Rating: 
Summary: Uninteresting, carelessly written garbage
Review: SPOILER: THERE IS NO ENDING. The book suddenly stops in its tracks. I had to re-read the final chapter and check the PAGE NUMBERS to see if the publisher had left out the ending by accident.It's as if Mr. Clarke lost interest in this awful piece of fluff about three pages into the story -- if story is the right word --and continued to write, grudgingly, in order to pay his mortgage. Yes, he's brilliant, and he's written some classic fiction and non-fiction, but he was so disintrested in his own story that the magic, the mystery, the grandeur of the next (or, previous) thousand years is glossed over without any thought about entertaining the reader. If you haven't read this book yet -- don't. Go find a 30-year-old Larry Niven book, curl up and enjoy the next thousand years written by an author who gave a damn.
Rating: 
Summary: Moderately Fun Pulp
Review: This is better than 2061 but still not a great book. The ultimate demise of HAL and Bowman is moderately interesting but the rest of the book is pretty flat. Poole's tour of the future is fun but it really doesn't do anything dramatic for the story. It starts to but Clarke never really goes there-misfit out of time and place, etc.-in any convincing way. Other potentially interesting sources of human drama are also left dangling or never developed. The best (or worst) indication of the book's quality is the fact that whole chapters are lifted verbatim from previous books in the series. 2061 does this in one justifiable scene but to do it again with the same text plus two more in the fourth novel is getting a little lazy. I was asked to read some of the same chapters three times between the books in the series. The whole series is still worth a read but it's more like pulp than great literature. As far as that goes, it's pretty good pulp. But neither 2061 nor 3001 poses the same sort of challenging sci-fi ideas or storytelling as 2001 or 2010.
Rating: 
Summary: Buck Rogers in the 31st Century--and on Prozac.
Review: An astronaut is frozen in space, picked up after five hundred, oops, make that one thousand years, and is introduced to the wonders of the future. Honestly, I'm stunned that Clarke had the gall to steal such an idea. All that was missing was Wilma Derring and the Draconians. Unfortunately, unlike Buck's tales of derring-do, Frank Poole's wander through the 31st century is extremely laid-back, and, strangely enough, filled with lectures and sermonettes against the alleged evils of religion (delivered, ironically enough, with an almost religious fervor). Clarke's humanist tendencies were clear enough in 2001 and 2010, but at least he had the sense not to completely and deliberately alienate a portion of his audience in those tomes. On a more positive note, I found John Glover to be an extremely competent interpreter of the written word. If you enjoy the art of reader's theater, the audio version of the book is worth a listen--just don't pay too much for it. To take a final shot, I must point out that the story didn't really begin until the last half of the third cassette (of 4). By that time I was almost wishing the Draconians would invade...
Rating: 
Summary: A Step Down from Previous Odysseys, but Still First-Rate
Review: I really enjoyed this book, but I must agree with those who said the previous books more. I loved the premise of Poole being revived the distant future when humanity is facing a possible threat of the monolith. I loved the details about the world of the future. My only complaint is that I would have liked more. Clarke could have carried on for a thousand pages about future technology and political changes without boring me. He did a good job making me feel Poole's disorientation in discovering a new world. It was nice that the book acknowledges that language would have changed. The idea that English will become the universal language seems quite plausible to me, although one might have said the same thing about Japanese many years ago. Anglish is a fitting name for the fictional language of the future-- obviously owing to influence from French and other languages. I found the explanation of the monolith to be satisfying. The only thing that disappointed me was the plan they used to resist the monolith-it's seemed a bit facile for something as powerful as the monolith. Judging by the changes the world has seen in the last 1000 years and the rate of change since the industrial revolution, I believe the changes in the next 1000 years will go way beyond what is in this book. Despite Clarke's insight, he can only fall short of creating a convincing future. This book is a great story and a starting point for thinking about humanity's distant future.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of a let down compared to the rest
Review: I really loved 2001. And the next two were very good, but this conclusion did not have the same appeal to me. It did have its moments of brilliance but they were few and far in between. It did not spark the imagination they way I expected. It was almost as if it was written by a different author. I guess I had too high os standards after being so blown away by 2001.
Rating:
Summary: You Mean That's It...?!
Review: It's really hard to place this book in the same universe or reality as that which was shown in 2001, 2010, and 2061. The other three books maintained pretty close continunity with each other and could be looked upon as a "true trilogy" but 3001 seems to be the odd book out. At best, you can see it as a "What If" book of what Earth and the Universe would be like if the Monolith wasn't around anymore, and the answer is, things would be a lot colder, darker, and more unknown then we would care to find ourselves in.
Rating: 
Summary: Good But Not Great!
Review: This wasn't as great as Clarke's earlier 2001 books, 2001. 2010, and 2030.
Rating:
Summary: Orbits between four and five Stars(pardon the pun)
Review: I was able to pick this book up for a song. Still I would have payed more for it.
For those of you who remember the movie or the book, you will remember when the supercomputer Hal killed the astronaut that was the crewman with Dave Bowman. This book starts out with a comet mining vessel being called to investigate a mysterious radar contact. They grumble about it: they have work to do. But they go any way and find something that at first they think is space debris, about two meters(six feet, roughly) long until they see it. It is the frozen body of Frank Poole and they(the doctors at the time) are able to repair and resurrect him with medical science.....
Mr. Clarke proceeds to tell a realistic tale of how a man who saw the beginning of the Third Millenium would react if he were suddenly transported to witness it's end. The story is mostly consistent with the rest of the storyline (I have not encountered 2061: Third Odyssey yet)and all the fiction he uses has some basis in fact(not surprising: We are talking about Mr. Arthur C. Clarke)and the story moves quickly. How he looked at religions in this book was somewhat harsh, but that was the storyline and it fit very consistently. There were only two minor points that seemed to not fit: he mentioned a date were Poole was born that seemed to be 1996, which was inconsistent if I read it correctly, and I do not think that an American Astronaut lost in the year 2001 would have such an easy time thinking in metrics, and not think in miles or inches at all. Given the time frame from the first authoring of this story to the authoring of this one, such small inconsistencies are readily forgiveable.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book I've read Since the Count Of Monte Cristo
Review: This story is one of the finest I read, I finsihed it the day I took it from the Library. I hope to read the other books soon, I found it Highly entertaining, although I don't know how it compares to the other books... YET.
Rating:
Summary: Odessey of Sound
Review: For those who are fans of John Glover, this is worth the price of admission. Glover does an outstand job in performing the adaptation for the audio book.
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