Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Rendezvous with Rama is an incredibly lean science fiction mystery. Clarke doesn’t spend dozens or hundreds of pages world-building, he doesn’t bolt on any number of subplots or drama between the crew members of the Endeavour, a solar survey vessel whose crew is tasked with exploring and analyzing the massive alien vessel dubbed Rama before it journeys out and beyond our solar system, possibly never to return.
In exchange for detailed character development and a complex plot Clarke serves up an almost documentary approach to how the Endeavour’s crew tackles the enigma of the Rama vessel, with government figures offering advice and orders from the moon, one of the many colonized celestial bodies in this world set in the 2130s.
Despite the presence of political wranglings (the Mercury colony is particularly willful) Clarke also makes no attempt to use his story to set up parallels to the then-present day of 1973, giving it a sense of timelessness, save for a few nods to the “swingin’ 70s” by furnishing the commander of the ship with two wives and having him note the inevitable low-gravity orgy that will happen at the end of their mission (without the wives, as one is on Earth and the other is on Mars).
This is otherwise a terse but fascinating examination of how we might explore a completely alien environment. Despite the sequels that came later, Clarke never intended to follow-up on the story and I would recommend treating it as a standalone.
Rendezvous with Rama is considered a science fiction classic and a cornerstone of Clarke’s body of work. If you like hard science fiction and have somehow missed it, I highly recommend picking it up.
