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^[3] and Nebula^[4] 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[link]

After a major disaster caused by a meteorite falling in Eastern Europe in 2077, the government of Earth sets up the SPACEGUARD system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space.

The "Rama" of the title is an alien star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439", it 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 realise that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid rotation period of 4 minutes, but it is exceptionally large for an asteroid. It is subsequently renamed Rama after the Hindu God, and an unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos to intercept and photograph the object. The resulting images 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 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 is already within Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by 55-year old Commander Norton, enters Rama through triple airlocks, 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) that actually served as factories, a sea that stretches in a band around Rama dubbed the Cylindrical Sea, and 7 massive cones at the southern end of Rama - believed to form part of the propulsion system.

One of the crew members, Jimmy Pak, who has experience with skybikes (light human-powered aircraft that are used in low-gravity conditions, such as the domed lunar colonies), volunteers to ride a skybike (created from parts smuggled aboard the Endeavour) along Rama's axis to the far end, otherwise inaccessible due to the cylindrical sea and the 500-m high cliff on the opposite shore. 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. The electrical charge in the atmosphere begins to increase during Pak's return, resulting in lightning. Unfortunately, one of the bolts hits Pak's skybike, and it plummets to the surface and disrupts communication with the crew of the Endeavour.

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, using 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, assisted by low gravity, and swims quickly to the craft. 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 a variety of odd creatures inspecting their camp. When one falls off the walkway to the bottom of Rama, the team's doctor/biologist Surgeon-Commander Laura Ernst goes down and inspects it. On dissecting it, she concludes that it is a "biot" or a hybrid of a biological entity and robot. It, and others, appear to be electrically powered by natural internal batteries (much like terrestrial electric eels) and possess some degree of intelligence. They are believed to be the servants of Rama's still-absent builders and maintainers of the starship.

Meanwhile, the Hermians (human colonists of Mercury) have concluded that Rama is a potential threat to them, and send a rocket-mounted bomb to destroy Rama, should it have any malicious intent. A crew member, Lt Boris Rodrigo, volunteers to neutralise it; he rides a "space scooter" to the bomb and manages to deactivate it.

As Rama approaches perihelion, the biots act strangely, jumping into the cylindrical sea where they are destroyed and absorbed back into the 'water'. On one last expedition 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 pedestals containing holograms of various artifacts, believed to have been used by the Ramans as tools and other objects. The holograms themselves are presumed to be templates for replicating these items as needed. The most amazing sight is what appears to be a uniform with bandoliers, straps and pockets that may be used by the Ramans; one possible theory is that the people were tall three armed/legged humanoids. But before the crew can photograph any more holograms, they must leave. They all exit up through the stairway on Rama's northern side, out of the three airlocks, and board Endeavour.

When Endeavour is a safe distance away, and Rama reaches perihelion, Rama harnesses the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious "space drive" for use in a slingshot manoeuvre and is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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[link]

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."^[5]

Design and geography of Rama[link]

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[link]

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[link]

Clarke paired up with Gentry Lee for the remainder of the series. Lee did the actual writing, while Clarke read and made editing suggestions.^[6] 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[link]

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).^[7]

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.^[8] 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,^[9] stated in a late 2007 interview that he was still attached to helm.^[10]

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."^[11]

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.^[12] 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.^[13]

In an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson in February 2012, Freeman indicated an interest in playing the role of Commander Norton for the film, stating that "my fantasy of commanding a starship is commanding Endeavour". Tyson then asked, "So is this a pitch to be ... that person if they ever make that movie?" to which Freeman reaffirmed, "We ARE going to make that movie." In response to a plea to "make that come out sooner rather than later", Freeman reiterated that difficulty in authoring a quality script is the primary barrier for the film, stating "... the only task you have that's really really hard in making movies, harder than getting money, is getting a script ... a good script".^[14]

Other media[link]

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[link]

The novel was awarded the following soon after publication

• Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973^[4]
• British Science Fiction Association Award in 1973^[4]
• Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974^[3]
• Jupiter Award for Best Novel in 1974^[3]
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1974^[3]
• Locus Award for Best Novel in 1974^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rendezvous with Rama at Worlds Without End