Rendezvous with Rama
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| Rendezvous with Rama | ||
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| Novel by Arthur C. Clarke | ||
| Released | 1972 | |
| Original publisher (U.S.) | Harcourt Brace Jovanovich | |
| Genre | Science fiction | |
| Professional reviews | ||
| SF Reviews.Net | T. M. Wagner | link |
| Awards | ||
| Hugo Award | Best Novel | 1974 |
| Nebula Award | Best Novel | 1973 |
| Jupiter Award | Best Novel | 1974 |
Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a thirty-mile-long cylindrical alien starship that passes through Earth's solar system on its way past the sun. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.
The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is widely regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography. It is considered a science fiction classic, and is particularly seen as a key hard science fiction text.
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[edit] Synopsis
The "Rama" of the title is the starship, which is initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the Hindu deity Rama. (By the 22nd century, we are told, scientists have run out of Greek and Roman mythological figures to name astronomical bodies after.) The nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book.
The book was meant to be a stand-alone, but the final sentence of the book convinced almost everyone who read it that there would be at least two more sequels:
- And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had woken from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes.
Facing such enormous pressure, Clarke paired up with Gentry Lee for the remainder of the series, but these later books have not received the same critical acclaim and awards that the original did. Lee did all of the actual writing of the sequels, while Clarke read it and made editing suggestions. That might explain why the focus and style of the last three novels are quite different from those of the original novel. There is an increased concern with detailed characterization, though the characters are actually more stereotypical than those in Rendezvous with Rama. The later books have more clearly portrayed heroes and villains, rather than Clarke's dedicated professionals who nonetheless have unusual personal lives by the standards of twentieth-century societies (for example some are involved in polyamorous relationships). The later books also take a highly sympathetic attitude to religious faith that is atypical of Clarke's work as a whole.
[edit] Books in the series
- Rendezvous with Rama (1972) ISBN 978-0-553-28789-9
- Rama II (1989) ISBN 978-0-553-28658-8
- The Garden of Rama (1991) ISBN 978-0-553-29817-8
- Rama Revealed (1993) ISBN 978-0-553-56947-6
Gentry Lee also wrote two further novels set in the same Rama Universe.
[edit] Design and geography of Rama
- See main article: Rama (spacecraft)
Rama is, in design, similar to an O'Neill habitat, with a large cylindrical interior that rotates to provide approximately one g of artificial gravity. Unlike most O'Neill habitat designs, however, Rama is equipped with several space drives, giving it maneuvering capability.
Rama contains a body of water, the Cylindrical Sea, which wraps around the cylindrical interior "surface" of Rama about halfway between the ends. In the center of the Cylindrical Sea is an island of mysterious purpose, named New York by the astronauts due to its tall towers and visual similarity to Manhattan. The Sea divides Rama into Northern and Southern Hemicylinders; beyond these are the North and South Poles, which are circular walls capping the interior space. The North Pole contains Rama's airlocks; the South Pole contains its drive systems.
Other collections of "buildings" are found on the "surface", arbitrarily named Rome, Peking, Paris, Moscow, London, and Tokyo.
[edit] Effects on science and history
The initial search program that detects Rama in the first two chapters of the book, Project Spaceguard, is a program to detect near-Earth objects on Earth-impact trajectories, initiated after a fictional disastrous asteroid strikes Italy on September 11, 2077, destroying Padua and Verona, and sinking Venice. A real Spaceguard project, named after the project in Rendezvous, was initiated some years later. After interest in the dangers of asteroid strikes was heightened by a series of Hollywood disaster films, the United States Congress gave NASA authorization and funding to support Spaceguard.
[edit] Other media
A text adventure style computer game based on the book was made in 1984 by Telarium and exported to systems such as the Apple II and Commodore 64. Despite its primitive graphics, it had highly detailed descriptions, and it followed the book very closely along with having puzzles to solve during the game. It was adapted from the Clarke novel in 1983 by Ron Martinez, who went on to design the massively multiplayer online game 10Six, also known as Project Visitor.
Sierra Entertainment created RAMA in 1996 as a point and click adventure game in the style of Myst. Along with highly detailed graphics, Arthur C. Clarke also appeared in the game as the guide for the player. This game also featured characters from the sequel book Rama II.
Early in the millennium, actor Morgan Freeman expressed his desire to produce a film based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama. The film was to be produced by Freeman's production company, Revelations Entertainment.[1] Freeman has not given up on the project, but he states that funding for a movie of this type is hard to procure. A popular science-fiction web site (Sci Fi Wire) posted an interview with Freeman about his troubles with the production. [2] (The project was thought to be abandoned for some time, but it's still listed as an actual production on the Revelations Entertainment website--as of December 2006--which is where visitors are redirected from www.RendezvousWithRama.com. Revelations Entertainment is also still touting David Fincher as director.)
[edit] External links
