Review by James Neal Webb
Speculative fiction runs the gamut in its many sub-genres, from fantasy to alternative history, but I've always felt that "hard" SF -- fiction constrained by the boundaries of science -- was the most difficult to write. When you have to extrapolate fantastic tomorrows from today's realities, you'd better know what you're talking about. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that the handful of writers producing this particular flavor of fiction are almost all working scientists; the acknowledged master of this rarefied group is an elderly British expatriate now ensconced in a paradise on earth. At the age of 80, Arthur C. Clarke still writes with authority, vision, and enthusiasm, and his new book, 3001: The Final Odyssey, proves he still knows how to tell a story.
It should be noted that Clarke's greatest claim to fame is outside the realm of fiction; it is, in fact, something we take for granted and something he dreamed up back in the forties -- orbital communications satellites. Unfortunately there's no patent on big ideas. He will always be known, of course, as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but as Sri Lanka's most famous resident approaches the beginning of a new millennium, it is perhaps fitting that he revisits his greatest triumph to show us the farthest reaches of the possible.
The book is the conclusion (perhaps) of a literary odyssey, answering a lot of questions posed by the first three books in the series, but leaving new ones unresolved. The focus of 3001 is an unlikely, and I must say welcome, source. A lot has been made of the so-called sterility of Discovery's astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole, and when the long-frozen corpse of Poole is discovered by an Oort Cloud miner in the solar systemÕs outer reaches, I had to cheer Clarke's inspired decision to bring him back from an undignified death. Poole is restored to life by thirty-first-century science, and it is through his twentieth-century eyes that we view the wonders of the fourth millennium; it is also through him that the mysteries of the monolith are at last resolved.
Poole eventually journeys to Ganymede, once a moon of Jupiter and now a planetoid revolving around Lucifer, the second sun in our solar system ignited by the monoliths at the conclusion of 2010. There scientists keep watch on Europa, the icy moon where life, planted by the mysterious visitors, has flourished over 1,000 years, yet has strangely stagnated. All of this is of little concern to Poole. He has come instead to investigate a ghost story -- reports of sightings of his long-lost comrade David Bowman.
The world Clarke postulates is fantastic; from thousand-mile-tall skyscrapers to inertialess space drives, from dinosaurian babysitters to mental computer connections, all are within the realm of the possible. I suppose if Arthur C. Clarke's work has fault, it is the same of all "hard" SF's practitioners: you always want to ask, "Who's going to pay for all this stuff?" And while there are some timeline discrepancies in 3001 (mainly because this planet's leaders donÕt have the vision Clarke has) on the whole, they are minor annoyances.
I read the other day that NASA will orbit a probe around Europa in 2001 to search for a possible ocean beneath the ice . . . and for life. The scientists in charge called Arthur C. Clarke to ask him for his blessing and he told them to "go to Europa." I'm sure he was grinning as he said it.
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