Rendezvous with Rama caused a bit of a stir with its publication in 1973. It was the much-heralded return to novel-writing by Arthur C. Clarke after 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, a five-year hiatus.
Arthur had not been resting his laurels, however. He had spent his time since the joint book and movie release promoting the Kubrick movie around the world. He had also made a name for himself as a populariser of science, like his friend Isaac Asimov. He was one of the ‘experts’ on hand at CBS with Walter Cronkite to explain and amplify the first moon landing in 1969 and then Apollos 12 & 15 as they happened. In that typical British way, he said little but when he did, people listened.
With all of this going on, there was little time for fiction writing. Arthur also felt himself to be in a writing slump, a mid-life crisis (he was in his fifties) combined with an unusual lack of self-confidence. (In his early days Arthur was nicknamed ‘The Ego’, taken with good humour and a certain degree of knowing.) His return to his home in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1969 saw him exhausted, unwell with flu and reluctant to leave his adopted home.
Nevertheless, when Sir Arthur did begin writing it was in shorter fiction that he found his inspiration, writing and refining short stories and non-fiction for what would be the collections The Wind From the Sun, Of Time and Stars and The Lost Worlds of 2001, all published in 1972. There was quality – in this time he wrote one of his personal favourite stories, Transit of Earth, and also the Nebula Award-winning novella A Meeting with Medusa, for example – but less quantity.
On the publication of The Wind from the Sun, Clarke said, half-jokingly,
“I was tempted to give it the subtitle ‘The Last of Clarke’—not through any intimations of mortality (I have every intention of seeing what really happens in the year 2001), but because I seem to be doing less and less writing, and more and more talking, traveling, filming, and skin-diving.”
McAleer, Neil. Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary: The Biography
By 1973 the last moon landing had taken place and Clarke felt that he should return to focus on writing longer fiction.
“We know so much more now that we don’t have to waste time on the petty things of the past. We can use the enormous technological advances in our work. Vision is wider now, and interest has never been deeper.”
Rendezvous with Rama was an example of this wider vision.
Rereading it 40-plus years on, and nearly forty years since I first read it, I’m still not sure that I agree with such accolades. For whilst it is very enjoyable, it still does not strike me as one of Sir Arthur’s best.
By the time I first read Rama as a teenager, I was heavily immersed in Clarkean writing. I’d read many of his short stories, as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey and many of his early novels – The City and the Stars, A Fall of Moondust, Prelude into Space and The Sands of Mars, are the ones that I can remember.
So, it was with excitement that I remember picking this one up, eager to read what Sir Arthur wrote after 2001.
And…. I was disappointed.
Having known Sir Arthur’s novels read so far for having those ‘big ideas’, the overriding emotion at the conclusion of Rama was that of disappointment. Actually, for such a big set-up, my feeling at the book’s conclusion was that not a lot happens.
It all starts well – in 2031 early warning system Spaceguard picks up an unusual object entering the Solar System. This is written with that Clarkean skill of telling big stories in few words to emphasise the enormity of the events that unfold. Like the monolith in 2001, the object, believed to be an asteroid, is a perfect shape, in this case a cylinder. An expedition team, led by Commander Bill Norton, is sent on the Endeavour to investigate. His crew, a typical mixture of characters (but no aliens other than those possibly on the cylinder now named Rama) land and find a vast interior landscape. It seems to be dormant, but the arrival of the humans and/or Rama’s increasing nearness to the Sun seems to be waking up whatever is in the cylinder.
Rama is a book that attempts to be enigmatic, but at the same time there are no answers, no big solutions. Rama passes through our Solar System, relatively unchanged by Mankind visiting it. Ultimately we know little and it remains so at the end of the book. There is no Uplift, no grand admission of humans into a wider community. In fact, at the end, it seems that the Ramans have not even noticed the human’s presence. It emphasises that, in the big scheme of things, humans are remarkably insignificant, even unnoticeable.
That’s not to say that there are moments of grandeur, of majesty and wonder. This is a Clarke novel, after all! Admittedly, the idea of a massive constructed spacecraft, not to mention the design and layout of Rama’s interior, is imaginative and impressive. The huge scale of this strange world is emphasised, and with it the power and history of this alien race. By contrast, both literally and figuratively, the humans are seemingly reduced to spending most of their time climbing up or down ladders with a limited view. Unfortunately to me this idea is so impressive that it leaves the rest of the novel wanting.
The characters themselves are the usual Clarke-ean archetypes – that is to say, varied in type but limited in depth. There are some unusual touches – for example, there are hints of a previous relationship between Norton and another crewmember, whilst he composes messages to his two wives back at home. There is a homosexual relationship in there too, though you could blink and miss it – all elements suitably left of centre for their time.
But to me, beyond the construct of Rama, it is a book that promises much and, in the end, gives little. Whilst there are touches of the Clarke style and humour that I’ve read before, there’s a lot that seems to be lacking. I accept that this may be deliberate, but whilst Sir Arthur should be applauded for trying to be different, I feel, even on re-reading, that there’s less here than I would have liked there to be. To me, whilst there is undeniably skill and originality, there is, unusually, a general ponderance of pace that leaves me rather flat. I was hoping that a re-read from a more experienced and mature viewpoint might change this, but it didn’t.
Clearly, I may be in a minority:
“There were accolades galore, including compliments from other big names in the field of science fiction. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Frank Herbert all had praise for the novel. And John Leonard of the New York Times judged Rama as “storytelling of the highest order” and praised its “sense of wonder and breathless suspense.” Continued Leonard, “Mr. Clarke is splendid. As a superior intelligence spins a strange spider-culture out of its bowels, we experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not quite knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative.”
McAleer, Neil. Sir Arthur C. Clarke: Odyssey of a Visionary: The Biography
With hindsight, I feel that these tributes may be more due to a welcoming of Sir Arthur back into the fold of science fiction rather than a celebration of this specific book – rather like the accolades given to Asimov’s additions to the original Foundation trilogy in the 1980’s, or the reaction to Robert A Heinlein’s Friday, perhaps.
My quibbles may matter little to the usual Clarke reader though. My issues didn’t stop Rendezvous With Rama winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1973, as well as the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Jupiter Award for Best Novel, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Locus Award for Best Novel in 1974. There was also the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Novel in 1980. It is possible I may be misguided!
Nevertheless, in summary, Rendezvous with Rama is a good old-fashioned space exploration novel but not an outstanding one for me. It highlights some of Sir Arthur’s strengths and may therefore entice readers to read more. However, I must reluctantly add that, for me, it was not one of his best. I guess that this may be one that may have dated and therefore may polarise reader’s views. I’m glad I re-read it – but it’s not necessarily one I would highlight as a book to begin reading Sir Arthur’s works.
Rendezvous with Rama by Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Originally published in 1973 by Gollancz (UK)
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0575077331
Review by Mark Yon
It might be that the reason for such an anticlimactic ending is that Sir Arthur C. Clark knew that there was going be a series of Rama books to be publish.
Hello, Dave. Thanks for the comment. It is always difficult with hindsight, but if I remember right (and I’m sure Sir Arthur said so somewhere as well) that there was never an intention to write sequels originally – it was written as a standalone. So it was a surprise to readers (and perhaps Sir Arthur!) that sequels were forthcoming. From what I remember, it was when writing Cradle with Gentry Lee that the idea of writing sequels to Rama was proposed – nearly fifteen years on.