constant re-reading

[NSTrekfan]

Not much I re-read, Trek or otherwise.
Forever War, Rendezvous with Rama, Icerigger.
The Final Reflection for good Trek. Federation for continuity porn.
May read others from time to time but the ones above get re-read every year or two.

 

[NSTrekfan]

^And I think I remember reading somewhere that 2061 and 3001 also contradict the other books in the series. I haven't read the books, so I don't know what is different, I just remember reading that when I was reseaching the books when I was thinking about reading them a while back.

The dates for one. Clarke moves up the date of the Jupiter mission significantly.

Don`t try to fit the 2001 novels into one contunuity. That way lies madness. Just enjoy each on it`s own.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I gather that Clarke approached the Odyssey novels as four distinct interpretations of a theme rather than as a single continuity. Like I said, continuity was not a feature of his work.

 

[NSTrekfan]

I imagine them as being four different POV`s of the same object. Each time you move it looks a little different. Ignore the dates (which is an odd thing to say since the titles ARE dates) and just imagine the second one happens about 10 years after the first, the third one 60 years after the first and the last one 1000 years later. The staring point doesn`t really matter.

 

[Steve Roby]

Somewhere in this world there must be someone who's tried to reconcile not only the four novels but also the different directions explored in The Lost Worlds of 2001. That's a book that might be fun to revisit; it's been well over 30 years since I read it.

 

[Sxottlan]

I totally understand that.

But for certain books, it's like rewatching favorite films.

Very understandable, especially since film is my preferred medium (I just dropped quite a bit on the 50% off Criterion Collection sale at Barnes & Noble this last week; most of them blind buys). And I do watch some movies once a year over and over again. I also have a "to watch" pile of movies on the shelf.

Plus, it helps to pick up extra details of 20+ books ongoing series when you go back through a few times lol.

Indeed. I'm really starting to forget many details for a lot of the Trek series from the early Aughties.

 

[Idran]

Yeah, I gather that Clarke approached the Odyssey novels as four distinct interpretations of a theme rather than as a single continuity. Like I said, continuity was not a feature of his work.

Yep, he even had explicitly said that at some point. He considered each of his Odyssey books as in a slightly different universe based around the same events, because he didn't care much for keeping track of the continuity between them.