Arthur C. Clarke's "RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA"
Review by Dennis D. McDonald
I approached reading Rendezvous with Rama with some trepidation. How would it hold up after all these years? Clarke was a pretty smart guy and the author of such work says Childhood’s End and The City and the Stars. Rama was published in 1973. A lot of technological time has passed since then especially when it comes to computers, robotics, and deep space exploration.
I’m happy to say that Rama has lost none of its punch despite its simple narrative structure and almost cardboard characters. Clarke was a big thinker. He spins his tale around basic physics, orbital mechanics, meteorology, gravity, and political and religious rivalries among humans spread throughout the solar system of the year 2131.
That’s when the giant object called Rama — 50 kilometers long — appears following a comet-like trajectory predicted to pass by the sun and slingshot back out of the solar system. An available ship and crew are rerouted and rendezvous with Rama to explore before it inevitably heads back out of the solar system.
Most of the book is devoted to the actual exploration of Rama. This is where Clark‘s imagination and big thinking kick in. I couldn’t help but marvel at the scenes and situations he dreams up based on simple principal such as:
What would happen to a gigantic spacecraft as it nears the sun and begins heating up?
How does one traverse from one end of a giant rotating cylinder kilometres across given the only zero gravity route is straight down the center from pole to pole?
While I’ve read many astonishing SF novels over the years with wildly imaginative plots and situations, I’m still impressed by Clarke. He may have been writing at a simpler time but his imagination and creativity certainly hold up!
Copyright (c) 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald
