Arthur C, Clarke - 2010: Odyssey Two
Arthur C. Clarke
1982
Nine years after the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey stranded the spaceship Discovery around a moon of Jupiter and Dave Bowman disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the countries of Earth are mounting missions to rendezvous with Discovery to try and figure out what happened to the ill-fated mission. The Russians, Chinese and Americans are all trying to get there first, and when it is discovered that the Discovery will crash with Jupiter before the Americans can reach it, the Russians and Americans team up. Will they make it to Discovery? Will they beat the Chinese there? What the hell happened at the end of 2001? All of those questions, and many that didn’t need to be answered, are addressed in 2010.
This book was really well written. It is smart and engaging, but for some reason it definitely rang hollow with me. I wasn’t in love with 2001, and I’m not in love with 2010 either. I do feel that it was the better of the two books, but I wasn’t sucked into the story. It wasn’t a page-turner, and I didn’t really care about the fates of any of the main characters. I was hoping that HAL would snap again and try to kill everybody, but that hope was dashed time and time again.
I thought the science in the book was mostly believable until the monoliths started doing silly things and Jupiter exploded. After that, I felt like the fantasy level skyrocketed and it sort of took me out of the otherwise compelling story.
Arthur C. Clarke is a brilliant science fiction author, and I would have to say that if you love his writing, you will probably enjoy 2010. If you like sci-fi with mostly competent science, this is a book for you. There are two more books in the space odyssey series. If I find them cheap at a used bookstore, I will probably purchase and read them, but I will not hunt them down.
