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
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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.
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Genre:
INSERT HERE
Science Fiction
Hard Science Fiction
Space
Fiction
Classics
Sequel
Series
Space Opera

Why this book:
Completist. Finish the series.
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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.
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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.
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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. ( )