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Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey was an interesting conclusion to the Space Odyssey series (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001). The book by itself is slightly boring and doesn't really carry a plot rather than describes events and environments in a typical Clarkeish, ethereal style. It does, hover, provide some kind of closure to the whole monolith/sentinel issue and mankind's relation to it.

If there was anything disappointing in this book, it was the computer virus thing. You will simply never make me believe that viruses, which are inherently smart blocks of code that utilize specific operating system or application features to spread and wreak havoc, could be applied to some generic alien technology. It just makes me think that the writer doesn't really understand what it's all about.

That said, I would recommend 3001 to anybody who's been reading and enjoying the Odyssey saga from the beginning. If you don't know what 2001: A Space Odyssey was all about (just seeing the movie is probably not enough), you won't enjoy 3001 either.