Product Description

To the spaceship Discovery, floating in the silent depths of space since Dave Bowman passed through the alien 'Star Gate', comes Heywood Floyd on a mission of recovery. What he finds near Jupiter is beyond the imaginings of any mere human.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21422 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Born in Somerset in 1917, Arthur C. Clarke has written over sixty books, among which are the science fiction classics '2001, A Space Odyssey', 'Childhood's End', 'The City and the Stars' and 'Rendezvous With Rama'. He has won all the most prestigious science fiction trophies, and shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of the film of 2001. He was knighted in 1998. He passed away in March 2008.

Customer Reviews

Rewarding Read
After the religious/philosophical experience that was '2001', this was ironically a lot more down to Earth with more action and domestic situations. A sequel to Kubrick's film, we see the occasional written flashback to that celluloid masterpiece, lacking in Clarke's original novel. We realised Dave Bowman had left a mother and a wife on Earth. The world political situation depicted here has not aged well with America, the Soviet Union and to an extent, Red China at each other's throats. Perhaps Clarke should have simply ignored world affairs as he did in the original. Nevertheless, a riveting adventure.

Nine years on and new mysteries abound.
Clarke returns once again to the mysteries of the Monoliths as an American/Russian mission races a Chinese one to investigate the disappearance of Dave Bowman in 2001.

Again he manages to catch the genuine sense of scientific exploration as the two missions enter Jupiter's moon system. The race with the Chinese vessel also gives the novel a nice sense of pace.

The scientist's account, as he awaits his own death, of the Chinese's disasterous encounter on Europa is at once gripping, horrifying and touching.

Dave Bowman, the Star Child, also returns on the side of mankind in the face of the strange alien intelligence behind the Monoliths. And this adds another level of wonder to the story as he explores the solar system as all but a god.

If the coming of Lucifer in this story doesn't set your pulse racing and your mind whirring, then I don't know what will.

In general, perhaps not as good as 2001, but a science fiction masterpiece nonetheless.

A worthy sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey
When I read this 2nd book of 4 in the Odyssey series I was simply gripped to it! Having read 2001 before hand I suppose I wanted to find out the answers to the mysteries Clarke had left unanswered and what had happened to the famous and elegant Discovery. A Soviet-American space mission aboard the 'Leonov' sets off to Jupiter to retrieve and revive Discovery, spinning hauntingly in the silent depths over the volcanic Jovian moon of Io. They reactivate the Discovery and revive Hal who can't remember anything about his disturbing behaviour in the previous mission because his memory has been erased. We get to see Dave and we eventually get to see the king of all planets meet its downfall. This book is SUPERB! An enjoyable and thrilling read! I would say it also much more action-packed and gripping than 2001, but then again its prequel is still very much the greatest in the series! You must buy this book and read away! (the film is also worth seeing)