Rendezvous with Rama

by Arthur C. Clarke

My husband has been on a science fiction reading kick for awhile now. Apparently Clarke’s work is the thinking person’s science fiction – sci-fi for scientists. We had a volume of Clarke’s short stories along on our Hawaii trip and those were fun. BN recommended Rendezvous with Rama as one of his favorites so I picked it up to read during Christmas break.

The book is fairly unique among novels that I’ve read. There isn’t any real character development – unless you consider Rama as a character: the enigmatic object traveling through space, too small to be a planet and too large to be a space ship. The plot consists of Rama coming alive, as observed by the astronauts sent from the United Planets to explore it. They are discovering a new world on a tight deadline, it’s on a collision course with the Sun. I found the description of the interior and landscape of Rama just fascinating – it’s a very imaginative concept and convincingly presented. I think Arthur C. Clarke could have written a much longer book (or even a series) with this as the starting material. But the spareness reinforces the enigma that Rama is and remains.

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You think you might cross over
You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
You’d better look it over
Before you make that leap

And you know I’m fine
But I hear those voices at night
Sometimes they justify my claim

And the public don’t dwell on my transmission
‘Cause it wasn’t televised
But it was the turning point
Oh what a lonely night

The song maker says, “It ain’t so bad”
The dream maker’s gonna make you mad
The spaceman says “Everybody look down”
It’s all in your mind

From Spaceman by The Killers