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3001 : The Final
Odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke |
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| List: $25.00
Our Price: $17.50 You Save: $7.50 (30%) Availability: This title usually ships within 24 hours. Hardcover, 352 pages
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From Booklist , 01/01/97:
At the opening of the third millennium, humanity
is spreading throughout the solar system, terraforming Venus, and already
settled on the moons of Jupiter. Enter one who is effectively a time traveler--astronaut
Frank Poole, frozen in deep space ever since, a thousand years ago, he
became HAL 9000's victim (as viewers of the movie 2001 will recall).
The revived Poole makes a fine observer, through whom Clarke leads readers
on a tour of humanity's future, and he is also the key to contact with
David Bowman, last seen encrypted in a giant black monolith on Ganymede.
And making contact with Bowman saves humanity, for the monolith was programmed
by its creators to destroy humanity, a plan foiled after it is injected
with a computer virus. 3001 can stand alone from its predecessors
in Clarke's Space Odyssey saga and is an intelligent romp, distinguished
by Clarke's usual and inimitable wit and an unusual (perhaps unwelcome)
strain of grumpiness about religion. Expect demand for it as the conclusion
to perhaps the most influential sf series ever--thanks to the movies--and
supply generously. Science Fiction Book Club main selection.
Copyright© 1997, American Library Association.
All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews , 01/01/97:
Fourth in Clarke's Odyssey series (2061: Odyssey
Three, 1987, etc.). Here, at the beginning of the fourth millennium, the
vacuum- frozen body of astronaut Frank Poole (murdered by poor mad computer
HAL in the original 2001) is recovered and revived. Frank awakens to find
he's a celebrity in an age of peace and plenty, with space elevators, inertia-less
space drives, and miraculous teaching devices. Frank visits Jupiter (transformed
into the mini-sun Lucifer in 2010: Odyssey Two) and ponders its ice-moon
Europa, where a giant monolith is attempting to develop intelligence among
the native lifeforms. And he meets that strange entity composed of Star
Child Dave Bowman fused with a copy of now-sane HAL. Dubbed Halman by Frank,
the entity warns of bad news arriving from the monolith's guiding intelligences
450 light-years distant: They've decided to destroy humankind. Europa's
monolith, though, is just a supercomputer, not intelligent or self-aware,
so Frank's associates decide to use Halman as a Trojan horse to infect
the monolith with an irresistible computer virus--whereupon all the monoliths
vanish. Clarke, while never uninteresting, long ago abandoned drama; here,
he simply reports, with the dispassionate precision of HAL before he went
bananas. (First serial to Playboy; Literary Guild alternate selection)
-- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Buzz Aldrin, astronaut and author of Encounter
With Tiber :
From the moment I picked it up, I couldn't put
it down. 3001: The Final Odyssey is a tour de force that finally
answers the questions that sparked the imaginations of an entire generation.
The New York Times Book Review, John Allen
Paulos :
Much of the enjoyment of the book comes from
. . . the high-tech thingamajigs that often differ interestingly from their
present-day analogues and the barely disguised commentary on issues like
prison reform, Freudian therapy, clitoridectomy, terrorism, religious mania
and. Of course, computer security and complexity . . . fans will most likely
embrace 3001
wim.mortelmans@ping.be from Antwerp, Belgium
, 01/24/98, rating=8:
well written book but it is no sequel to 2061
Although the book was very good. It should have
been written as a 'stand-alone' book.
MikeOwens@Prodigy.net from Elkhart, Indiana
, 01/17/98, rating=9:
Excellent!
I thoroughly enjoyed 3001: Final Odyssey. It
reads fast, has clean language, and brought up some interesting speculation
on what life might be like in the third millinneum.
woggwoo@hotmail.com from USA , 11/16/97,
rating=10:
Best book I've Read In My Entire Life!
I think that 3001 was a wonderful story and all
my thanks to Arthur C. Clarke for writing such a fantastic and mind captavating
novel! If you haven't read this book yet-DO! It was the first book I have
read in a long time that I didn't want to put down!

