3001: The Final Odyssey - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

This novel begins with a brief prologue describing the aliens who created the black monoliths. They apparently evolved from "primordial soup", and over the course of millions of years, turned into a space-faring species. As they explored the Universe, they saw that few intelligent species ever successfully evolved. Therefore, they traveled the universe and catalyzed the evolution of intelligent species wherever they went, including Earth, by increasing the evolving species' odds of survival. Upon reaching Earth, they performed experiments on many species to encourage the development of intelligence. Then they left, leaving their black monoliths behind. After visiting the Earth, the extraterrestrials continued to evolve, eventually to the point where they found a way to impress themselves into the fabric of space and time, thus becoming noncorporeal beings. Meanwhile, back in the Solar system, the alien monoliths continued to watch over humanity. However, sometimes the monoliths were prone to degenerating and acting independently of their original programming.

3001 follows the adventures of Frank Poole, the astronaut who was killed by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey by tearing his spacesuit open and casting him on a trajectory into deep space. One thousand years later, Poole's freeze-dried body is discovered out in the Kuiper belt beyond the orbit of Neptune by a human spaceship, a comet-collecting space tug named the Goliath. The advanced medical science and technology of that age is able to bring Poole back to life. Being freeze-dried and then kept near absolute zero for the intervening centuries preserved Poole's body and brain well enough for him to make a full recovery.

Poole is next taken home to explore and learn about the Earth in the year 3001, a millennium after he left it. Some of its notable features include the BrainCap, a brain-computer interface technology that connects a computer directly to the human brain, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, a space drive, and four gigantic space elevators spaced evenly around the Equator. Human beings have also colonized the Jovian moons Ganymede and Callisto.

During the 26th century, the remains of an alien monolith has been found in the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa (the one that had that kickstarted human evolution). TMA-1, the black monolith that had been found on the Moon in 1999, was brought to the Earth in 2006 and then erected in front of the United Nations Building in New York City.

In the course of the novel, it is determined that following the events of 2010: Odyssey Two and 2061: Odyssey Three the Jovian monolith had sent a report back to its makers some 450 light years away. It is expected to receive its orders on how to deal with humanity after the 900-year round-trip. Presumably, the monolith was empowered to obliterate the nascent biosphere of Jupiter, but it needed a higher authority's approval to obliterate the technological civilization on Earth. There is considerable worry that the judgment, which was based on the monolith's observations of humanity up to 2061, will be negative. The entire human race, then, may be in danger of being obliterated by the aliens, just as the Jovian life-forms discovered by David Bowman were deliberately destroyed in the course of making Jupiter into a second sun so the Europans could evolve. Frank manages to conscript Bowman and HAL, who had fused into a new entity — Halman — and now reside in the monolith's computational matrix, to infect the monolith with a computer virus retrieved from Pico vault, a special containment facility on the moon used to house various chemical, biological, and cybernetic weapons in an attempt to avert a potential apocalypse.

Just as the humans feared, the monolith does indeed receive orders to exterminate humankind, and it begins to duplicate itself many hundreds of millions of times over. These millions of monoliths assemble themselves into two separate screens in front of the Sun to prevent all light and heat from reaching the Earth and its colonies. The intent is to shut down the entire terrestrial biosphere. However, Halman had already infected the monolith with the virus at the time it began duplicating itself, and fifteen minutes after the screens are formed, all the monoliths disintegrate, including TMA-0 and TMA-1.

Halman manages to upload its combined personalities into a petabyte-capacity holographic 3D storage medium and thus survives the disintegration of the monoliths. However, that medium is infected with the virus in the process and is subsequently sealed by human scientists in Pico Vault, where it will presumably be stored until such time as humans (or others) choose to disinfect and revive it.

At the close of the story, Poole and the other humans land on Europa and attempt to start peaceful relations with the primitive native Europans.

Apparently, the creators of the Monoliths - having long since evolved into a noncorporeal and godlike state of existence - had been watching humanity. They decide to grant the human race a reprieve, and that they will not determine humanity's fate until "the Last Days".