Clarke presents 3001: The Final Odyssey as the closing tale of a space tetralogy loosely connected by their tides, some of their characters, and some of their events.

He acknowledges overtly extracting and editing material for 3001: The Final Odyssey from chapters 18 and 37 of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from chapters 11, 36, and 38 of 2010: Odyssey Two.

The characters Frank Poole, Dave Bowman and the HAL computer derive from 2001. Dr. Heywood Floyd, the lead character in 2061: Odyssey Three (1987; see separate entry) receives occasional references in 3001. However, though Floyd in 2061 was transformed from material state in the same fashion as Dave Bowman had been in 2001, Clarke does not include Floyd in the significant action of 3001.

Factors of setting—the monoliths discovered in the earlier novels, the rearrangement of the solar system with Jupiter flared into a sun, and the premise of Europa as forbidden planet with new life forms are consistent...