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3 comments on “Book Review: 2010: Odyssey Two

  1. I just finished reading this last week. It was mostly good, nothing to write home about. The exploration of the Discovery relic was fun. The loss of the Chinese ship was really startling. Then the ending! Wow – that was truly exciting.

    As for the changes, Clarke’s foreward provides an indication that he is going to follow the movie’s story, not his novel’s. Though I can’t remember why exactly… I’ll have to look at my copy when I get home. (I only have 2061 with me at the moment!)

    “My god, it’s full of stars,” is definitely in the book 2001. I believe it’s in the film, but, I’ve only seen the movie once.

    I too was disappointed the sequel is all about a minor character from the first book (he’s made more interesting here at least). I was also disappointed that Dave is not the next evolutionary step, as the first story suggests, but merely a tool of the TMA-aliens.

    Good review. I pretty much agree with your points. Looking forward to your take on 2061. I’m about 70 pages in and it is not doing anything good yet!

    • Michael Jun 18, 2013

      “My god, it’s full of stars,” is definitely in the book 2001. I believe it’s in the film” – Nope, it’s not, so that makes for an interesting retcon in the 2010 film, but not an overly distracting one.

      I really like both the novel and the film of 2010. It is a good sci-fi action story, but still has the integrity one would expect from Clarke by having Big Ideas at its heart.

      I think Clarke followed the movie story because it “streamlined” things to set the action at Jupiter, rather than Saturn. As I recall, he also says, for each of the four books, that he envisions them more as changes rung upon certain themes, not a linear 1-2-3-4 sequence per se.

      2061 never picks up, in my opinion – I just re-read it two years or so ago, and it was as dull and inconsequential as I remembered.

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