Science Fiction Books > Arthur C. Clarke Science Fiction Books

FROM APEMAN TO SPACEMAN

Advantages: Well written, good concepts and detail
Disadvantages: Slight flaws in the structure and lack of theme development

...people believe that the film 2001: A Space Odyssey is an adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s book but in fact almost uniquely for such a highly regarded novel the truth is the other way around. Stanley Kubrick the director of the film had read a short story by Clarke ‘The Sentinel’ and from the idea within that he decides to make an epic Sci-fi movie that was to explore some of the most basic and yet most complex themes, the origins ...
...certainly the novel like the film can be highly recommended. ***************************************************************** 2001: A Space Odyssey is published by Orbit (ISBN: 1857236645) in paperback (266 pages) and is available from Amazon.co.uk for £4.79 (p & p). Thank you for reading and rating this opinion. © Mauri 2003 ...

Mauri 27.06.2003 · Read full review
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Review of 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke

2061 Odyssey Three

Advantages: more of the same, better?
Disadvantages: is he covering old ground

...advanced from the previous outing. 2061 Doesn't disapoint in this respect. Clarke has a knack for retaining the same thrilling and mysterious atmosphere and premise of 2001 and 2010 whilst shifting the focus of the story to new characters and new aspects of space travel. It always amazes me how Clarke makes his narrative so accecable, readable and believable, and his attempts at predicting the advances in communications and technology through his ...
...the odyssey series is that each novel is not too long. It seems that since clarke helped make the benchmark for hard sci-fi fiction, novels have been increasing in size to gastronomic proportions, just look at peter f hamilton, kevin j anderson, alistair reynolds and co. Not that these authors don't create masterpieces of their own, but it is nice to read a book that doesnt take too long to read and still deiverse a satisfying, deep and profound ...

negoti8r 20.10.2008 · Read full review
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Review of 2061 - Arthur C. Clarke

A Rama Drama in Space

Advantages: Imaginative and thought provoking
Disadvantages: Dull and predictable characters

...Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. Rendezvous with Rama was published in 1973 and at the time received much critical acclaim winning various literary awards including the Hugo, Jupiter and Nebula. When a huge meteor strikes Northern Italy in the 2077, the cities of Padua, Verona and Venice are wiped out and the world's leading scientists and politicians are forced to get their heads together and create an early warning system called Spaceguard ...
...The scientific descriptions in Rendezvous are meticulously described and quite easy to follow albeit a little tedious at times - think of the first half of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and you should get the idea. The physical and temporal difficulties of space travel and the geophysical and astronomical data about the moon, asteroids and other planets are all conveyed in great detail. In particular one is able to accurately form a lucid image ...

Zmugzy 15.05.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke

Rama Returns

Advantages: Continues the Rama spacecraft "mythology"
Disadvantages: Doesn't do it well enough

Rama 2 is the follow on to the highly acclaimed "Rendezvous with Rama", a science fiction story dealing with the exploration of an alien spacecraft of gigantic proportions by a small group of human astronauts. Clarke mentions that further books beyond the original were never planned, and that the last sentence of the original "The Ramans do everything in threes" was simply the best way to end the book, although to me it was pretty inevitable that ...
...ideas and returned to the Rama story for inspiriation when he realised it was set up nicely for further explaoration. For the next three books in this series Clarke has teamed up with Gentry Lee, a writer with whom he'd already co-written the science-fiction novel "Cradle". Gentry Lee had been a senior NASA employee for their Project Galileo and Viking missions. He had also worked with Carl Sagan during the creation of the excellent Cosmos TV series. ...

TheDuke 27.03.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Rama II - Arthur C. Clarke

The (Fool's) Golden Age

Advantages: The Sentinel
Disadvantages: My God, it's not full of stars...

...And so theediscerning turned to Expedition to Earth, Arthur's first collection of short stories, first published in the UK in 1954. Would the book still hold up, or appear dated, juvenilia, or just plain bad? Well as it was in an edition from 1999, someone fairly recently thought it worthwhile resurrecting. The eleven short stories here all date from the late '40s and early '50s, and as such have one fairly obvious theme, and one perhaps not so ...
...then. As to whether Expedition to Earth should be bought or not, is really down to price. The edition to hand is a large paperpack, with ten quid on the back. It was ten pee from a library clearout (yay!). There is no Earth, however alien, on which that price is justified by the contents - under 180 pages of patchy, at times quite forgettable stories. It's on recommended to science fiction fans, and then not for buying. It's not a disaster, but ...

theediscerning 28.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Expedition to Earth - Arthur C. Clarke