I read the 3001 as a part of the series. The first 2001 I bought in 1998 from an old book store for just 40 bucks, and it is still one of the greatest treasure in my collection. I started hunting for the next i.e. 2010, but it seem to have dissapeared from the market. Everywhere I looked the 3001 was there. It was actually the year 2000, when it came around the book stall. It was always available in every book store. But I didn’t wanted to buy it. Unless offcourse I had the rest of the pieces, namely 2016 and 3001. It was useless to have blind set. Sensing this urge of mine, my girlfriend somehow managed to get it (Gosh! I don’t know how she managed it!). I was ecstatic! The next two steps were easy. Finally, I had all of them!
The next thing I knew that I needed to get the movie of 2001. And luckily I managed to get it too! The expectations from the movie was met satisfactorily. That was because offcourse that the screenplay of the movie was developed along with the novel.
The most amazing and unexpected event in 3001 turned out to be Frank Pooles’ return. The most unexpected. But it was nevertheless necessary. But I sensed an overall differrence between 2001/2010 and 2016/3001. The former two were more filled with awe and surprises of massive nature. But the later two I guess more focused towards answering specific questions that were obvious to pop up in the mind of the readers.
In every sense, The Odysseys worth much much more than what I had expected.