Readers do not approach a Clarke novel expecting the lush style of William Faulkner. They will find no surprises in 3001: The Final Odyssey. Chapters are typically short, some little more than two pages long, and others being three, five, or seven pages. A few stretch to eleven or twelve pages. The chapters are themselves grouped in five sections with their own section titles. When the plot carries Poole back into space, communicating indirectly with Indra Wallace and others by long distance telecommunication, several chapters consist of "messages" sent and received via the correspondents' electronic "personal secretaries." In this mode, Clarke echoes the early beginnings of the English novel in which stories were composed of a protracted exchange of letters, to form an "epistolary novel."

To keep the story in a present-day reader's perspectives, Clarke makes many allusions to documented events and social developments. He also uses fictional allusions...