03 April 2024

Books: Rendezvous with Rama By Arthur C. Clarke (1973)

“At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama, after the Hindu god. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at an inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams...and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits — just behind a Raman airlock door.”
 
A cornerstone of late 20th Century science fiction, Rendezvous with Rama is a great book for what it really does not reveal. Sure, there are multiple conversations, philosophical conversations about the ship, where and why it’s here. These were the tropes that set off the imagination of writers during the Golden Years of this genre. What I appreciated from the tale was Clarke not going into great detail about how complicated it might be to get a ship to latch onto an alien one and time it would take to do it. This led to some fantastic exploration of the ship itself, with the of the Endeavour postulating of how such a spaceship might really work in terms of our Earthbound physics. Pondering things like how can it generate gravity, how could it travel? What would the aliens be like? What is the purpose a large body of water, and those featureless buildings on an island within?

Though published 51 years ago, I think the book holds up pretty well. Like all science fiction set centuries ahead, you can be cynical about what these “futurist” were thinking (like the ones published in the 50s that still had everyone smoking like chimney’s in the 21st Century), like characters having two wives (one on Earth, one on the Moon or Mars). That seemed a weird choice for Clarke. I also appreciated the shortness of this classic take on First Contact (though not with any actual aliens, but the technology left behind). The arcs of the characters were satisfying and to the point, and everything was wrapped up (I guess) in 274 mass market paperback pages.

One interesting bit: the book was meant to stand alone, although its final sentence suggests otherwise:

“And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.”

Clarke denied that this sentence was a hint that the story might be continued. In his foreword to the book's 1989 sequel, Rama II, he stated that it was just a good way to end the first book, and that he added it during a final revision.

Still, he and Gentry Lee pen a total of four novels set in the Rama universe, including 1991’s The Garden of Rama, and 1993’s Rama Revealed (Lee would write two more novels set in the same universe without Clarke, 1995’s Bright Messengers and 1999’s Double Full Moon Night).

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