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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
I haven't read this for years, but watching the movie version last weekend with my son made me want to look at the book again. As I read, I marveled anew at Clarke's accuracy in imagining 33 years in the future. Things like reading newspapers on a tablet, swiping a credit card to make a phone call, video phone calls, and many other little details are all just about right, even if his predictions about manned space travel were not quite right. I liked this line: "The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry or depressing its contents seemed to be" (68). How true that seems today, with the constant flow of mindless information available online (of which I suppose this review is a part...).
What I don't like about the book is the kind of pedantic voice that's always calling attention to things and explaining what things are and how they work. The author's voice is not comfortable just letting the story be a story; instead, it's more like a guided tour of 2001. Because the book is connected to the movie, it's okay in this case, with the book being almost an "extra feature" to fill in some of the gaps that the movie leaves unexplained. But just as a book, it doesn't work so well for me. I don't read much sci-fi, so I don't know if this is the way good sci-fi novels are written. Maybe so, and maybe I'm thus not much of a sci-fi person.
I enjoy 2001 because of the uniqueness of the movie/book collaboration, among other things. I enjoy both, though I think the movie is a better movie than the book is a book; and I definitely enjoy the book mostly because of its connection to the amazing film.
My reviews of the other books in the series:
2010: Odyssey Two
2061: Odyssey Three
3001: The Final Odyssey
The ending is great. And just for the monolith adn the ending this gets 4 stars.
I enjoy reading Clarke because he is so good at describing things. Yes, his description of what we now call the Internet is quaint and the gender roles in the book infuriating if you think about it too hard (as one of the essays in my current book, She's Such a Geek put it, if he can imagine technologically advanced space ships and alien societies, why can't he imagine female astronauts?), but his descriptions are marvelous.
