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mmcirvinSo I just got around to reading 3001: The Final Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 novel ending the loose series that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey... Given Clarke's other late novels, it was better than I expected, certainly not as thin as 2061 was. But many things about it are... odd, to say the least, and it does suffer from the general defects of Clarke's recent writing.
The story is of astronaut Frank Poole, who we last saw falling off to infinity after being clobbered by a space-pod under the control of berzerk ship's computer HAL 9000. After not being rescued by Dave Bowman, Frank drifts through space for about a thousand years, and is then found and brought back to life by futuristic technology, whereupon he has an uneventful "When the Sleeper Awakes"-type travelogue in the fantastic world of the year 3001. He eventually travels to what used to be Jupiter (transformed into a star in 2010), visits the critters of unfrozen Europa, has a bunch of uninteresting conversations with the amalgamated spirits of Dave and HAL, and eventually helps save humanity in a highly stupid manner that involves infecting the Monoliths with computer viruses. Yes, you read that right. Trust me, you're better off knowing it now. (In the endnotes, Clarke mentions that the writers of the movie Independence Day coincidentally came up with the same trope around the same time; let us hope that we have seen the last of it.)
There's more plot than in his other recent books (at least, the ones he wrote by himself), but, still, Clarke seems to have completely forgotten anything he once knew about when to show and when to tell. He's always been more fond of lectures than action, but here nearly all of the really pivotal events in the story, both in the world and in the lives of the characters, take place offscreen or are summarized in brief passages. The remainder is padded out with reprinted episodes from the previous books, and with lectures and dialogue showcasing Clarke's usual preoccupations: space elevators, the sexual freedom of the utopian future, the folly of religion, and so forth. Some of this material was interesting the first or second time Clarke wrote it, but it's wearing thin by this point. And the matter of Frank's assigned valet, a young man rendered subservient by technological mind control as punishment for a crime, is rather peculiar, especially since it doesn't go anywhere in particular: I found myself wondering if this was just some kink of Clarke's.
As in the previous books in the series, Clarke intentionally messes with the continuity to adapt it to his evolving view of the future, but I think he actually goes too far this time. Certain remarks subtly imply, if you do the math, that the events of 2001 didn't take place in 2001 at all, but, rather, some decades later (I suppose he regarded the earlier timeline as obsolete and didn't want to write 3001 as alternate history). But that's not what I found objectionable; rather, it bugged me that for purposes of this story he treats the alien Monoliths as being limited to speed-of-light communication with one another, since, as far as I can tell, it retcons Dave's fantastic trip through the Star Gate entirely out of existence. I can take a lot, but getting rid of that effectively severs any close connection with 2001, and especially with the film that provides the novel series with much of its appeal.
There are extensive notes at the end in which, among other things, Clarke enthusiastically endorses some dodgy fringe physics having to do with tapping zero-point energy. For the purposes of the story it works fine, but I'd advise readers not to take it too seriously.
The story is of astronaut Frank Poole, who we last saw falling off to infinity after being clobbered by a space-pod under the control of berzerk ship's computer HAL 9000. After not being rescued by Dave Bowman, Frank drifts through space for about a thousand years, and is then found and brought back to life by futuristic technology, whereupon he has an uneventful "When the Sleeper Awakes"-type travelogue in the fantastic world of the year 3001. He eventually travels to what used to be Jupiter (transformed into a star in 2010), visits the critters of unfrozen Europa, has a bunch of uninteresting conversations with the amalgamated spirits of Dave and HAL, and eventually helps save humanity in a highly stupid manner that involves infecting the Monoliths with computer viruses. Yes, you read that right. Trust me, you're better off knowing it now. (In the endnotes, Clarke mentions that the writers of the movie Independence Day coincidentally came up with the same trope around the same time; let us hope that we have seen the last of it.)
There's more plot than in his other recent books (at least, the ones he wrote by himself), but, still, Clarke seems to have completely forgotten anything he once knew about when to show and when to tell. He's always been more fond of lectures than action, but here nearly all of the really pivotal events in the story, both in the world and in the lives of the characters, take place offscreen or are summarized in brief passages. The remainder is padded out with reprinted episodes from the previous books, and with lectures and dialogue showcasing Clarke's usual preoccupations: space elevators, the sexual freedom of the utopian future, the folly of religion, and so forth. Some of this material was interesting the first or second time Clarke wrote it, but it's wearing thin by this point. And the matter of Frank's assigned valet, a young man rendered subservient by technological mind control as punishment for a crime, is rather peculiar, especially since it doesn't go anywhere in particular: I found myself wondering if this was just some kink of Clarke's.
As in the previous books in the series, Clarke intentionally messes with the continuity to adapt it to his evolving view of the future, but I think he actually goes too far this time. Certain remarks subtly imply, if you do the math, that the events of 2001 didn't take place in 2001 at all, but, rather, some decades later (I suppose he regarded the earlier timeline as obsolete and didn't want to write 3001 as alternate history). But that's not what I found objectionable; rather, it bugged me that for purposes of this story he treats the alien Monoliths as being limited to speed-of-light communication with one another, since, as far as I can tell, it retcons Dave's fantastic trip through the Star Gate entirely out of existence. I can take a lot, but getting rid of that effectively severs any close connection with 2001, and especially with the film that provides the novel series with much of its appeal.
There are extensive notes at the end in which, among other things, Clarke enthusiastically endorses some dodgy fringe physics having to do with tapping zero-point energy. For the purposes of the story it works fine, but I'd advise readers not to take it too seriously.
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Date: 2004-04-20 08:53 pm (UTC)Or is that, the only thing I remember about 3001, something I made up myself? I can never tell.
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Date: 2004-04-20 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 10:40 pm (UTC)Also, wasn't there a meteor impact in that book? Though I can't recall how it fits in the plot, I recall that Clarke said a meteor hit Earth(?) and there was a big EMP from the collision, and I asked my astro prof who was an authority on meteors and interstellar stuff, and he said that no, as far as he knew, there wasn't an EMP from a meteoric impact. Then he told me something that I believed at the time, but now it's so fantastic I want google a little to confirm it.
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Date: 2004-04-20 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-20 10:51 pm (UTC)This phenomenon has probably confused a UFO report or two in its time.
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Date: 2004-04-21 05:00 am (UTC)And I am a somewhat receptive audience for such a speculation, as I personally heard such a noise in 1985, seemingly produced by the brightest meteor by far that I ever saw. It was a sort of crackling sound, like a distant car backfiring. Later on I dismissed it as not possibly being associated with the meteor, for the usual reasons. I'm still skeptical, because, given how people interpret events after the fact, it seems to me that it would be easy to autosuggest an association between a spectacular fireball in the sky and any noise you happened to hear within a few seconds of the meteor, on either side of the sighting.
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Date: 2004-04-21 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 06:26 am (UTC)Another thing I noticed is that the amazing technology of the 30th century seems to recede as the book goes on. This may just be because they don't have all the luxuries of home out on Ganymede, etc. Still, by the end it seems as if not much has really changed in most of the solar system since the events of 2061: the settlements on the Galilean moons are still just hardscrabble frontier towns; the fact-- by rights, world-shattering-- that people can be easily backed up and nanoreplicated doesn't come into play at all except as a side effect of a McGuffin; and I'm still trying to figure out why anyone in that world would use a "vidphone".
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Date: 2004-04-21 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-22 05:15 am (UTC)