A thousand years after his death at the hands of HAL, astronaut Frank Poole’s frozen body is recovered from deep space and revived in the year 3001. He awakens to a transformed, largely utopian Earth of space elevators, brain-computer interfaces, and solar-system colonization, only to discover that the ancient monoliths have received orders from their distant creators to eliminate humanity. Working with the merged consciousness of David Bowman and HAL, Poole helps mount a last-ditch effort to stop the judgment.

Clarke closes his Space Odyssey sequence with an expansive vision of a matured human future and a final confrontation with the enigmatic monoliths. Though the novel is more reflective and less dramatically intense than the earlier books, it offers satisfying answers, inventive technological detail, and a fitting sense of cosmic perspective that brings the long saga to a thoughtful close.