My thoughts on Clarke:

Firstly, not only was the first book based on the movie, but Clarke himself
wrote the screenplay for the movie in collaboration with Stanley Kubrick,
the director, expanding on his short story 'The Sentinel'.

I agree with everyone about Clarke's novel sequences - they get steadily
less interesting! He's a very clever man with very good SF ideas (this is
the guy who invented geostationary orbits, don't forget), but I don't think
he's a terribly good author. His characters all feel the same and his prose
feels a little flat. He's at his best when involving you in a mystery of
some sort, a la 2001 or Rendezvous With Rama, but trying to explain those
mysteries usually spoils it all. 2010 worked well, because it moved the
story on and explained the events in 2001 without ever revealing the nature
or motivations of the monolith (or whoever built it). I especially like the
idea of igniting Jupiter artificially to allow life to evolve on Europa,
and the final haunting scene in 2010 closes the circle that started in
2001.

I thought the reasons for Hal's malfunction a were very consistent and
logical. It always annoys me that Hal is seen as a 'mad', 'homicidal'
computer by most people - it was never mad, and it never malfunctioned,
except when Dave Bowman dismantled its brain in the interests of
self-preservation. It was just given conflicting orders by people who had
no idea how it worked. A better argument for keeping 'normal' users away
from computers I've yet to see. :)

Oh, and Rendezvous With Rama should never have been continued...!

Clarke's earlier stuff tends to be better ('A Fall Of Moondust', although
outdated, is great!), and I think some of his collaborative novels are
good, especially the recent ones, because his co-authors appear to handle
the nitty-gritty of characters while Clarke (presumably, I'm only guessing
really) puts more into ideas and storyline. The Trigger and Richter 10 are
quite readable.

As to my scene, I think I'm going to try to build the 'Discovery' and use
the crew section as the CGSphere centre...

Bill

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