Rendezvous with Rama is a
Science Fiction novel by
Arthur C. Clarke, in which a giant asteroid comes shooting through the Solar System, circa 2131 AD. By the time it's realized that the visitor is actually a hollow artificial cylinder, only one human spaceship can even briefly reach the object and explore it before it slingshots around the Sun and returns to the depths of space. Captain William Norton and the crew of the
Endeavour discover that the structure, dubbed Rama after
one of the major Hindu gods (
the Roman and Greek naming reserves having long been exhausted), is actually an entire miniature world stuffed with ever-more-amazing technology, which Clarke spends the bulk of the narrative
detailing. The novel garnered much acclaim and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Although
Rendezvous ends with a large
Sequel Hook, Clarke never seriously intended to write a follow-up, and many people agree that he shouldn't have. In fact, the three belated sequels were not written by Clarke, but by a friend of his, Gentry Lee, with Clarke merely providing ideas and support. While
Rendezvous with Rama was pretty high on the
Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness, the sequels fell squarely on the soft side. The science is largely overshadowed by commercial conspiracies,
government corruption, scientists having sex, and Lee's
views on religion. It also changes the nature of the setting to some degree, ratcheting it
significantly farther to the cynical side and turning up the
Used Future level.
Your Mileage May Vary, naturally.
The books in the series are:
A movie version of the first novel has been languishing in
Development Hell for decades.
"Rendezvous with Rama" includes these tropes:
- Alien Geometries: There's a sense of this, the interior of Rama using cylindrical coordinates. 'Up' and 'down' are towards and away from its rotation axis. Gravity reducing to zero at the hub doesn't help.
- Big Dumb Object: Rama
- Famous, Famous, Fictional: "Rama needed the grandeur of Bach or Beethoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not the trivia of popular entertainment."
- The Federation: The United Planets, which has seven members: Mercury, Earth, Luna, Mars, Ganymede, Titan, and Triton. The fact that most of these are moons, not planets is Lampshaded in the story.
- The Great Politics Mess-Up: Chapter 38 begins with: "According to the history books - though no one could really believe it - there had been a time when the old United Nations had 172 members." At the end of 2010, The United Nations had 192 members.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The book opens/begins with the deaths of 600,000 people and the near-destruction of North Italy... on September 11
, 2077. - If Jesus Then Aliens: The members of the Fifth Church of Christ Cosmonaut, who believe Jesus was a Sufficiently Advanced Alien.
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The Ramans prove to have absolutely no interest in Earth, or any other planet in the solar system.
- Lost Technology: In SPACE!
- OT 3: Mercer, Calvert and their unnamed wife back on Earth.
- Reactionless Drive
- Sequel Hook: "The Ramans do everything in threes.".
- Unintentionally so, though, as stated by Clarke himself. The fact that the series ended up comprising four books seems to support that.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: It's alluded to that Earth is having trouble reaching its population target of one billion - as if it is already trying hard. Then it is mentioned that the Mediterranean Sea has been drained for real estate. The population of the earth is 7 billion in 2011 and we don't have to drain any seas, so unless earth is WAY off its population target it seems a little off.
- The Mediterranean was drained for archaeological reasons.
- Earth is trying to reduce its population to one Billion
- Sufficiently Advanced Aliens
- Time Abyss: The Rama.
- Uplifted Animal: The superchimps.
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