March Read/John 2

Arthur C. Clarke - being a  writer of science, a science fiction writer, an inventor, lecturer, and avid scuba diver - had much life experience to bring to his work. The four novels that make up the Space Odyssey series are well-rounded stories with many details which give them believability. At 247 pages 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY is the fourth and last in the series and was published in 1997 by The Random House Publishing Group. For edification, the first three of the series in order are: 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), 2010 ODYSSEY TWO (1982), 2061: ODYSSEY THREE (1987). The series, along with other works by him, generally involve mankind's contact with aliens and their influences as far advanced entities keeping track of their offspring. 

The stories are heavenly ladened with science, with his imagination extrapolating from facts, one to another not unlike looking from the rear sight to the front sight of a rifle, aiming at a plausible idea in the future. So too a spiritual component as a thread tying it all together as some of the aliens had already evolved from human-like beings. From there they evolved with a much higher intellect into what we could perhaps call super humans. With extraordinary intellect they then transferred their brain power to machines, then perhaps organic machines, to energy itself. What they left behind (remember the monolith in 2001?) kept track of the advancement of earth's people. 

So 3001 taking place an entire millennium later has Frank Poole, the Executive Officer astronaut who was with Dave Bowman on the USSS DISCOVERY in 2001, awakening from an almost 1000 year cryogenic sleep. Part of the fun for the reader - and with some surprises to the lead character - was discovering what mankind had done technologically via Sir Arthur's imagination. (Yes, Clarke, originally from England and educated at King's College, London, was knighted in 1998.) Also intriguing are the changes he saw as social, intellectual, spiritual - heck,
the many changes his fertile imagination conjured in this field of dreams. Hummm. Make that not field but space. 

I do highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to discover new ways of looking at the future; one may not agree with Clarke's particular point of view, but it can help stretch one's mind in surprising directions, from ultra tall structures that reach to space to Dave Bowman's change to Star Child and ultimate location. But I do not recommend reading the series out of sequence. If the future reader also saw the movie 2001 - and perhaps 2010 - I also do not recommend skipping the first two books and jumping into the latter two. (Only 2001 and 2010 have been movies, with the former book and movie basically written simultaneously.) Please, read them each and in proper order. Oh, I forgot to mention just in case one was wondering, "Dave's not here."