In 2007, I did a book report on Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Monday, Friar reviewed it as well.
Seeing Friar review a book I’ve read is as good of an excuse as any for me to go back and read what I thought about the book.
Funny thing, though: in my review, I noted that I’d bought two of the sequels to 2001 the week before I found it. And I have yet to read them. That testimony underlines what I said in my review about my feelings for Clarke.
UPDATE: Welcome, VftP readers. Take a moment to check out John Donnelly’s Gold, my novel. It sucks less than The Garden of Rama, guaranteed!
I think Clarke must have made his reputation with his short stories and with novels that broke new (for the time) ground during the 1950s and early 60s. “Odyssey” and “Rama” (1972) were probably the last quality work from him, “Imperial Earth” was a tangle of interesting pieces not fully assembled and all of his sequels were pretty much rent-payers that kept the back catalog in print.
I agree.
So did you make it all the way through the Rama series?
It seems like I did when they came out, probably out of curiosity to see what the heck the Rama probe was, but when I just now looked at the Wiki entries for them nothing of the stories had stuck with me.