From my spousal unit's sf/f collection -- I've been trying to fill in some gaps. 3001 was written to answer questions a d while not lifeless is not full of the energy of his earlier work. Nonetheless Clarke knows how to put a story together, how to balance fact with dramatic scenes, and just a wee bit of character, really not his thing, though. The 'reveal' of what those monoliths are up to was, is just the right degree satisfying. Not entirely explained, but enough, with plenty of mystery. And suspense too, a further millennium down the road. Clarke's (barely disguised) rant on religion, more or less in line with my own views, was lucid and entertaining both (and will offend many, so be warned). I particularly liked his descriptions of the moons of Jupiter. I cringed a bit with giggling (all women) nurses and a few other mishaps, but they were minor. ***ish ( )

Brings closure to the fate of the monoliths and humanity's future, but reads like a list of Asimov's pet peeve list of (then) current issues for a good quarter of the book. The speed of technological development also seems to have run into a wall as far as his pretty stellar record of predictions is concerned, though he did create a larger safety net in terms of timespan for this novel. It's astonishing to think how many popular scifi stories have mined/plagiarized the Odyssey series for ideas, though not always without improvements. The Expanse series mirrors many of these ideas but does better in what Asimov never gets right; characters. ( )

Like most of Clarke's later novels, this is mostly a tour of future Earth, not a novel. There's a minimal story to hang various mini-lectures on. Like Heinlein's For Us, The Living, someone from our time is brought into the future to be lectured about how stupid humanity used to be. In this case, that someone is Franke Poole, the astronaut jettisoned into space by HAL in 2001. How his frozen body happens to be recovered is as believable as the astral projection in For Us, The Living or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Where Heinlein's primary target was capitalism, Clarke's is religion, but there are plenty of SF ideas tossed out, mostly continuing prior explorations of space elevators and such. One of the most prescient sections recounts the rise of ransomware -- prescient bcause when written in 1997 only a few incidents -- done by floppy disk! -- had yet occurred.

Only for completists. ( )

A thrilling conclusion to the series that ends all to soon. I feel an investment into this story that I've not felt in a while. ( )

This "Final Odyssey" is the last and least of the three novels that Arthur C. Clarke wrote to extend the ideas introduced in 2001. The setup is clever enough: Frank Poole, a Discovery expedition member murdered by HAL 9000 back in 2001, is recovered in his excursion pod still exiting the Solar System, and he is restored to life by fourth-millennium super-science. Much of the book--the more interesting parts, really--concerns his difficulties and successes adapting to a "braincapped" posthuman society after a thousand years out of circulation.

At one point Poole's birthdate is specifically given as 1996 (199), which would have made him only five years old when crewing the Discovery. This sort of retroactive discontinuity is common to the Odyssey Sequence, which Clarke called "variations on the same theme ... not necessarily happening in the same universe" (261, quoting 2061).

The interactions with Poole's previously monolith-integrated colleagues were a little disappointing. In particular, Heywood Floyd went missing altogether, while Dave Bowman and HAL were collapsed into a character called "Halman." This element of the plot is focused on a threat posed by the monolith network, and defeated by human ingenuity. Clarke later rather sadly noted that his narrative resolution here was notably similar to that already used in the film Independence Day, which "contains every known science-fiction cliche since Melies' Trip to the Moon (1903)" (253).

There is a certain irony in the book's extensive criticisms of religion and metaphysical thought generally, while the Prologue and Epilogue construe the "Firstborn" creators of the monoliths as basically divine entities who may yet judge and sentence humanity. Perhaps inspired by the then-recent (in 1997) Aum Shinrikyo attacks, Clarke makes religiously-motivated terrorism responsible for biological and informational attacks that lead to greater global cooperation among governments in the early twenty-first century (216).

The book includes two pieces of interesting end matter. The Sources and Acknowledgements provide a chapter-by-chapter review of scientific justifications for the speculative technological elements of the novel and references to relevant current events. The Valediction is an author's retrospective on the full Odyssey Sequence. In it, Clarke protests too much perhaps that "it's all [his] own fiction" (262), disclaiming any co-authorship for the four books, but thus downplaying the significant contributions of Stanley Kubrick to the development of 2001 from "The Sentinel" and to the features of the cinematic narrative later retrofitted to the not-sequels.

3001: The Final Odyssey
Author: Arthur C Clarke
Publisher: Del Rey / Ballantine Books
Publishing Date: 1997
Pgs: 263
Dewey: F CLA
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
=======================================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
On an ill-fated mission to Jupiter in 2001, the mutinous supercomputer HAL sent crewmembers David Bowman and Frank Poole into the frozen void of space. Bowman’s strange transformation into a Star Child is traced through the novels 2010 and 2061. But now, a thousand years after his death, Frank Poole is brought back to life—and thrust into a world far more technically advanced than the one he left behind.

Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness—and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths’ mysterious creators.
_________________________________________
Genre:
INSERT HERE
Science Fiction
Hard Science Fiction
Space
Fiction
Classics
Sequel
Series
Space Opera

Why this book:
Completist. Finish the series.
_________________________________________
The Page 100 Test:
& ◄ - Imma need a bit more.
? ◄ - Just not sure about this.
(≖_≖ ) ◄ - side eyeing this
± ◄ - could go either way

Favorite Character:
Poole. He’s our way into the story and its main character. And he’s likable.

Least Favorite Character:
Halman. He’s so much less than the sum of his parts.

Professor Theodore Khan. He almost seems to be there to create a religion around the Monoliths and the Europs.

Tropes:
The “absence making the heart grow fonder” trope is hammered and telegraphed HARD here.

Calling the Ball:
Considering the hard science fiction of Clarke's other work, I'm curious at pulling off a thousand years of advancement and making it believable without going metaphysical and blowing the curve on what his writing is good at. Considering the progress since the Wright Brothers and Alan Turing, Clarke probably didn’t aim high enough. We would hope.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
Feels a lot like closing the loopholes, rather than a complete story in and of itself. And the part that could have added to the story is given deus ex machina short-shrift.

Turd in the Punchbowl:
Genetic-enhanced gorillas and college students on an archaeology dig not being platonic. ... ... Dammit, Arthur.

An alien species evolving out at Jupiter orbit and Clark used a chapter to talk about the changes in the way that humanity deals with foreskin. Okay.

Missed Opportunity:
The mystery and promise of what was happening to Hal and Bowman after 2061 is dumped on here. They become so much less than they were in the previous books.

Strikeout:
This is on -ism watch. There is a glaringly unnecessary RUFKM in the early part of the story used as a description of a Japanese scientist who is helping Poole recover. Not cool, Arthur. Not cool at all. Strike One.

Gorilla sex and foreskin. Let’s call that Strike Two.

The Poker Game/DND Table:
Clarke at a DND table would probably suck. Bet he could be inscrutable at a poker table, might be fun to play against. Bowman, at least the one we met in the previous books, not the cypher that he is here, would have been better to play poker with than Poole.
_________________________________________
Pacing:
Well paced.

Last Page Sound:
Massive, big, eclipsing move and bloop. Leave a hole for a 4001: The Odyssey Beyond The Final Odyssey that isn't ever coming. It's well written but damn.

Questions I’m Left With:
I don’t even want to think about them.

Conclusions I’ve Drawn:
While slightly more plausible than ID4, the method being a better delivery and possible translation of language to language, still, it was a trope best left on the cutting room floor. And the effect was huge...and the bloop. Ending on a Meh is tough when you are 4 books into a series and this is the last book.

Author Assessment:
It is well written.

Editorial Assessment:
Seems that the decision was made to let him write whatever he wanted to write and no one was going to have a long talk with him about plot or what was going to happen at the end.

Reread Pile:
No. I might be done with Clarke’s other works too. Very on the fence.
======================================= ( )

This is by far the weakest volume in the series. It is flat, repetitive and unimaginative. A serious let down compared to the previous volumes.

Large passages of previous volumes were simply copied. The main storyline belongs into the field of utopia rather than that of science fiction.

I finished it mostly because I don't like starting books and not reading them to the end. But I could not help getting the impression that Clarke did not really want to write it, but had to do so due to contractual obligations. ( )

And everything is explained and tied up in a bow. ( )

[July 27, 1997] If anyone suggests you read this book, just say NO! Why? How about: NO plot, NO characterization, NO answers, NO drama, NO tension, and above all:

NO sense of wonder! Of all the books I would have loved to see convey a sense of wonder over the mysteries of the universe, this would be it. A very disappointing Cincinnati-to-San-Francisco-on-Delta read. ( )

After spending 1000 years asleep - though presumed dead by his former shipmate and those in charge of his odyssey - Frank Poole wakes up in a strange new world - errm, time. How much has the human race changed in the last 1000 years? Quite a bit, but they're still awestruck by the large monolith that inhabits the Jupiter/Lucifer moon, Europa. Not to mention the two - wait, there was two monoliths on earth?! - that they have on Earth. So begins the final odyssey in the pages of 3001.

Poole is more than ready to return back to the planet where he met his doom, in hopes that the entity that Dave Bowman has become will greet him. It is after their 1000 year reunion that Bowman reveals to Frank the truth behind the monoliths uncovered on the moon and in Africa, something that threatens the human race.

Where does this take us? Well, down another path of space exploration that only Arthur C. Clarke can take us. However, the finale falls short of its predecessors - with the kind exclusion of 2061. While it's not a complete disaster, it does leave plot holes open that leaves readers scratching their hands in wonder. The one that strikes me the most is the complete clash with the ending of 2010, which flashes forward to the year 20,001. If the events were to take place in linear time, then Clarke screwed it up himself.

[more] ( )

2061'den sonra 3001 çok güzel geldi ve seri güzel bir şekilde sonlandı.Serideki kitapları en sevdiğimden en az Sevdiğime sıralayacak olursam 2010>3001>2001>2061 şeklinde olur. ( )

The last and probably the best one in the series. Frank Poole is found after being blown out the hatch if the Discovery in 2001. He is resuscitated and finds things amazingly different than when we last heard of him. Many things come to fruition and humanity lands safely on Europa to start peaceful relations with the inhabitants. ( )

Lightweight futurism, plus an alien threat. The notes at the end, justifying the predictions through the current state of the science or engineering, are conscientious and interesting. ( )

They told me - don't bother reading 3001, it's not worth it. I knew they were right. But partially from a need to complete the series, and partially out of morbid curiosity, I read it anyway.

It's awful. It's only [b:saving grace|130916|The Saving Graces A Novel|Patricia Gaffney|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171995451s/130916.jpg|126092] is being just 112 pages. There are a few beautiful passages - all lifted directly from the other novels in the series. He makes some interesting social commentary, but that's overwhelmed by his diatribes against religion.

Again, instead of ending it just frays away. What plot there is ends, but it's an unsatisfying end.

I will say this much for it - he does a nice job of handling a man sent 1000 years in the future. It's not an easy task, and he did it well. I also enjoyed the references to other SF works, and possibly seeing the origin on things in more recent SF stories. Did this inspire John Scalzi's "Brain Pal" in his Old Man's War series?

To save you the trouble, here's my synopsis of 3001: The Final Odyssey












SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!!! (which I'm only hiding out of politeness. I'd much rather tell you about this book than have you suffer through reading it.)

















So, it's the year 3001. In an amazing coincidence, a ship finds the body of Frank Poole, the astronaut HAL knocked into space in 2001. Becuase of the advances in medical science, he can be brought back to life. Can we say Mary Sue boys and girls? I knew you could. And why write a knew character, when you can just bring one back from the dead. But I digress.

He gets used to living 1000 in the future, and the author gets to hold forth on what's wrong with humanity in the second millinium.

For poorly explained reasons, Frank decided to try and contact Dave Bowman, by landing on Europa. In this process he meets a philosopher who holds forth at lenght about the insanity of religion. Somehow this is related to landing on Europa, although I do not at all understand how. The landing works! Frank is now the only being in conact with the only being who can contact the Monolith. Whee.

Frank goes back home, and goes on with his life. At some point, Dave gets in touch with him, basically pointing out that, based on 20th century information about humanity, the makers of the monolith have decided that Humanity has gone completely wrong and should be wiped out. Frank passes along that information, and watches as the great minds of the day figure out a way to stop their destruction. They gather the worst computer viruses they can find, send Frank back to Europa, and as him to ask Dave to be the Trojan Horse who delivers the computer viruses. They also give him a memory device to download himself to, to try and save him from the same fate as the monoliths.

It works, humanity is just barely saved from destruction, but Dave's consciousness is still infected with the viruses he delivered and so cannot be contacted. Frank goes on with his life, missing his old friend.

No, really. That's how it ends.

In 2061, the Dave/Hal/Monolith entity thing downloaded a copy of Heywood Floyd. There's no hint of him in this book - nothing. ARG! ( )

Too many problems with this book to go more than two stars. Science fiction imagines futures...distant, disconnected futures and sometimes alternate futures with familiar elements. Frank Herbert did a good job taking a disconnected reality and jumping it forward 4,000 years. Stephen Donaldson also did a good job when he wrote the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (also 4,000 years forward in that fantasy universe). Clarke was ambitious in trying to take his Odyssey saga 1,000 years into the future...but he didn't do it well.

Because he resurrected a dead Poole (sorry, couldn't resist, though I don't read comics)he spent a lot of time trying to acclimate the reader through Poole to his imagined future. The first part of the book seemed to be a What's What of Clarke's Bucket Wish List for what he hoped would happen to humanity. Because he was tied to an alternate past and (I'm guessing) wanted to connect the reader to his future, he dropped a lot of 20th century anchors that really hurt in a cliche way that was beneath Clarke. Star Trek? please. I'm sure Roddenberry would be flattered that space captains 1,000 years from now would not only know what Star Trek was, but had watched it. A thousand years from now??!! That's where Clarke really stooped to an early Stephen King level...product placement is unbecoming to a grandmaster.

And language... We're to believe that someone awakened from a 1,000 year frozen death would only have a marginal difficulty understanding the language? 400 year old English has numerous differences from modern English and 1,0000 years ago, English was in the waning years of Old English, making its way into Middle English, which is pretty unintelligible to us. Ray Kurzweil has had limited luck predicting technological advances more than 10 years out (unless you ask him...he thinks 60-80%) - I would think rather than trying to nail 1,000 years down the road it would be easier to just not try to connect with current technologies.

I'm not even going to go into the Independence Day bit (that came out three years before this did...did he not know?), and I thought the hat tip to Asimov cute (Susan Calvin...).

So, it's not worth picking all the low hanging fruit on this one. It was just okay and a sad conclusion to an okay series. ( )

Frank Poole didn't die, but hybernated in deep space. Gets rescued in 3001. Mankind destroys the Monoliths, which, according to Halman[the amalgamation of Dave Bowman and HAL which were NOT the next step but merely co-opted as extra sensors] were going to destroy humanity because it had been found wanting. So it ends with Humanity having 900 years to figure out the next step. The whole Odyssey series was so blase! And whole chapters were taken from former books, it got very boring and repetitive. Glad I read them, but I don't plan on reading them again unless there is some Need, which I can't imagine there ever being one. ( )

I couldn't finish it. Looking back I should have stopped with this series at 2001. ( )

Very entertaining final sequel to 2001, it brings back to life the astronaut who was killed by Hal while doing an EVA! Set far enough in the future that he can really kick out. ( )

Not as enjoyable as the previous novels, but a nice way to wrap up the series. ( )

A great conclusion to an awesome series of books. I love the picture Clarke paints of the future, although some ideas are obviously "vintage" (like the Braincap). Must read for anyone interested in science (fiction). ( )

3001 isn’t a terrible story, but it does fall way short of 2001 and 2010. The storytelling doesn’t have the same resonance and the plot itself was forced and felt unnecessary. The humanity feels like it has been stripped away. There is no longer any mystery to the fates of Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, nor is there any sense of danger. It seems that 3001 was an attempt to resurrect the series after the flat reception of 2061. Instead, it is simply a continuation of a once great story that has fallen into mediocrity. ( )

Lords of the galaxy rove at will as energy with no body restraints. Never human they did seek fellowship in the stars with the power they possessed. They encountered life throughout the worlds and watched the faint sparks of intelligence die in the great cosmos. Planting life they valued mind above all. They reaped and weeded life forms dispassionately. Ages had passed as they returned to earth they began to study, catalog and modify the destiny of life forms. Now they set goals of their own, not being immune to the corruptions of time they use memory. Their indifference through science may exclude plans for a future. This well written book endures time and steps into the future with striking insight. ( )

A poorly written vehicle for some more of Clarke's technological future-gazing. The format is just another take on H. G. Wells's The Sleeper Wakes using the 2001 astronaut Frank Poole as the central character. The author confesses to what I instantly spotted - that five of the chapters are lifted from earlier books in the sequence. An afterword traces the sequence from the original short story written in 1948: it's a pity that, other than updating of technology, the style of the prose is still stuck in 1948.

MB 14-vi-2013 ( )

The elements that make "2001: A Space Odyssey" a classic -- the pacing, dramatic tension, smartly efficient plot lines -- are mostly missing from Arthur C. Clarke's "Space Odyssey" finale, "3001". What it retains is Clarke's obvious exuberance for biological, technological and cultural evolution. Each book in the series represents an evolution in itself even, of Clarke's own perspective and thinking on the growth of humanity overtime, while providing a platform for his reflections on extraterrestrial life and evolution.

This story follows Frank Poole, murdered by the omnipresent HAL in "2001", found preserved and alive after floating in the cold vacuum of space for 1000 years. It's through Frank's eyes, mind and mouth that Clarke exposes his views on the future. Religion is no more; and technology is the new religion. And while technological advancement has skyrocketed beyond Poole's own age, one character comments that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Poole doesn't understand it, but has faith enough to accept it.

In connecting this story to the previous three novels, Clarke writes in a couple 'guest appearances' by David Bowman and HAL - now a single entity called Halman. They appear, literally and figuratively, as mere shadows of their former selves. Poole's character, and the smattering of future humans he interacts with, are not nearly enough to carry the story itself, however.

In tying up loose ends, we learn more about the entities that sent the Monolith's to earth as well. Much of this is speculated in the previous novels so don't really count as 'spoilers':

"And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everhwere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed."

"For years they studied, collected, catalogued. When they had learned all that they could, they began to modify. They tinkered with the destiny of many species, on land and in the seeas. But which of their experiments would bear fruit, they could not know for a least a million years. They were patient."

The last two novels in the "Space Odyssey" series are weak; are really no more than long novellas (about 200 pages) and do little to build on the mythology started in "2001". Unless you feel compelled to 'complete' the Clarke's quadrility, you miss out on little by reading only "2001" and it's very strong sequel "2010". ( )

If "2001" the movie is perhaps the greatest film of all time, there is an undeniable symbolic irony that "3001: The Final Odyssey" is perhaps the worst book ever written. It was impossible to believe that the mind who invented such a cornerstone of science fiction could somehow have fathomed this unmitigated disaster... until the writer's afterword explains how all of his previous books have been coauthored while this was the first one he ever wrote alone. Even if this were the crudest fan fiction, it is mind-boggling that the writer's friends, editors, etc. could allow him to print such a blasphemous defamation of this classic legacy. Where to begin? The author must've struggled to find enough to say as this lightweight tome barely escapes orbit from a novella, weighing in at a measly 180 pages. The first half of the book is dedicated to an awestruck protagonist swooning at the magic of the future, one that's so juvenile in its conception that dinosaurs are babysitters while virtual reality is used to fly with scantily-clad women riding dragons. The book is pathetically anachronistic, dating itself by marveling at the wonders of the pocket calculator. The writing is dreadfully uneven as it meanders around a poor pastiche of strange diaries, stage conversations or plain old piss-poor prose. The original vision of a world cohabitated with artificial intelligence is nonexistent and forgotten. Yet in the end, the plot is a poor reject from the most cliched Hollywood story about aliens, and NONE of the headier ideas demonstrated in the first installment are on display anywhere. Why, I even had to reread the entire ending to be sure that I caught the most sudden and anticlimactic conclusion ever committed to paper. In conclusion, this book is very bad. ( )