Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a forty-kilometer-long cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system. 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.

This 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.

Plot summary

The "Rama" of the title is an alien starship, initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the Hindu God Rama. (Clarke mentions that by the 22nd century, scientists have used the names of all the Greek and Roman mythological figures to name astronomical bodies, and have thus moved on to Hindu mythology.) Asteroid 31/439 is detected by astronomers in the year 2131 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100 000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that this is not an object on a long orbit around our sun; it comes from interstellar space. Astronomers' interest is piqued when they realize that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid 4 minute rotation period but it is quite large in size for an asteroid. An unmanned space probe is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, and photographs taken during its rapid flyby reveal an absolutely cylindrical object 16 kilometers wide and 50 kilometers long, made of a highly reflective material. In other words, this is humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship.

The manned solar survey vessel "Endeavour" is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period of time Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft already is within Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Norton, enters Rama and explores its vast interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book. The only lifeforms are the cybernetic "biots" who completely ignore the humans. Endeavour is finally forced to leave a few weeks later as Rama moves too close to the Sun for Endeavour's cooling systems to compensate. Rama then is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the Large Magellanic Cloud, using the Sun's gravitational field as a slingshot.

The book was meant to stand alone, although the final sentence of the book seemed to suggest 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, however, denied that this sentence was meant to hint at the continuity of the story – according to his foreword in the book's sequel, it was just a good way to end the book, and was added during a final revision.

Design and geography of Rama

Main article: Rama (spacecraft)

A 3D artist's impression of the interior of Rama.

Interior view of an O'Neill cylinder showing alternating land and window stripes

Rama contains a strip-like body of water, the Cylindrical Sea, which girdles the cylindrical interior "surface" of Rama about halfway between the ends. In the center of the Cylindrical Sea is an island of unknown purpose, which the astronauts name 'New York' due to an imagined similarity to Manhattan. The Sea divides Rama into Northern and Southern Hemicylinders; at each end of the ship are North and South 'Poles'. The North 'Pole' is effectively the bow and the South Pole the stern, as Rama is traveling in the direction of the North Pole and its drive system is at the South Pole. The North Pole contains Rama's airlocks, and is where the Endeavour lands; the South Pole contains Rama's drive systems.

Other collections of "buildings" are found on the "surface" of the Northern "Hemisphere", arbitrarily named Rome, Peking, Paris, Moscow, London, and Tokyo.

Project Spaceguard

Clarke invented the fictional space study program which detects Rama, Project Spaceguard, as a method of identifying near-Earth objects on Earth-impact trajectories; it was initiated after an equally fictional asteroid 'struck' Italy on September 11, 2077, destroying Padua and Verona and sinking Venice. However, a real Spaceguard project was initiated some years later, named after Clarke's fictional device. 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.

Books in the series

Facing pressure, Clarke paired up with Gentry Lee for the remainder of the series. Lee did the actual writing, while Clarke read and made editing suggestions.^[1] The focus and style of the last three novels are quite different from those of the original with an increased emphasis on characterization and more clearly portrayed heroes and villains, rather than Clarke's dedicated professionals. These later books did not receive the same critical acclaim and awards as the original.

• 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.

• Bright Messengers (1995)
• Double Full Moon Night (1999)

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

In the early 2000s, actor Morgan Freeman expressed his desire to produce a film based on Rendezvous with Rama. After a drawn-out development process – which Freeman states has been due to difficulties in procuring funding^[2] – it appeared this would indeed be happening. IMDb upgraded the status of the project to "announced" with an estimated release date in 2009. The film was to be produced by Freeman's production company, Revelations Entertainment. David Fincher, touted on Revelations' Rama website as far back as 2001, stated in a December 31, 2007 interview that he is still attached to helm.^[3] IMDb indicated that Stel Pavlou had written the adaptation. Fincher is of the opinion that the novel was an influence on the films Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.^[3]

Recent information suggests that this movie will no longer be made. As noted by David Fincher "It looks like it's not going to happen. There's no script and as you know, Morgan Freeman's not in the best of health right now. We've been trying to do it but it's probably not going to happen."^[4]. Likewise, the entire IMDb page has been removed.

Other media

A graphic adventure computer game with a text parser based on the book was made in 1984 by Telarium (formerly known as Trillium) and ported to other 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.

Awards and nominations

The novel was awarded the following soon after publication

• Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974
• Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973
• Jupiter Award for Best Novel in 1974

References