3001: The Final Odyssey

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The Final Odyssey is a 1997 science fiction novel by British writer ArthurC. Clarke. It is the fourth and final book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. Yes, the plot is thin. Yes, the characterization is feeble at best. Yes, his philosophical and social commentary is hardly argued. I can deal with all that. Too many hours of television can lower anyone's standards. But the reason I read books (especially science fiction) is to be lost and believe in a grand mysterious worlds. I want to see the monoliths. I want to hear the conversations between Poole and Hall/Dave. I want feel it once as if I'm there. And that, above all it's faults is where this book has gone tragically wrong.

After reading the ending of the Rendezvous with Rama series I was expecting Clarke to pretty much end things the same way, on a magnanimous upnote. With 2001 we learn that there is a vastly superior alien intelligence that has intervened in the natural evolution of apes to accelerate a group of them toward sentience. They use the monolith as their all-purpose tool to carry out the upgrades, then they leave one under the dirt on the moon so that some day, millions of years later, the creatures they engineered will find it and give the makers a status update. In 2001 we find it, uncover it, and activate it, and it sends off its data. In 2010 we discover that the monolith, operating independently from its makers, has started the process anew for some creatures evolving on Europa. Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: By the year 3001 all the familiar organized religions of the 21st century have died out, having all been discredited by the discovery that aliens had "jump-started" human evolution and that the monolith in Africa was humanity's first object of worship. That said, they aren't entirely disbelievers: they are generally either "Deists", believing in not more than one god, or "Theists", believing in not less than one god. The distinction is somewhat lost on Poole, who is Jewish, and is not elaborated on further. Me ha gustado que intenta cerrar la serie y redondear determinados conceptos. Está un poco mejor escrito que los primeros libros y se agradece. Hay cosas que no cuadran con entregas anteriores (la conexión entre Monolitos y entes superiores, por ejemplo). The only bad thing i found was the mid-book exit of a character named 'Dim.' He just vanishes and his fate is only mentioned in passing.

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And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. The petabyte storage device, containing Halman and other lifeforms, but also infected with the virus, is subsequently sealed by scientists in the Pico Vault. At the close of the story, Poole and other humans land on Europa to start peaceful relations with the primitive native Europans. A statement is made that the monolith's makers will not determine humanity's fate until "the Last Days". A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this book is not the author's descriptions or ideas of how things will be in one thousand years, but it is how Clarke forces the reader into thought. The fact that this Poole comes from 1000 years before when he now lives begins a thought-provoking discovery. It is great that Clarke is showing the future through the eyes of a twenty-first century man, someone who the reader can relate to because of the time-connection. As the reader sees it through Poole's eye, the reader can feel as thought they were Poole. The specific question raised in the book is how it would be to have someone who lived in the 1000s to suddenly appear in the 2000s. Think of all the changes humans have gone through it just the last 100 years. Considering that, now how will our world look in the year 3000. Will people be: brighter or dumber, taller or shorter, more dependent or less dependent on technology? Clarke does a good job of answering questions like that and making his prophecy of one thousand years from now seem at least somewhat correct in its logic and technological theories. The reader is drawn to consider all of mankind and how we have grown in search for God, education and brainpower, and how we will continue (or not continue to grow). Civilization for humans can be seen as a large exponential function. At the beginning of man it took quite a while for our first ancestors to greatly contribute to the rest of mankind. As time went on more and more each civilization came up with more and more inventions to help the world. Yet in just the last 100 years, the advances we have made have been "astronomical" toward every person's life and items.

Written very vividly, it actually puts the reader in the middle of the situations describing almost everything that is necessary. Some parts of the text were edited repeats from Book 1 and 2. However, I felt they were interesting to read again. After traversing the ever expanding story arc of 2001, 2010, and 2061, the finale was a supreme letdown and major disappointment. Part of the tragedy lies in the evolution of science fiction writing itself. Contemporary sci-fi writers are much more nuanced, subtle, and sophisticated. While there is still some of the simplistic alien wars with bizarre lifeforms (usually for no reason), the majority of sci-fi writing today is for an educated, adult audience that includes exploration of societal organization and interpersonal relationships in addition to the standard advances in physics, biology, medicine, electronics, and computers. Mind-Control Device: In 3001 the "braincap" that everyone wears that gives them direct mental access to the future internet can also be used as a mind-control device. In fact there are no prisons in 3001 - criminals are simply mind-controlled through their braincap into menial laborers until they have served their sentence. Indra says it would be very difficult to staff those kinds of jobs if they didn't have a pool of criminals to mind-control into doing them. Poole worries a bit about whether the braincap will allow others to control him when he first has it installed, but when Indra later reveals to him that it certainly can function in this way he is surprisingly accepting of the whole idea. Perhaps he is being influenced through his braincap to accept this as normal and moral?

This series of novels contain examples of:

Clarke was a graduate of King's College, London where he obtained First Class Honours in Physics and Mathematics. He is past Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, a member of the Academy of Astronautics, the Royal Astronomical Society, and many other scientific organizations.

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: The Final Odyssey. 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. Novelization: Technically, 2001 is a novelization of the film, although being based on an early version of the screenplay it differs in many ways ( Discovery goes to Saturn rather than Jupiter, for example, and the book ends with World War III breaking out on earth.)The story takes place in (duh) the year 3001. Frank Poole's corpse, after bobbing around space for a millenium, gets discovered, defrosted, and woken up. Too bad for Frank, 'cause the world of "3001" is hokey, derivative, and ever so lame. For example, the decorative plants of 3001 are tended by intelligent(ish) gorillas and dinosaurs with computers attached to their heads (my question: where are the sharks with friggin' laser beams attached to their heads??). Chekhov's Gun: In 2010, as the Leonov is leaving Earth orbit, the Captain comments that they're passing the new Chinese space-station, and Floyd muses to himself that there's some international suspicion regarding its function, especially as the UN Space Committee's repeated requests for an inspection have been refused. As it later turns out, it's not a space-station at all — it's a spaceship, the Tsien, which they plan to use to get to Discovery first. Even their rivals are impressed by the sheer audacity of them building the thing in plain sight. Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Firstborn, who created the Monoliths and later went on to transfer their consciousness to all of space-time. While they normally stay out of the affairs of lesser races, they will occasionally personally interject their help if they deem the one asking for it worthy. This is displayed at the end of 2010 when Dave asks them to save HAL from being killed by the newly-born Lucifer's creation. They transfer HAL's consciousness to be with Dave in his ascended form from then on. Amicably Divorced: Poole's marriage to and eventual divorce from Indra is a form of this. They are said to have managed to stay friends afterwards.