The Internet Book Database of Fiction

<img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0553287893.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg" align="left"> Rendezvous with Rama /Rama /1

Rendezvous with Rama is a celebrated book, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It's definitely an interesting and thought provoking book, and a fairly quick read. But I can only give it a lukewarm endorsement.

It features a lot more description of puzzling alien structures than story. In fact you might say that Clarke's conception of Rama, a massive alien artifact that suddenly appears in our solar system, is the whole book. Don't expect much in terms of brilliant dialogue or finely drawn characterization. I found the early scenes of exploration to be quite compelling, but from the point that the encircling lake/sea/river turned green, the later discoveries and developments (things like the checkerboard field patterns from the southern half of Rama) seemed arbitrary and on some level pointless. And I thought the "paranoid-colonists-from-Mercury" subplot added nothing to the book.

Clarke leaves many unanswered questions, but I suppose that's a good reason to read the sequels.

I'd give it an 8 - but historically it probably deserves a 9 - sometimes you have to remember when these books were written and place them in that context, sci-fi has come a long way since then and it's used novels like this as stepping stones to get where it is today. Rendevous with Rama is a very important stepping stone.

As for the sequels....hhmmmmmmmmmmmm..... I really didn't like them much - they had a huge amount of filler - three books could have been two easily or better still one large one. I won't give anything away but they should have stuck to the main idea and dropped all the colonists infighting baloney.

His other collaboration with Gentry Lee 'Cradle' was much better.

cheers

sE