“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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