"First Edition: December 1982" stated on copyright page; Ballantine Books publishers, New York; hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
Description -
2010: Odyssey Two is a 1982 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. It is the sequel to the 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, but continues the story of Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation with the same titlerather than Clarke's original novel, which differed from the film in some respects.
Set in the year 2010, the plot centres on a joint Soviet-American mission aboard the Soviet spacecraft Leonov. The mission has several objectives, including salvaging the spaceship Discovery and investigating the mysterious "monolith" discovered by Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983. The novel was adapted for the screen by Peter Hyams and released as a film in 1984.
Plot -
The story is set nine years after the failure of the Discovery One mission to Jupiter.
A joint Soviet-American crew,[3] including Heywood Floyd from 2001, on the Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov (named after the cosmonaut) arrives to discover what went wrong with the earlier mission, to investigate the monolith in orbit around the planet, and to resolve the disappearance of David Bowman. They hypothesize that much of this information is locked away on the now-abandoned Discovery One. The Soviets have an advanced new "Sakharov" drive which will propel them to Jupiter ahead of the American Discovery Two, so Floyd is assigned to the Leonov crew.
However, a Chinese space station rockets out of Earth orbit, revealing itself to be the interplanetary spacecraft Tsien, also aimed at Jupiter. The Leonov crewmembers think the Chinese are on a one-way trip due to its speed, but Floyd surmises that due to the large water content of Europa they intend to land there and use the water content to refuel. The Tsien's daring mission ends in failure, when it is destroyed by an indigenous life-form on Europa. The only survivor, Professor Chang radios the story to the Leonov; it is presumed that he dies when his spacesuit air supply runs out.
The Leonov survives a dangerous aerobraking around Jupiter and arrives at Discovery. Mission crewmember and HAL 9000's creator, Dr. Chandra, reactivates the computer to ascertain the cause of his earlier aberrant behaviour. After some time, Floyd is speaking to a Russian on board, who, for an instant, sees the Monolith open again...