Rendezvous With Rama: A Novel

Awesome story. Well paced, exciting. Totally different feel than most stories on this subject. I'll read more or Arthur's stuff.

This feels like one of those books where I waver between four and five by mood alone. Resting on four now, as there were times whilst reading it that I felt slightly bored, but this feels like more of a 'me problem' rather than any problem with the text. 'Lot going on right now. Anyhow, who doesn't love a getting a classic science-fiction novel for Christmas?? Clarke has been on my list for as long as I've been aware of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and with the recent news that Rendezvous with Rama may be Denis Villeneuve's next project after he's finished with Dune, what better time for such a sweet gift? I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed this novel. There is always a slight worry—at least for me there is—that classic novels will not hold up to the scrutiny of a contemporary gaze. Not so with Rama. Not so at all. Clarke weaves his unknowable cosmic journey with a not-at-all-concealed intelligence and a wry wit that combines into a cohesive package offering frequent moments of casual brilliance that will please readers new and old. It's true that the character work is nothing to write home about, but that simply wasn't Clarke's focus. Rama is hard sci-fi of the highest order. It is one hundred percent about the science, and yet Clarke keeps things fun and engaging (science is fun? who knew). And clocking in at just over two hundred pages, he keeps the pace up, too. There are no real lulls here, as the crew of the Endeavour explores a brand new world. Clarke's strongest offering here is the sheer sense of exploration the reader gets. The reader himself is a discoverer of an alien artifact of unimaginable magnitude. The reader herself embarks on an unknowable cosmic journey as a sleeping giant awakes. It's a ride worth taking.

Rendezvous with Rama is widely acclaimed as Arthur C. Clarke's best book, and it definitely deserves much of the praise it's gotten. That said, the book isn't perfect, particularly when it comes to the characters. Rendezvous with Rama starts when an large, cylindrical object is detected hurtling towards the sun. The object is named "Rama" after the Hindu god. The United Planets sends the solar survey vessel Endeavour under the command of Commander Bill Norton to investigate. The rest of the book focuses on the crew's exploration of the alien artifact. Rama is excellent at evoking a sense of wonder. Clarke manages to convey the artifact's grandeur and to create a uniquely bizarre alien world. The structures and other things encountered do not resemble the familiar sci-fi tropes. I especially liked how Clarke takes advantage of Rama's artificial gravity (generated by the object's spin) to present the astronauts with a new challenge. Even more than the alien structures, I'll always remember the description of Commander Norton climbing "down" the ladder towards Rama's "ground." That said, Clarke demonstrates an admirable amount of discipline in not revealing everything about Rama. Some mysteries remain unanswered, and are thus all the more intriguing. I can only imagine that, when the book was first published in 1973, the effect was even greater and there were fewer books about alien worlds. I haven't read the sequels, but fear they would undermine the majesty of this book. Clarke has always focused more on alien life and technology than on characters in his stories. That said, the characters in Rama are surprisingly serviceable, if not great. Commander Norton gets enough backstory to make him relatable. Norton's interest in and admiration for James Cook, captain of an earlier Endeavour, gave him some depth. For those who know their history, it also infused the story with some foreshadowing over Norton's fate. Most of the crew members at least get a few personality quirks that help distinguish them, although few are actually memorable. The lack of characterization generally works - until it doesn't. At a few points, the book places some of these characters in danger and the reader is expected to care, but I found it hard to do so. For example, two-thirds into the book, a character whom we'd never seen before, Jimmy, suddenly appears, and then the next 15% of the book focuses on him and his trials. At the least the character would have benefitted from some sort of introduction. I've criticized Clarke's problems ending some of his stories in a satisfactory manner, especially his tendency to rely upon incongruous twists or cheats to resolve plot threads (see, for example, my review of Clarke's Childhood's End). Fortunately, Rama avoids this problem. The story ends in a manner that suits the mystery and grandeur of Rama. There is a twist at the end, but it manages to be both subtle and thought-provoking at the same time. I could see how readers demanded a sequel, but the book was designed to - and mostly manages to - stand on its own. Rendezvous for Rama isn't for anybody. This book is about exploration writ large, about drive to explore rather than the discoveries. If you want a fully realized alien civilization, this isn't the book for you. However, if you want a somewhat realistic account of how man's first contact with alien technology might occur, Rama is still a classic.

Here I am, decades later, catching up on novels I should have read long ago. Arthur C Clarke is terrific at world-building, but I needed a little help to visualize this 50-km-long alien spacecraft. Fortunately, if you do an image search using the title, there are many images that clarify the strange interior of this world. I kept my favorite one in a tab and referred to it several times as I read. Helped a lot. Be advised, this is not a space opera. Other than a couple main characters, the people are less important than the setting and the plot, and therefore they aren't fleshed out. There are important conflicts among the leaders of human colonies on Mercury, the Moon and Mars, but they are political in nature. The main conflicts could best be described as "man versus the environment" and "man versus the unknown." Also be advised, although the novel concludes in a satisfactory way, you won't get all your questions answered. It's quite possible some are saved for the three sequels. It's fun to read about what life might be like a couple hundred years from now. I enjoyed this a lot, and I'll probably read the whole series. Highly recommend, even if you don't typically read science fiction.

Being an avid SciFi fan for a couple decades, I decided to start reading some of the classics and legends. The writing, the words used, descriptions...all are outrageously dated to somebody who thrived in the 1960-1980s in USA. This is a pet peave of mine; authors who categorically abandon their writing to a specific generational viewpoint. It's like watching a 1978 sitcom; the music is all wrong, the clothes are all wrong, the mannerisms are all wrong, the annoyingly fake audience laughs & claps are all wrong. So you are forced to endure all of that while frantically holding onto the slippery actual storyline audaciously pretended for 400 years in the future. The storyline, the concept, is amazing. Clarke's legendary status is immediately recognized as deserved and his attention to detail is just right enough to both satisfy and spur wonder. For me, the amount of real story is pretty small compared to the volume of generational muck you are forced to pick through. Rama II, Gardens of Rama and Rama Revealed (all 4 books) should still be considered "must read" if only to give you another vantage of sciFi. The following books in this series have co-authors which immediately and obviously kick up the writing skill level of the books a few notches, leaving the generational muck much thinner yet still present as Clarke is the author. The very end of the series, in Rama Revealed, was personally disapointing in all aspects. The main character chooses to die alone despite having just been reunited with loved ones and being offered rejuvination to a younger healthy body and immortality, which is contrary to her character the entire series. The dominant question through all 4 books was...who are the ramans? And just like the main character, the answer is completely out of character from the rest of the story and you learn the ramans are just a superintelligence created by god to collect information & monitor life forms to eventually create a perfect universe.

Arthur C Clarke is, with Isaac Asimov and a couple of others, a fatherly figure for Science Fiction enthusiasts. Although I had already read some of his short stories, each of which had left me in awe, I had amazingly never read any of his novels. This omission is now repaired and boy, did it make me regret having waited for so long. Because Rendezvous with Rama is a masterpiece. It deserves every award it earned, the most prestigious ones being the Hugo and the Nebula in 1973 and 1974, respectively. The setting is simple: A cylindrical vessel, coming from the depth of space is entering the solar system and an expedition party is mounted to make contact with what clearly constitutes the first proof of an alien civilisation's existence. The book follows the exploration of the ship and the discoveries of the party. At several times in the book, Clarke draws a parallel between the events and the archaeological exploration of Tutankhamen's tomb. Nothing could more adequately describe the nature and tone of the story than this parallel. As such, the book may be a bit slow and uneventful for some. Well, maybe not uneventful because a lot is actually happening. But the events are mostly not of a thrilling, adventurous type. This is essentially a "quiet" story. However, when it comes to describing an alien world, I know of no other author that can mesmerize like Clarke. His talent for unravelling clue after hint is unsurpassed. Rendezvous with Rama is not a linear monolithic bloc either. Clarke gives a lot of attention to the diplomatic consequences of the exploration, providing a welcome change of perspective on a regular basis. While there is a no denying that this novel is extraordinary, it may not be for everyone. I've already written about the scarcity of action. It's also important to know that this is one of the "hardest" science-fiction books ever published. Clarke is a great science populariser, so the concepts he uses are never hard to grasp, but one must be willing to ponder the subtleties of gravity, meteorology and other scientific subjects to truly enjoy it. Also, Clarke has often been criticized for his shallow characterization and it is not an entirely unfair judgement. Nevertheless, I've never felt that the book needed more action, deeper characterization and/or less science. Rama itself is the main character and it is complex and interesting enough to not necessitate such things. One last word of warning about the ending (don't worry; I'm not going to spoil it for you). Many readers have expressed their disappointment with it, but once you get there, ask yourself if there would have been a more logical conclusion, one that would have better fitted all the developments that preceded it as well as Mr Clarke's dedication to plausibility. It is my belief that there isn't.

I first read Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama around 1974, about a year after it came out, while I was still in college. I enjoyed it, but my interest in Clarke was beginning to fade a bit by that time. As a kid and a teenager I'd loved his short stories and the cosmic novels like The City and the Stars and Childhood's End to the point that Clarke's work pretty well embodied what I thought science fiction ought to be. His novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out of a collaboration with Stanley Kubrick based on an old short story called The Sentinel (1948), was published at the end of the 60s and was his last novel before this one. Each of them featured what has come to be known in science fiction circles as a Big Dumb Object (i.e., the monolith in 2001 and the cylinder in Rama). The term, which was invented by a sf fan/critic and is meant to be a bit derogatory, refers to huge, inexplicable devices created by alien technologies at which humans can only marvel. Having heard that Denis Villeneuve is planning to adapt the novel into a movie, I decided to reread it. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a cylindrical object passes through the solar system. At first assumed to be an asteroid, which they name Rama, astronomers soon come to realize it is actually a constructed artifact -- a spaceship perhaps, or a probe -- that is 12 miles wide and more than 30 miles long. (There is no doubt in my mind that the speculation surrounding ‘Oumuamua as it passed through the solar system in 2017 was in part sparked by this book.) In the Clarkean near-future of the novel, humans have already built colonies on the moon and nearby planets, so they have the ability to send a manned expedition out to rendezvous with Rama and examine it up close. The explorers manage to find a point of entry into Rama and discover that it is cold and dark and apparently dead inside. It does have a breathable atmosphere though, and, because of its spin, it has gravity along the outer surfaces of the interior. As the object nears the sun, it begins to heat up and come to life inside. Gigantic lights illuminate the interior, a body of water that forms a ring around the midpoint begins to melt, and weather patterns develop inside the enormous habitat. Lifelike entities emerge and begin to perform tasks, paying no attention to the human visitors. The entities appear to be an amalgam of biological and mechanical components, and the human visitors can't decide whether these are actual Ramans or merely the programmed servants of the Ramans. As Rama gets nearer the sun, the visitors have only a short time to explore as much as possible before they must abandon it. As they explore, making ever more puzzling discoveries, some of the massive processes that happen inside Rama get dangerous. This is the kind of science fiction adventure at which Clarke excelled. There are no villains or monsters to contend with -- there are only the powerful dynamics of physics and the inscrutable ways of alien intelligences far beyond our own. After all, it was Clarke who famously predicted that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The ultimate goal of the novel is to provoke a sense of wonder at the possibilities that may await us "out there." Inevitably, it feels a bit dated nearly fifty years later, but for someone approaching it with the right frame of mind, I think it would still serve that purpose well enough today. 2001: A Space Odyssey did pretty much the same thing. Reviewers of the movie often described it as more of a "trip" than a movie because, instead of the usual Hollywood plot devices, character development, and conflicts, 2001 offered audiences a thought experiment on human evolution and cosmic destiny. If he handles the material right, Villeneuve may be able to do something similar for 21st century audiences. Will it fly today? Only time will tell.

Arthur C. Clarke was a master. I’ve read this one several times now, but probably not for about twenty years. As time goes by, science fiction from the classic era gets filtered over and over until not too many books are still standing. This is definitely one of them, in a small group that maybe also includes Clarke’s Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Much of this one is an adventure story, a throwback for current readers to a time when the wonder of space exploration and first discoveries of alien life was all you really needed or looked for. We passed through, hopefully, an era of high action, high pace where plots hit you with cosmic scale catastrophe and intrigue every chapter. By comparison, Clarke’s plot here rides a fairly even keel. An object has been detected, passing through our solar system. At first it is thought to be an asteroid or comet, but its orbit and behavior give it away. It’s technological. It’s headed for a high speed pass around the sun, and we’ve detected it early enough to mount an exploratory mission, in this year of 2131 when much of the solar system has been colonized and interplanetary space flight is relatively routine. Commander Norton, through whose eyes much of the story is seen, commands the Endeavour to a docking with the object, now named Rama. Rama is a large, cylinder-shaped object 50 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide. That’s big. Big enough to be a generational ship of some sort, or who knows what, given that we have no idea of its origin or purpose. The story is the story of Norton’s crew’s mission to explore Rama and determine as much as they, and supporting scientists, can during the time it is safe to fly along with Rama, as it approaches the sun and then either heads back out of the solar system or alters course in some to-be-determined way. The plot peaks are mostly produced by Rama — its unexpected and enigmatic features and behavior. The plot is also sustained by political and personal conflicts and agendas among the politicians and scientists on Earth and its colonies. To be honest, on my reading, those conflicts and personalities are background, I won’t say background “noise” but close to it, buzzing around the adventures of the Endeavour and its crew. There’s no superhero stuff, although some heroics certainly, and no monsters, although there is certainly danger as well. To really get into the spirit of the book, you have to let yourself fall into the experience of first contact and the wonder and mystery of a truly alien encounter. Not to give too much away, but we don’t meet the Ramans themselves. Also in my reading, that’s a strength of the book (as it is in Clarke’s 2001). As readers we are left to imagine the Ramans, with an uncertainty of 100%. That’s the thing about aliens and their artifacts. They are alien. I can’t let this go without mentioning the parallels between Clarke’s story, written more than fifty years ago, and the real-world passage of ‘Oumuamua through our solar system in 2017. The parallels are eerie, especially if you buy into Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s claims that ‘Oumuamua exhibited signs of a technological artifact itself (I don’t).

Bought it for my nephew. I loved this book and I'm sure he will too.

Super geniale Einsteiger Science Fiction.

Ce livre est pour moi l'un des meilleurs de Arthur C. Clarke. Il nous raconte la découverte et la visite d'un vaisseau spatial à la dérive dans une ambiance très immersive. Cette ambiance ainsi que des images fortes sont gravées dans ma mémoire. J'ai lu ce livre en version originale, et je le recommande à ceux qui découvrent la lecture en anglais: c'est court et d'un niveau très abordable.

Rama es un mundo absorbente y misterioso, el libro te atrapa y no te deja marchar hasta que las incógnitas no se van desvelando poco a poco. El rigor y la atención al detalle de Clarke son clave a la hora de imaginar y describir Rama, y es lo que lo hace tan interesante.

This is the first book from Arthur Clarke that I finished. My mind is completely blown by the world of Rama and the intrigue around it which he created. This book and World of Rama will haunt me and fuel my imagination for a long long time. Eager to start the next one.