the space elevator are shown as plausible, reasonable, and surprisingly useful. As with 2061, you best appreciate the book if you just treat Clarke as a tour guide and prepare for a voyage through a fascinating world. As for the monolith story, you could easily skip 2061 and not miss a beat. (In fact, the book would be slightly less confusing if you did so.) As with the previous books in the saga, this is not a direct "sequel" and it takes some liberties with established history. (If you take everything as fact, Frank Poole was five years old in 2001.) But there are some fascinating insights into the monolith. A series of anticlimaxes proves a little disappointing, but it is followed by a surprising message at the end of the book. (If the end gets you thinking about ID4, you'll appreciate Clarke's notes on that slightly embarassing matter.) Almost certainly the worst of the series, but still a fascinating romp through Clarke's nigh-impeccable vision of the future.

This Arthur C. Clarke novel is the fourth and final installment of the series that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was published in 1997, a long while back, but a review may be justified because the series has gotten so much publicity in the past, thanks to the blockbuster film of the same name.

This book read very fast for me. It is only about 250 pages, and is set in a large, well-spaced typeface. The book has a few pluses but also serious shortcomings.

One irritating aspect of this novel was Clarke's tendency to use the story as a coat rack. He hangs onto the story all kinds of speculations about our distant future. Some of the early chapters don't even involve the characters or the story. They are just embedded essays on a variety of subjects, such as the design of huge space stations or the wired communications of future people. It is only when one reaches about page 150 that the story really starts to move.

Characters are pretty thin. Most characters are taken from the first novel in this series, including the astronauts Poole and Bowman, and even Hal -- or what Hal has become. The point-of-view skips around quite a lot. Most of the novel is seen through the eyes of Poole. Bowman and Hal are hardly characters at all, having been transformed by the monoliths. They come across like "cosmic voices."

When the spacecraft Goliath reaches Europa, the location of the largest and most important monolith, I found the book suddenly very interesting. Clarke describes the oceans of Europa -- shielded under a kilometer of ice -- with considerable detail and imagination. The denizens which inhabit Europa are very unexpected, original in concept, and very interesting. The final chapters of the novel began to really capture my interest, but could not offset the serious structural flaws of the book when judged as a work of fiction. All in all, a mixed bag.