Clarke strikes again with this fantastic continuation of universal proportions! ( )

Volume 3 of the 'Space Odyssey' series pales a bit in comparison to the previous ones. While it is a good read in and of itself, one cannot help missing the surprising turn or element, which A.C. Clarke managed to put in the earlier volumes.
I am reading this right after the first two volumes, which helps to keep the storyline(s) straight but also offers the direct comparison, which is unfavourable for volume three.

SPOILER:

I felt it quite a stretch to have the main character of the fist two books (covering 2001-2015) still alive and very active at the rather respectable age of 103 years old in 2061. The attempt of a scientific explanation for this, is rather hastily done and not quite convincing. ( )

In his foreword to 2061: Odyssey Three, Arthur C. Clarke wrote that scientific advances kept this book from being a "linear sequel" having "perfect consistency" with the previous volume, let alone the original 2001 (vii). Unlike the case of the first book, though, he did not allow the changes in the cinematic version of 2010 to usurp the narrative of this novel. The fate of the Chinese exploratory vessel Tsien, so important to the second book and omitted from the film, is still a fact in this third book.

Despite teasing out at great length a plot reveal regarding Mount Zeus on the Jovian moon Europa, this book does not have the sort of cosmic "punch" of either of the two previous volumes. It is a pleasant read, though. By 2061, interplanetary travel is on its way to being routinized as a luxury product, and we are treated to centenarian Floyd hobnobbing with the cultural elite.

The story stirs in some normalized homosexuality in the persons of Floyd's longtime friends George and Jerry. And there is a curious little thumbnail history of gay military conquerors in Chapter 40 "Monsters from Earth." By Clarke's standards, he was really tipping his hand here, but I can't help noticing that Delany had already written Flight from Nevèrÿon a couple of years earlier.

Clarke thought the Beatles would descend into obscurity by 2061 (220). I suppose that will be true in the event of a civilizational collapse, but not in the interplanetary expansion of the Anglosphere that this book contemplates.

I have been attending to esoteric readings of the Odyssey Sequence, and while this volume seems to have less to offer on that front, there is some packed into the final chapters. 2061 is the year Heywood Floyd becomes a Secret Chief, just as Dave Bowman had in 2001 and HAL in 2010. There is also a strong suggestion that the artificial star Lucifer presides over an apocalyptic Millennium from 2001 to 3001.

This was reasonably amusing but not, in my opinion, as good as the first two. I think part of the problem is that I am not particularly fond of the choppy narrative styles that all of the space odyssey books have. It is like "point of view 1", "point of view 2", "point of view 1", "point of view 3", "point of view 2", etc. I find the sudden changes disorienting. ( )

Back to old friends - Heywood Floyd, Dave Bowman and the depths of the solar system.