Rendezvous with Rama the Novel Discussion

[Lapis Exilis]

I just read (well, lsitened to) Rendezvous with Rama for the first time. I've heard it frequently cited on this board and was curious about what everyone's thoughts and opinions were of the novel. I must admit to not being much of a Clarke fan, though I appreciate the strict hard SF and the presentation of enigma that he does so well. In general though I think that the inclusion of some characterization would enhance his writing. I was unfortunate also to have a reader for the audio book whose style was about a hundred times drier even than Clarke's prose.

Meanwhile Rama itself was wonderfully thought-out and its discovery terrifically detailed. The dating of the tech and such wasn't too terribly noticeable and I enjoyed the speculation about how human society evolves in the next two hundred years. The most blatant dating of the whole thing had to be the introduction of the first of only two female characters by a rather extended meditation by the captain on how her breasts behave in zero-g. But after that, he handles Laura and Ruby well enough - that is, by making them the same competent professionals with no lives beyond the mission as the men. Well, Ruby and Pak have a bit of life with some hobbies - luckily hobbies that provide them with the exact skills they need to explore Rama!

I do have some gripes about the book beyond the utter lack of characterization - I found it hard to swallow that the exploration of the buildings in the cities was kept to a quick gander at the end. I get that this was to keep Rama enigmatic - but there's a point at which this authorial goal becomes obtrusive and breaks suspension of disbelief. I would also have liked to see some of the ramifications for human society of this mysterious contact. Instead, Rama jets off, Captain Norton is nostalgic, and the books ends with a line that could have been intriguing except for the fact that you know nothing about why Rama even matters to humanity.

So... what do you think of the novel?

 

[Christopher]

I just read (well, lsitened to) Rendezvous with Rama for the first time. I've heard it frequently cited on this board and was curious about what everyone's thoughts and opinions were of the novel.

It's a classic. One of Clarke's best and most important novels. It's got a very Star Trek kind of flavor to it, with an optimistic future and a love of exploration and discovery.

(The Gentry Lee sequels totally ruined that optimistic future, which is part of why I loathe them and consider RWR to be the only true Rama story.)

The most blatant dating of the whole thing had to be the introduction of the first of only two female characters by a rather extended meditation by the captain on how her breasts behave in zero-g.

When I read the book as a teenager, that was right up there with all the spectacular worldbuilding and science as one of the most memorable things in it.

I would also have liked to see some of the ramifications for human society of this mysterious contact. Instead, Rama jets off, Captain Norton is nostalgic, and the books ends with a line that could have been intriguing except for the fact that you know nothing about why Rama even matters to humanity.

Why wouldn't it matter? It's proof of the existence of intelligence elsewhere in the universe. That alone is the answer to one of the great questions of our age. It's something that would fire our curiosity and our caution, maybe drive us to develop our space technology even farther and faster so we could find Rama's builders or be ready for what comes next.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Gentry Lee sequels totally ruined that optimistic future, which is part of why I loathe them and consider RWR to be the only true Rama story.

Rama-II wasn't half bad, actually. Much better characterization and more thorough exploration of the spacecraft. The whole thing flew completely off the rails after that, but it was fun while it lasted.

 

[Christopher]

^Like I said, I hated the darkness of it. Clarke's nifty optimistic future was torn down and replaced with a stock dystopia, most of the characters were thoroughly unpleasant and rotten people, and the few characters who were actually decent ended up suffering or failing while the scumbags thrived and triumphed. It was not enjoyable to read, and it was very, very un-Clarke-like.

 

[Harvey]

I think the adventure game they made out of RAMA II -- simply called RAMA -- was more fun than the sequel book.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Why wouldn't it matter? It's proof of the existence of intelligence elsewhere in the universe. That alone is the answer to one of the great questions of our age. It's something that would fire our curiosity and our caution, maybe drive us to develop our space technology even farther and faster so we could find Rama's builders or be ready for what comes next.

Exactly - and after the introduction of the United Planets and their reactions to Rama, it would have been nice to see a bit more of the aftermath of Rama on humanity at large. For instance - how would it affect the optimism and exploration depicted in the book? Granted, leaving it ambiguous allows for the reader to speculate, but it felt odd to leave that out completely when much had been made of how the colonies interacted. The whole thing ends up being more an exercise in "here's a bunch of neat stuff I worked out in great detail" rather than a story. That is, I felt the impact of the whole thing was seriously undercut - in structure it felt more like an extended short story, where you can get away with such things.

I get the classic quality of it - it feels very much of a place and time in SF, and I enjoy the appeal of stories that were just vehicles for big ideas, but it felt a bit like an incomplete big idea.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I think that incompleteness was part of the point -- that this was something very alien, something that was just passing through and wasn't here for our benefit, so we only had a limited window to explore it and had to settle for only learning a fraction of what we wanted to know. That's how scientific discovery really happens a lot of the time -- we have to wait for our chances to gain a little more data about something (like, say, what happens when a star goes supernova or when a comet hits Jupiter), learn what we can from it, then hope we get another chance sometime in the future. It's actually kind of a refreshing change from all the stories where something alien comes to Earth specifically to do something to/for/about the human race. Rama was just doing its own thing, using our sun as a way station, and while its existence meant everything to us, ours meant nothing to it.

For all we know, actual contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence or its creations might go a lot like that. Odds are it would be so advanced that we could barely comprehend it and might barely be able to attract its notice. Clarke did have a way of approaching aliens that way, as pure enigma, as in 2001. He recognized that being alien might well mean being incomprehensible.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, I concur with Christopher. Just getting a relatively brief glimpse of the Raman artifact is the whole point. The point of the last line of the book is....

Spoiler: The point of the last line of the book

There will be two more chances to learn more. And, being forewarned, missions can be prepared and ready to take full advantage of the brief opportunities.

There being more questions than answers is also clearly the point. RwR is a classic, which I've read twice in my life; I've had no interest to read any of the sequels.

Christopher, you call them "Gentry Lee sequels", but Lee is credited as coauthor with Clarke. Do you know how the relative contributions of the two coauthors broke down for these books?

 

[Harvey]

http://www.arthurcclarke.net/?interview=15

Okay, I'll answer the collaboration question. It's quite simple. Arthur and I talk about the books, I write all the text, he reads and makes editing suggestions.

It looks like Lee can be primarily credited (blamed?) for the sequels.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Ugh. Thanks, Harvey.

Interest. Waning. Further.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, when I first read the sequels (only the first two, after which I gave up), it was clear to me that most of it was Lee's work; the only parts that felt at all Clarkelike were the bits that actually entailed exploring Rama II. But now I know Clarke didn't even write those himself. Basically Clarke was more an "executive producer" on the sequels (and probably most of his other late-in-life collaborations) than a full coauthor.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Well, I think that incompleteness was part of the point -- that this was something very alien, something that was just passing through and wasn't here for our benefit, so we only had a limited window to explore it and had to settle for only learning a fraction of what we wanted to know.

Oh, I got that. That point is pretty much hammered home every 10 pages or so.

It's actually kind of a refreshing change from all the stories where something alien comes to Earth specifically to do something to/for/about the human race. Rama was just doing its own thing, using our sun as a way station, and while its existence meant everything to us, ours meant nothing to it.

And I liked that. I thought Rama's departure was handled beautifully, and excellently written scene.

For all we know, actual contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence or its creations might go a lot like that.

I imagine that it would - certainly the encountering of what is essentially just an alien artifact (as opposed to an encounter with actual alieans) would be full of mysteries. My gripe isn't with any of that - I thought it was well-handled. But, in the case of a story like that, how that enigma is absorbed by the characters, and the society at large, is all the more interesting. If you were among the crew who explored Rama, wouldn't your life and psychology be irrevocably altered by the experience? Sadly, the characters weren't even fleshed out enough for the reader to speculate on that, i.e. how Norton vs. Mercer vs. the doctor were changed by the experience. And, now that I think about it, the entire depiction of the larger society was pretty lacking. The Rama council only existed as a vehicle to explaining how the United Planets were set up - except for the Hermians. That part was fairly interesting since you get a sense of their culture and psychology. But what was the reaction across the other planets? Was there a wave of religious fervor, or a greater turn towards rational exploration of space? Did anybody panic, did anybody rejoice?

The lack of the human element makes it difficult for the book to feel very effecting at all. It's always been my beef with SF - I love the ideas, but who cares if no one in the story can react except as some unrealistic ideal of a scientist?

 

[Lindley]

I've read all three of the sequels. They were interesting, if different. I don't put Clarke on a pedestal, though, so that may be why I don't mind them.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't put Clarke on a pedestal either. I just didn't feel that the first story, as told, needed any continuation at all.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama:

Clarke, however, denied that this sentence [the final one in the book] 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.

Seems I read it the way he originally intended it.

 

[Christopher]

The lack of the human element makes it difficult for the book to feel very effecting at all. It's always been my beef with SF - I love the ideas, but who cares if no one in the story can react except as some unrealistic ideal of a scientist?

Well, it's a novel from 1972, written by an author who came onto the scene in 1946. It's true that by the '70s, SF was starting to become more sophisticated in its exploration of character, theme, and such, but that was still considered the "New Wave," and Clarke was more an old-guard writer. Really, if you're looking for deep characterization, you should know better than to expect it from Clarke. (Although it's completely unfair to make that a blanket dismissal of SF as a whole. There's a great deal of more character-driven SF out there, and there has been for nearly half a century now.)

 

[xortex]

The movie is in development but I would love to go see it if they find something mysterious aboard that makes them act strangely possessed or that they come to the wrong conclusions about. It needs intensity but Clarke is all about the cerebral excitement of big mysterious ideas and concepts that are unexplainable or have deep multiple meanings and open ended philosophies and intangible metaphysics like all great art should have. Just listen to Beethoven. Same thing. Worlds within worlds.

 

[RAMA]

Quite frankly I find nothing wrong with idea SF, or a sense of wonder...I don't really always have the same interest in characters as ideas. There's nothing wrong with that being the central focus of a story.

RAMA

 

[Kegg]

The most blatant dating of the whole thing had to be the introduction of the first of only two female characters by a rather extended meditation by the captain on how her breasts behave in zero-g.

When I read the book as a teenager, that was right up there with all the spectacular worldbuilding and science as one of the most memorable things in it.

Even as a teenager I remember thinking that was pretty stupid.

As far as the sequels go my biggest issue with them (that I still remember, because I didn't exactly hate them) is that Gentry Lee overplayed his hand in selling the reader on how impressive his extraterrestrial encounters were. He'd have a few lines about how impressed all the characters were about seeing something before getting down to telling you what it was... and whatever he described felt like a bit of a letdown in retrospect.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

Well, it's a novel from 1972, written by an author who came onto the scene in 1946. It's true that by the '70s, SF was starting to become more sophisticated in its exploration of character, theme, and such, but that was still considered the "New Wave," and Clarke was more an old-guard writer. Really, if you're looking for deep characterization, you should know better than to expect it from Clarke.

Thanks for the tip - I believe I mentioned knowing what to expect from Clarke in my OP. Knowing that doesn't mean I can't critique the book.

Quite frankly I find nothing wrong with idea SF, or a sense of wonder...I don't really always have the same interest in characters as ideas. There's nothing wrong with that being the central focus of a story.

RAMA

There's not - that sort of story is to the taste of many. I was looking for fans of the book to explain their reactions to it, which is why I started the thread.

I would argue about whether or not RwR effectively conveyed a sense of wonder though. It did in certain moments, but overall, I'm not so sure.

 

[Bob Morton]

I liked the description of the stairs. Yup. It made the gravity of the situation all the more realistic.