Rendezvous with Rama

I saw some news about a possible movie adaptation of “Rendezvous with Rama” and it set me thinking again about the book and what I thought about it. There’s quite a lot here, so I thought it would be worth sharing in a blog post. Let’s start with some history.

Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke (born 1917) was the pre-eminent British science fiction writer in the mid part of the 20th century with a prodigious output of novels and short stories. Globally, he was considered one of the “big three” of science fiction and he sold well in the English-speaking world and beyond. 

Famously, “2001: A Space Odyssey” was based on his 1948 short story (The Sentinel) and Clarke wrote the movie screenplay with Kubrick. The movie's psychotic HAL 9000 computer was an example of his fascination with new field of AI, though he would have been aware of the real-world “AI Winter” that came in the early 1970s.

I think it’s fair to say that much of Clarke’s fiction was driven by story rather than serious character development; many, but not all, of his characters seem a little one-dimensional and the dialog is sometimes flat.  Unfortunately, some of the misogynistic and class-based attitudes of the time leak into some of his writing. In some respects, this is surprising because Clarke himself was gay, but perhaps none of us can fully escape the attitudes of our times.

Clarke emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956, where he lived until his death in 2008.

The story of Rendezvous with Rama

In the year 2131, Spaceguard detects a large object entering the solar system which it later names “Rama”. A probe detects that it’s a 20 x 50km cylinder, obviously constructed by aliens. Because of its trajectory, the only crewed space vessel that can intercept it is the space freighter Endeavour. Endeavour’s crew aren’t explorers, they’re just a well-trained freighter crew who happen to be in the right place at the right time. The crew intercept Rama and board it.

(Rama as imagined by Nano Banana)

Inside Rama, they find several city-sized clusters of objects and a central cylindrical sea, but no life and no controlling AI. As Rama gets closer to the sun, it warms up and comes to life, meaning strange robotic life forms start appearing and doing things the crew don't understand. One of the crew explores deeper into the interior (in a very contrived way!) and has to be rescued, which brings some elements of danger into the novel (which up to this point has been a “space procedural”). The rescue is against the clock as the crew know their time on Rama is limited because of its flight path.

(The inside of Rama, as imagined by Nano Banana.)

Unfortunately, Rama is seen by a threat by some human groups, and the whole object is in danger, requiring the crew on the Endeavour to carefully defend Rama.

After the crew save Rama, and themselves, they leave Rama as it gets closer to the Sun. Rama then heads off towards the Magellan cloud, leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

The book was published in 1973.

Let’s turn to some of the themes in the book.

The crew

In movies like Alien, ships' crews are portrayed as space “truckers”: rude, crude, and rebellious. They have some level of training, but they’re not experts by any means. They have problems following orders and working as a team. 

The crew of the Endeavour are very different; they’re highly trained, they work as a team, and they can follow orders. There’s a pointed discussion early on about avoiding heroics and working together; the ethic of quiet competence permeates the book. I’ve heard the book described as competency porn, and I agree. This isn’t a crew of space truckers, it’s like the crew of a supertanker or some other ocean-going vessel, which feels both more likely and more realistic to me.

A big part of the crew are the chimpanzees engineered to have a higher IQ that enables them to do some jobs that would otherwise be done by humans. Notably, these simps stay on the Endeavour and I think they're an underused part of the story. I also get the sense that the simps are a replacement for the AIs that would otherwise run things.

(Nano Banana.)

AI?

Clarke talked a lot about AI, but in this novel, AI is conspicuous by its absence. There are no self-aware AIs in Endeavour or in Rama. I’m speculating, but I think Clarke would have seen AI go “off the boil” in the early 1970s. Perhaps he felt that after HAL in 2001, there was nowhere new to go with AI stories. Of course, by not having an AI in Rama, Clarke can keep the mystery – there’s no sentient AI that tells the humans everything they want to know.

Rama is alien

This was my second big take-away from the novel. Rama feels very alien, from the cylinder to the biots, to the way it works. Rama makes no attempt to explain itself to the crew of the Endeavour and there are no clues explaining “why”. I very much get the sense that something non-human built and operated this thing for its own purposes. The crew leave Rama with many more questions than answers.

Wonder

When I first read this as a teenager, I came away with a huge sense of wonder. What is this thing? Who sent it? Why did they send it? When I re-read it many years later as an adult, I didn’t quite get that same sense of wonder, but maybe that’s because I’m more jaded now. 

Wonder seems to have fallen out of favor with sci-fi writers. I can't remember reading a recent book that gave me a sense of awe or grandeur.  On the other hand, characterization and dialog are very much in favor (which is a good thing), I've read a lot of recent books with vivid characters and dialog.

With the death of wonder, I can't help feel we've lost part of what made the genre a bit different.

Subsequent books

There are some sequel novels written by Gentry Lee. My advice: don’t read them.

Movie version

Rama isn’t an action-adventure book, but it does have some adventure themes and it does ask some though provoking questions. It would plainly have to be a big-budget sci-fi movie.

(Nano Banana)

Morgan Freeman has spent decades trying to bring the book to the screen without success. However, as of 2021, the film is in “development” with Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival”, “Dune”) writing the script and set to direct it. Sadly, Villeneuve will work on the new James Bond movie and other projects first, so a Rama movie is still a few years in the future at best.

Overall thoughts

It’s true that you can never go back. On re-reading the book as an adult, I saw all the flaws I didn’t see as a child, and I saw little of the wonder and excitement I felt back then. The characterization is a bit flat as is the dialog. Some of the scenarios the crew find themselves in on Rama feel a bit contrived. The politics feel off.

But….

The book offers a more intelligent view of what a first contact might be. Nothing is trying to eat you or conquer you, and nothing is trying to be your friend or show you the galaxy. The aliens just don’t care and are doing alien things. 

The humans in the book aren’t super men and women, but neither are they cynical individualists. They’re just competent people working together as a team.

These ideas of alien aliens and competent humans makes the book different and noteworthy. 

Is the book flawed? Yes. Is it worth reading? Yes. Will I be in line to see the movie? Hell yes.