3001: The Final Odyssey
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 Cover of the English edition (1997) of 3001: The Final Odyssey. |
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| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
| Released | 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 237 pp (US hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-31522-7 (US hardback edition) |
| Preceded by | 2061: Odyssey Three |
3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It is the fourth and final book in the Space Odyssey series.
[edit] Plot summary
3001 follows the adventures of Frank Poole, an astronaut who was murdered by HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His body is discovered after drifting in space for a millennium and brought back to life, exposure to vacuum having preserved him sufficiently for the advanced medical technology of the time to be able to revive him. He then explores the Earth of 3001, notable features of which are the BrainCap, a technology which interfaces computers directly with the human brain, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and four enormous towers spaced around the equator connected by a spaceport ring in geostationary orbit, called Astropolis. Many readers have surmised that this future is intended to represent (at least in part) Clarke's personal vision of Utopia.
In the 26th century, the monolith in Africa (dubbed TMA-0) which kickstarted human intellectual evolution has been discovered. In the course of the novel, it is determined that following the events of 2010: Odyssey Two the Jupiter monolith sent a report back to its "superior" 500 light years away and is about to receive its orders on how to deal with humanity (since the report would take 500 years to reach the superior, and the orders 500 years to come back). There is considerable worry that the judgment, made based on the monolith's observations of humanity up to 2001, will be negative. The entire human race, then, may be in danger of being obliterated by the aliens, just as the Jovian life-forms discovered by David Bowman were deliberately destroyed. Frank manages to conscript Bowman and HAL, who have fused into a new entity - 'Halman' - and now reside in the monolith's computational matrix, to infect the monolith with a computer virus in an attempt to avert the potential apocalypse.
Just as the humans feared, the Monolith does indeed receive orders to exterminate mankind, and begins to duplicate itself many hundreds of millions of times over. These millions of monoliths assemble themselves into two separate screens in front of Sol and Lucifer to prevent all vital light and heat from reaching Earth and its colonies. The intent is to shut down the entire terran biological life-cycle. However, the Monolith was already infected with Halman's virus at the time it began duplicating itself, and fifteen minutes after the screens are formed, all the Monoliths disintegrate, including TMA-0 and TMA-1.
Halman manages to download its combined personalities into a petabyte-capacity storage medium and thus survives the disintegration of the monoliths. However, it is infected in the process with the virus it itself created, and is subsequently sealed by human scientists within a special containment facility used to house various chemical, biological, and cybernetic weapons, where it will presumably be stored until such time as humans (or others) choose to release it.
Apparently, the creators of the Monoliths, who had long since evolved into non-corporeal beings, had been watching humanity. They decided that they should not decide humanity's fate until "the Last Days".
[edit] Differences between 3001: The Final Odyssey and earlier books
This portrayal of the monoliths is notably different from that in the earlier novels. In particular, the 2001 monolith was capable of faster-than-light transmission, and was generally portrayed as both less malevolent and more of a thinking entity than the one seen in this novel (in particular, Dave Bowman's transcendence as a star child is explained as a mundane case of being uploaded into a computer). However, since 2010: Odyssey Two Clarke has consistently stated that each of the Odyssey novels takes place in its own separate parallel universe — this is demonstrated by the facts that the monoliths are still in existence in the year 20,001 at the end of 2010: Odyssey Two and that Floyd is no longer part of the trinity formed at the end of 2061: Odyssey Three. These parallel universes are a part of Clarke's retroactive continuity.
[edit] Film version?
For a time, Tom Hanks expressed interest in adapting 3001 for the screen. He would have directed the film and starred in it (as Frank Poole). It is unknown whether he still plans to make the film.
| The Space Odyssey series | |
|---|---|
| Films | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) |
| Novels | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) | 2061: Odyssey Three (1987) | 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997) |
| Comics | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1976) |
| Short stories | "The Sentinel" (written 1948, first published 1951 as "Sentinel of Eternity") |
| Characters | HAL 9000 | David Bowman | Dr. Chandra | Walter Curnow | Heywood Floyd | Frank Poole |
| Vehicles | Discovery One | EVA Pod | Leonov | Orion III | Aries Ib | Space Station V |
| Locations | Earth | Moon | Clavius Base | Tycho | Jupiter | Europa | Io | Ganymede | Saturn | Iapetus |
| Cast | Keir Dullea | John Lithgow | Gary Lockwood | Helen Mirren | Douglas Rain | Roy Scheider | William Sylvester | Leonard Rossiter | Margaret Tyzack |
| Crew/creators | Arthur C. Clarke | Peter Hyams | Jack Kirby | Stanley Kubrick |
| Interpretations | Interpretations of 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| Music | Alex North's 2001: A Space Odyssey |
