Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama
1st edition (UK)
Author(s)	Arthur C. Clarke
Cover artist	Bruce Pennington
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Rama series
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Gollancz (UK) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (US)
Publication date	Jun 1973 (UK) Aug 1973 (US)
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	256 (UK)
ISBN	0-575-01587-X (UK)
Followed by	Rama II

Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a 50-kilometre (31 mi) 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 star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the king Rama who is considered to be the seventh Avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. Asteroid 31/439 is detected by astronomers in the year 2130 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 dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, and photographs taken during its rapid flyby reveal that Rama is a perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and 54 kilometres (34 mi) long, made of a completely featureless 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 the vast 16-km wide by 50-km long cylindrical world of its interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book. Inside Rama, the astronauts discover several features, including "cities" (odd blocky shapes that look like buildings, and streets with shallow trenches in them, looking like trolley car tracks), a sea that stretches in a band around Rama dubbed the Cylindrical Sea (see cover image on the top right corner) and 7 massive cones at the southern end of Rama (believed to be the propulsion system Rama uses to move through space).

At one point, one of the newer crew members (Jimmy Pak) who's had experience with skybikes (vehicles that are light, one-man craft that can be used to fly through low-gravity area/regions) decides to ride a skybike across the cylindrical sea to the southern side of Rama, made inaccessible due to the cylindrical sea and the 500-m high cliff on the opposite shore. This is possible because of Rama's odd, fluctuating gravity. A few hours later, Jimmy reaches the massive metal cones on the southern end of Rama, picking up a strange magnetic field coming from the cones. Pak takes a few pictures of the area and the strange fields on the southern end of Rama's landmass before leaving. When Pak is a short distance away, he encounters lightning. Unfortunately, one of the bolts hits Pak's skybike, and it plummets to the bottom of the southern landmass of Rama.

When Pak wakes up, he sees a crab-like creature picking up his skybike and chopping it into pieces. He cannot decide whether it is a robot or a biological alien, and keeps his distance while contacting Norton and the others on the other side of Rama for help. Norton sends a rescue party across the cylindrical sea (on a small, improvised craft) and Pak waits. He sees the crab-like creature dump the remains of the skybike into the sea, and he approaches the creature, but it completely ignores him. Pak explores the surrounding fields while waiting for the rescue party to arrive on the southern cliffs of the cylindrical sea. He sees geometric structures in odd shapes and forms. Then he spots a flower, and receives no objection from base when he decides to pluck it. Afterward, he walks to the sea, waiting for the craft to arrive at his location.

Pak jumps off the cliff and swims quickly to the craft, and the ride back is highlighted by tidal waves in the cylindrical sea formed by movements of Rama itself as it makes course corrections. When the crew arrive at base, they see odd creatures inspecting their camp. When one falls off the walkway to the bottom of Rama, the team's biologist goes down and inspects it. It turns out to be a "biot" or a hybrid of a biological entity and robot. They are believed to be the servants of the Ramans' starship. Meanwhile, the Hermians (human colonists of Mercury) send a bomb to destroy Rama should it have any malicious intent. Another crew member (Boris Rodriguez) rides a skybike to the bomb and luckily manages to deactivate it.

As Rama approaches perihelion, the biots act strangely, jumping into the cylindrical sea. On one last idea to explore Rama, a few crew members decide to visit the city "London" (chosen as closest to the stairways at the "northern" end of the cylinder they use to return to their ship) to use a laser to cut open one of the buildings and see what is inside. Inside, they discover holograms with objects in them, believed to have been used by the Ramans. The most amazing sight is a uniform that is supposedly used by the Ramans. Unfortunately, before the crew can photograph anymore holograms, they must leave. They all exit up through the stairway on Rama's northern side, out the three airlocks, and get onboard Endeavour.

When Endeavour is a safe distance away, and Rama reaches perihelion, Rama is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, harnessing the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious "space drive" for use in a slingshot manoeuvre. Rama is then gone and never seen again.

The book was meant to stand alone, although the final sentence of the book 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, however, denied that this sentence was meant to hint at a continuation 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.

Reception

John Leonard, writing in The New York Times, finding Clarke "benignly indifferent to the niceties of characterization," praised the novel for conveying "that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes sci-fi at its most technically imaginative."

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.

The interior of Rama is essentially a large cylindrical landscape, dubbed 'The Central Plain' by the crew, 16 kilometres wide and 50 long, with artificial gravity provided by its 0.25 rpm spin. It is split into the 'northern' and 'southern' hemispheres, divided in the middle by a 10-km wide expanse of water the astronauts dub the 'Cylindrical Sea'. In the center of the Cylindrical Sea is an island of unknown purpose covered in tall, skyscraper-like structures, which the astronauts name 'New York' due to an imagined similarity to Manhattan. 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 accelerates 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 airlocks open into the hub of the massive bowl shaped cap at the North Pole, with three massive 8-kilometre long stair systems dubbed Alpha, Beta, and Gamma by the crew leading to the plain. The Northern hemisphere contains several small 'towns' interconnected by roads, dubbed London, Paris, Peking, Tokyo, Rome, and Moscow. The South Pole has a giant cone-shaped protrusion, surrounded by six smaller ones, which are probably a major part of Rama's reactionless "space drive".

Both ends of Rama are lit by six giant trenches (three in the northern hemisphere and three in the south), equidistantly placed around the cylinder, effectively functioning as giant strip lighting.

Project Spaceguard

Clarke invented the 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.

A real project named Spaceguard was initiated in 1992, 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

Clarke paired up with Gentry Lee for the remainder of the series. Lee did the actual writing, while Clarke read and made editing suggestions. 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)

Adaptations

In 2009, as part of their science-fiction season, BBC Radio 4 produced a two-part radio adaptation of the book. It was adapted by Mike Walker, and was broadcast on 1 March 2009 (Part 1) and 8 March 2009 (Part 2).

In the early 2000s, actor Morgan Freeman expressed his desire to produce a film based on Rendezvous with Rama, however the film has been stuck in "development hell" for many years. In 2003, after initial problems procuring funding, it appeared the project would go into production. The film was to be produced by Freeman's production company, Revelations Entertainment. David Fincher, touted on Revelations' Rama web page as far back as 2001, stated in a late 2007 interview that he was still attached to helm.

However, by late 2008, David Fincher stated the movie was unlikely to be made. "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."

In 2010, Freeman stated in an interview that he was still planning to make the project but that it has been difficult to find the right script. He also stated that it should be made in 3D. In January 2011, Fincher stated in an interview with MTV that he was still planning to make the film after he had completed work on his planned remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which is scheduled to begin production in 2012). He also reiterated Freeman's concerns about the difficulty of finding the right script.

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 featured characters from the sequel book Rama II.

Awards and nominations

The novel was awarded the following soon after publication

• Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973
• British Science Fiction Association Award in 1973
• Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974
• Jupiter Award for Best Novel in 1974
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1974
• Locus Award for Best Novel in 1974

External links

• Rendezvous with Rama at Worlds Without End