Agreed. The later books in Clarke’s series all sucked.
Given Childhood’s End, and the influence that had on the 2001 script, I think Clarke got it just fine. The real problem is that there shouldn’t have been a sequel to 2001, because any sequel keeping with the spirit of the book/movie would be too far out there for audiences. Remember the Star Child’s last thoughts in the book echoed Moonwatcher’s when he became a tool user. There was a clear implication that he would lead humanity to the next evolutionary step. Instead, in 2010 he weighs in on the euthanasia debate which was just beginning at the time, and then watches while the monoliths transform Jupiter. Why send him back again?
It would be like a sequel to Childhood’s End, with the Overmind fighting with the Overmind of another galaxy. Sometimes it is best to just end at the end.
“Piece of pie.”
Concur.
I enjoy 2010 as a book and as a movie, but I’m sorry to say that when they get sequelized, Clarke’s stories all eventually become crap or worse*. The problem is that in his prime, he was one of those rare storytellers who understood the adage “leave 'em wanting more.”
*I’m looking at you, Rama sequels.
Pretty much ditto. Heavy handed as a lead brick. Yawn.
That’s Gentry Lee, a man who should not be allowed near a word processor. If you think the Rama sequels were bad, try “Cradle” which he wrote himself. It includes one of the worst passages I’ve ever read in an sf book, and I’ve read several by Pel Torro.
I found out only last week that Natasha Shneider, who played the Russian crewmember who ‘cuddled’ briefly with Roy Scheider, died a year and a half ago. 
And for Cthulhu’s sake, pray that no one ever even thinks of filming 3001.
Just for the shuttle to dock with the space station takes hours. Real spacecraft are boring. (Except for that part that reaches out and grabs satellites; that’s the bomb!) Kubrick had the nerve to film things that were boring and make them stately. I don’t think Hyams had the guts. He gets a lot of the mechanics right, but he has to crank the intensity knob up a little too high. Things are too loud, too extreme, Discovery is spinning way too fast. He made this a little too much of an action movie.
It also suffers from Robot Arm’s Law of the Emasculated Sci-Fi Badass.
It’s still a good movie. It just should have been great, ya know?
Also, look for Zooey and Emily Deschanel’s mom in a small role.
What’s that?
You would think that!
Bowman’s wife, according to IMDb.
It’s one of the scenes where Dave is visiting people he knew on Earth. Mary Jo Deschanel plays his wife.
Kubrick was not afraid to film things that are absurd in the engineering sense because they look good. Having the docking part of the space station rotating also makes no sense - but the station looks just like the classic Ley/von Braun model, and looks great. Having the bit hydraulic platform at Clavius is absurd also - consider the reaction mass spent to bring all that stuff up. But it looks fantastic. Not to mention that the living quarters on Discovery are not exactly cramped, even when all five would be awake.
Why doesn’t it make sense, exactly? I’m honestly curious.
I don’t know about that after all it did work out good for Frank Poole.
Until you run into someone who is part of the Society for Creative 21st century Anachronisms that gets upset at too much accuracy.
I just didn’t like the way they handled Dave/HAL and the virus thing. I thought it detracted way too much from the original book/movie. Things went from inspiring/mystical to cliche.
Think of the hassle of having to spin the shuttle at just the right speed to match up to the station. In the book the shuttle docks at a non-rotating port, I don’t remember how Floyd gets there. There is also the issue of an artificial gravity gradient. In the exact center of rotation it is 0 g, but it increases as you move to the rim. I don’t know what gravity is on the rim; surely not 1 g but probably more than lunar gravity; but gradient is probably fairly steep.
I’m pretty sure there is no fancy lift in the book either, and IIRC they go to Tycho on a moon buggy, not a cool flying bus.
In space you want to keep things simple and make it easier to recover from failures. If a thruster fails on the shuttle, they are screwed.
I’ve seen this criticism in other places, and haven’t ever done the physics to understand the full implications myself.
Right, but–and perhaps I’m just ignorant–how exactly would a non-rotating port work?
Agreed–but wouldn’t they be screwed pretty much regardless?
Just found an interesting thread on this very topic:
One of the last posters seems to suggest this was actually planned to be used by NASA for Skylab B. Also according to that thread, (in my admittedly layman perspective) it would seem that trying to offer a non-rotating docking bay would only further complicate things (such as having motors to rotate the docking bay in the opposite direction of the station itself–what happens if a motor blew? We’d be back at square 1).