Buy used: $16.99

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Thursday, January 5 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by RNA TRADE LLC

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Author

Arthur C. Clarke

Rendezvous with Rama Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 1990

by Arthur C. Clarke (Author)

5,648 ratings

4.1 on Goodreads

154,229 ratings

Book 1 of 4: Rama

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$2.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$91.49

$91.48

$36.96

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.99

$11.00

$7.94

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

—

$46.96

$37.96

Mass Market Paperback, November 1, 1990

$16.99

—

$1.68

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$9.99

$6.00

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards • “[Arthur] Clarke is quite splendid. . . . We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative.”—The New York Times

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams . . . and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits—just behind a Raman airlock door.

Book 1 of 4

Rama
Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Spectra
Publication date

December 1, 1990
Dimensions

4.17 x 0.77 x 6.86 inches
ISBN-10

0553287893
ISBN-13

978-0553287899
Lexile measure

990L
See all details

Arthur C. Clarke
2,018
Mass Market Paperback
116 offers from $1.18
Arthur C. Clarke
1,291
Paperback
95 offers from $1.18
Arthur C. Clarke
1,220
Paperback
103 offers from $1.47
Arthur C. Clarke
3,991
Mass Market Paperback
87 offers from $0.99
Joe Haldeman
5,245
Paperback
115 offers from $1.49
Arthur C. Clarke
5,113
Mass Market Paperback
81 offers from $1.99

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An all-time science fiction classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke's best novels--it won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle's puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama's secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible "southern" half of the enormous cylinder. Rama's unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed. Rendezvous with Rama is fast moving, fascinating, and a must-read for science fiction fans. Clarke collaborated with Gentry Lee in writing several Rama sequels, beginning with Rama II.

Review

"Mr. Clarke is splendid...We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative." -- The New York Times

From the Publisher

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams... and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits -- just behind a Raman airlock door.

"Mr. Clarke is splendid...We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative." -- The New York Times

From the Inside Flap

At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredible, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence. It will kindle their wildest dreams... and fan their darkest fears. For no one knows who the Ramans are or why they have come. And now the moment of rendezvous awaits -- just behind a Raman airlock door.

From the Back Cover

"Mr. Clarke is splendid...We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative." -- The New York Times

About the Author

Arthur C. Clarke has long been considered the greatest science fiction writer of all time and was an international treasure in many other ways, including the fact that an article by him in 1945 led to the invention of satellite technology. Books by Clarke—both fiction and nonfiction—have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. He died in 2008.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Spaceguard

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On June 30, 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometers--a margin invisibly small by the Stan•dards of the universe. On February 12, 1947, another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometers from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivaling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.

In those days there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the last random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twenty-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole. And so, inevitably

At 0946 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the Sun, and as it moved across the heavens-at first in utter silence-it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones.

Moving at fifty kilometers a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labor of centuries. The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the Earth; and the last glories of Venice sank forever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landward after the hammer blow from space.

Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to history, to science-to the whole human race, for the rest of time-was beyond all computation. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.

After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years-but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.

Very well; there would be no next time.

A hundred years earlier, a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself. The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defenses of Earth.

So began Project Spaceguard. Fifty years later-and in a way that none of its designers could ever have anticipated -it justified its existence.

Intruder

By the year 2130, the Mars-based radars were discovering new asteroids at the rate of a dozen a day. The Spaceguard computers automatically calculated their orbits and stored the
information in their own enormous memories, so that every few months any interested
astronomer could have a look at the accumulated statistics. These were now quite impressive.

It had taken more than 120 years to collect the first thousand asteroids, since the discovery of Ceres, largest of these tiny worlds, on the very first day of the nineteenth century. Hundreds had been found and lost and found again; they existed in such swarms that one exasperated astronomer had christened them "vermin of the skies." He would have been appalled to know that Spaceguard was now keeping track of half a million.

Only the five giants-Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Eunomia, and Vesta-were more than two hundred kilometers in diameter; the vast majority were merely oversized boulders that would fit into a small park. Almost all moved in orbits that lay beyond Mars. Only the few that came far enough sunward to be a possible danger to Earth were the concern of Spaceguard. And not one in a thousand of these, during the entire future history of the solar system, would pass within a million kilometers of Earth.

The object first catalogued as 31/439, according to the year and the order of its discovery, was detected while it was still outside the orbit of Jupiter. There was nothing unusual about its location; many asteroids went beyond Saturn before turning once more toward their distant master, the Sun. And Thule II, most far-ranging of all, traveled so close to Uranus that it might
well be a lost moon of that planet.

But a first radar contact at such a distance was unprecedented; clearly, 31/439 must be of
exceptional size. From the strength of the echo, the computers deduced a diameter of at least
forty kilometers. Such a giant had not been discovered for a hundred years. That it had been
overlooked for so long seemed incredible.

Then the orbit was calculated, and the mystery was resolved-to be replaced by a greater one.
31/439 was not traveling on a normal asteroidal path, along an ellipse which it retraced with clockwork precision every few years. It was a lonely wanderer among the stars, making its first and last visit to the solar system-for it was moving so swiftly that the gravitational field of the Sun could never capture it. It would flash inward past the orbits of Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, gaining speed as it did so, until it rounded the Sun and headed out once again into the unknown.

It was at this point that the computers started flashing their "We have something interesting" sign, and, for the first time, 31/439 came to the attention of human beings. There was a brief flurry of excitement at Spaceguard headquarters, and the interstellar vagabond was quickly dignified by a name instead of a mere number. Long ago, the astronomers had exhausted Greek and Roman mythology; now they were working through the Hindu pantheon. And so 31/439 was christened Rama.

For a few days, the news media made a fuss over the visitor, but they were badly handicapped by the sparsity of information. Only two facts were known about Rama: its unusual orbit and its approximate size. Even this last was merely an educated guess, based upon the strength of the radar echo. Through the telescope, Rama still appeared as a faint, fifteenth-magnitude star-much too small to show a visible disc. But as it plunged in toward the heart of the solar system, it would grow brighter and larger month by month; before it vanished forever, the orbiting observatories would be able to gather more precise information about its shape and size. There was plenty of time, and perhaps during the next few years some spaceship on its ordinary business might be routed close enough to get good photographs. An actual rendezvous was most unlikely; the energy cost would be far too great to permit physical contact with an object cutting across the orbits of the planets at more than a hundred thousand kilometers an hour.

So the world soon forgot about Rama. But the astronomers did not. Their excitement grew with the passing months as the new asteroid presented them with more and more puzzles.

First of all, there was the problem of Rama's light curve. It didn't have one.

All known asteroids, without exception, showed a slow variation in their brilliance, waxing and waning in a period of a few hours. It had been recognized for more than two centuries that this was an inevitable result of their spin and their irregular shape. As they toppled end over end along their orbits, the reflecting surfaces they presented to the sun were continually changing, and their brightness varied accordingly.

Rama showed no such changes. Either it was not spinning at all or it was perfectly symmetrical. Both explanations seemed unlikely.

There the matter rested for several months, because none of the big orbiting telescopes could be spared from their regular job of peering into the remote depths of the universe. Space astronomy was an expensive hobby, and time on a large instrument could easily cost a thousand dollars a minute. Dr. William Stenton would never have been able to grab the Farside two-hundred-meter reflector for a full quarter of an hour if a more important program had not been temporarily derailed by the failure of a fifty-cent capacitor. One astronomer's bad luck was his good fortune

Stenton did not know what he had caught until the next day, when he was able to get computer time to process his results. Even when they were finally flashed on his display screen, it took him several minutes to understand what they meant

The sunlight reflected from Rama was not, after all, absolutely constant in its intensity. There was a very small variation-hard to detect, but quite unmistakable, and extremely regular. Like all the other asteroids, Raina was indeed spinning. But whereas the normal "day" for an asteroid was several hours, Rama's was only four minutes.

Stenton did some quick calculations, and found it hard to believe the results. At its equator, this tiny world must be spinning at more than a thousand kilometers an hour. It would be rather unhealthy to attempt a landing anywhere except at the poles, because the centrifugal force at the equator would be powerful enough to flick any loose objects away from it at an acceleration of almost one gravity. ltama was a roiling stone that could never have gathered any cosmic moss. It was surprising that such a body had managed to hold itself together, and had not long ago shattered into a million fragments.

An object forty kilometers across, with a rotation period of only four minutes-where did that fit into the astronomical scheme of things? Dr. Stenton was a somewhat imaginative man, a little too prone to jump to conclusions. He now jumped to one that gave him an uncomfortable few minutes indeed:

The only specimen of the celestial zoo that fitted this description was a collapsed star. Perhaps Rama was a dead sun, a madly spinning sphere of neutronium, every cubic centimeter weighing billions of tons.

At this point, there flashed briefly through Stenton's horrified mind the memory of that timeless classic, H. 0. Wells's "The Star." He had first read it as a small boy, and it had helped to spark his interest in astronomy. Across more than two centuries of time it had lost none of its magic and its tenor. He would never forget the images of hurricanes and' tidal waves, of cities sliding into the sea, as that other visitor from the stars smashed into Jupiter and then fell sunward past the Earth. True, the star that old Wells described was not cold, but incandescent, and wrought much of its destruction by heat. That scarcely mattered; even if Rama was a cold body, reflecting only the light of the Sun, it could kill by gravity as easily as by fire.

Any stellar mass intruding into the solar system would completely distort the orbits of the planets. The Earth had only to move a few million kilometers sunward-.or starward-for the
delicate balance of climate to be destroyed. The antarctic icecap could melt and flood all low-lying land; or the oceans could freeze and the whole world be locked in eternal winter. Just a nudge in either direction would be enough.

Then Stenton relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief. This was all nonsense; he should be ashamed of himself.

Rama could not possibly be made of condensed matter. No star-sized mass could penetrate so deeply into the solar system without producing disturbances that would have betrayed it long ago. The orbits of all the planets would have been affected; that, after all, was how Neptune, Pluto, and Persephone had been discovered. No, it was utterly impossible for an object as massive as a dead sun to sneak up unobserved.

In a way, it was a pity. An encounter with a dark star would have been quite exciting.

While it lasted.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Spectra (December 1, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553287893
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553287899
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 990L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.17 x 0.77 x 6.86 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #224,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,161 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #1,892 in First Contact Science Fiction (Books)
- #6,668 in Classic Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
5,648 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Arthur C. Clarke

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE (1917-2008) wrote the novel and co-authored the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey. He has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and he is the only science-fiction writer to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His fiction and nonfiction have sold more than one hundred million copies in print worldwide.

Photo by en:User:Mamyjomarash (Amy Marash) (en:Image:Clarke sm.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		26%
3 star		7%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all customer images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

R. Stewart

What awaits us out there?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 6, 2022

Verified Purchase

I first read Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama around 1974, about a year after it came out, while I was still in college. I enjoyed it, but my interest in Clarke was beginning to fade a bit by that time. As a kid and a teenager I'd loved his short stories and the cosmic novels like The City and the Stars and Childhood's End to the point that Clarke's work pretty well embodied what I thought science fiction ought to be. His novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out of a collaboration with Stanley Kubrick based on an old short story called The Sentinel (1948), was published at the end of the 60s and was his last novel before this one. Each of them featured what has come to be known in science fiction circles as a Big Dumb Object (i.e., the monolith in 2001 and the cylinder in Rama). The term, which was invented by a sf fan/critic and is meant to be a bit derogatory, refers to huge, inexplicable devices created by alien technologies at which humans can only marvel.

Having heard that Denis Villeneuve is planning to adapt the novel into a movie, I decided to reread it.

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a cylindrical object passes through the solar system. At first assumed to be an asteroid, which they name Rama, astronomers soon come to realize it is actually a constructed artifact -- a spaceship perhaps, or a probe -- that is 12 miles wide and more than 30 miles long. (There is no doubt in my mind that the speculation surrounding ‘Oumuamua as it passed through the solar system in 2017 was in part sparked by this book.) In the Clarkean near-future of the novel, humans have already built colonies on the moon and nearby planets, so they have the ability to send a manned expedition out to rendezvous with Rama and examine it up close.

The explorers manage to find a point of entry into Rama and discover that it is cold and dark and apparently dead inside. It does have a breathable atmosphere though, and, because of its spin, it has gravity along the outer surfaces of the interior. As the object nears the sun, it begins to heat up and come to life inside. Gigantic lights illuminate the interior, a body of water that forms a ring around the midpoint begins to melt, and weather patterns develop inside the enormous habitat.

Lifelike entities emerge and begin to perform tasks, paying no attention to the human visitors. The entities appear to be an amalgam of biological and mechanical components, and the human visitors can't decide whether these are actual Ramans or merely the programmed servants of the Ramans. As Rama gets nearer the sun, the visitors have only a short time to explore as much as possible before they must abandon it. As they explore, making ever more puzzling discoveries, some of the massive processes that happen inside Rama get dangerous.

This is the kind of science fiction adventure at which Clarke excelled. There are no villains or monsters to contend with -- there are only the powerful dynamics of physics and the inscrutable ways of alien intelligences far beyond our own. After all, it was Clarke who famously predicted that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The ultimate goal of the novel is to provoke a sense of wonder at the possibilities that may await us "out there." Inevitably, it feels a bit dated nearly fifty years later, but for someone approaching it with the right frame of mind, I think it would still serve that purpose well enough today.

2001: A Space Odyssey did pretty much the same thing. Reviewers of the movie often described it as more of a "trip" than a movie because, instead of the usual Hollywood plot devices, character development, and conflicts, 2001 offered audiences a thought experiment on human evolution and cosmic destiny. If he handles the material right, Villeneuve may be able to do something similar for 21st century audiences. Will it fly today? Only time will tell.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Luigi616

Great Sci-Fi Classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2022

Verified Purchase

Reminded me a little bit of Niven's Ringworld, but better. Unlike Ringworld, I'm curious to read more and look forward to the next installment.

Helpful

tom

This book is 50 years old and amazingly in my opinion still very relevant as if written yesterday.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 1, 2022

Verified Purchase

I remember this book being offered for sale. I’m sure I bought this and I know absolutely that I never read the book. Probably because some of the other books by Clarke were in my opinion difficult to read.
And, I do not know why I didn’t, anyway. It is really an amazing book to read. The thinking behind it was excellent.
Interestingly I have seen some of these ideas that Clarke presented in 1973 in currently written books by other authors.
I will read the other 3 books of the series, but probably wait until the series books are on sale before I buy them, if they ever are.
I do currently own 7 of his books that I did buy at a reduced cost. Hopefully this series will eventually be available for me.
Anyway definitely worth reading.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bryan Desmond

Hard Sci-Fi of the Highest Order

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2022

Verified Purchase

This feels like one of those books where I waver between four and five by mood alone. Resting on four now, as there were times whilst reading it that I felt slightly bored, but this feels like more of a 'me problem' rather than any problem with the text. 'Lot going on right now.

Anyhow, who doesn't love a getting a classic science-fiction novel for Christmas?? Clarke has been on my list for as long as I've been aware of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and with the recent news that Rendezvous with Rama may be Denis Villeneuve's next project after he's finished with Dune, what better time for such a sweet gift?

I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed this novel. There is always a slight worry—at least for me there is—that classic novels will not hold up to the scrutiny of a contemporary gaze. Not so with Rama. Not so at all. Clarke weaves his unknowable cosmic journey with a not-at-all-concealed intelligence and a wry wit that combines into a cohesive package offering frequent moments of casual brilliance that will please readers new and old. It's true that the character work is nothing to write home about, but that simply wasn't Clarke's focus. Rama is hard sci-fi of the highest order. It is one hundred percent about the science, and yet Clarke keeps things fun and engaging (science is fun? who knew). And clocking in at just over two hundred pages, he keeps the pace up, too. There are no real lulls here, as the crew of the Endeavour explores a brand new world.

Clarke's strongest offering here is the sheer sense of exploration the reader gets. The reader himself is a discoverer of an alien artifact of unimaginable magnitude. The reader herself embarks on an unknowable cosmic journey as a sleeping giant awakes. It's a ride worth taking.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Awesome classic science fiction

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 23, 2022

Verified Purchase

Unlike most of the nutty psychodrama that passes for science fiction these days, Rendezvous With Rama goes back to the roots of the field: smart humans dealing with fascinating technology, in the presence of aliens, or at least, alien artifacts.

The main story line is that a huge alien spaceship is observed entering the solar system at very high speed. It's a story that manages to be engaging and well paced *without* having Faster Than Light travel (FTL). Einstein didn't like the idea of FTL travel, but very few space travel science fiction stories manage to be interesting without it. Rendezvous With Rama does it exceedingly well.

Humans have enough space travel capability at that point in the future that we're able to mount a mission to go check out this visitor/invader. As Rama gets closer to the sun, Rama gets hotter...and so does the action inside the vessel!

We learn as much as we can about the vessel and the aliens during their brief stay in our solar system which, given their enormous speed, wasn't very long.

But in the end...the Ramans always do everything in threes...

If you want excellent hard science fiction without the psychodrama, this is the book for you!

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Miles Atkinson

as a result of my evident enjoyment, began to feed me his Asimov and Clarke ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

I first came across this book via BBC Radio Four's programme 'Story Time' in November 1976 (or, as my wife says A Long Time Ago). It impressed the hell out of the ten year old me and, having ordered it from the local library, was impressed all over again. My dad was already a big sci-fi fan and, as a result of my evident enjoyment, began to feed me his Asimov and Clarke collection volume by volume.
Rama remains as fresh and enjoyable a book at nearly fifty-one as it was forty years ago. What I appreciate most now is the spare, uncluttered style of the author. Clarke is not big on wordy prose and his emphasis on concepts and story is often at the expense of detailed characterisation. In some ways this makes the book dated. If you are expecting detailed interpersonal subplots then you are likely to be disappointed.
Rama is on a hyperbolic path through the solar system, so Commander Norton and the crew of the Endeavour have a limited amount of time to explore the vast interior of the craft. What I liked about this was that there are no sudden shock revelations as to what Rama 'really' is. The explorers struggle to make sense of an inexplicable alien environment and what they do discover comes via good old fashioned scientific investigation and reasoned deduction.
This is classic 'hard' science fiction, emotionally understated by todays standards perhaps, but no less powerful for that.

35 people found this helpful

5t4n5 Dot Com

Proper, good, classic sci-fi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

What’s there to say: proper, good, classic sci-fi. As with Childhood’s End, it is well deserving of it’s place in the “SF Masterworks” series.

This time, instead of actual aliens coming to Earth and a prophecy of how humanity will eventually evolve, in Rendezvous With Rama we have a large alien vessel entering the solar system on a path that will take it inside the orbit of Mercury, around the Sun, and then, is anyone’s guess. Will it adjust it’s trajectory, pull a breaking manouvre and find a stable orbit in the solar system, or will it use the Sun and sling shot elsewhere? Where did it come from, who sent it, who or what is inside, what is it’s purpose?

Set in a time when humans have colonised several planets and moons in the solar system and space flight is quite normal, we have one space ship — the Endeavour, captained by a big fan of James Cook — that is able to get some fuel and rendezvous with this vessel and investigate it. However, once the vessel has passed inside the orbit of Mercury, the Mercurians decide to take matters into their own hands and ignore what the rest of humanity has to say on the matter.

As i say, this is a proper old school sci-fi first contact story at its best and well deserving of its place as a “SF Masterworks”.

9 people found this helpful

Martin Jones

Journey To A High Concept

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

Rendezvous With Rama describes the exploration of a vast alien space ship. This vessel takes the form of a spinning cylinder, fifty kilometres long by twenty kilometres wide. Centrifugal forces anchor a miniature world of cities, fields and seas against its inner surface. With Rama apparently abandoned, this is a detective story where the explorers look for clues to its origins and intentions. Let’s start with the good stuff. For me, the best thing about this book was the idea of Rama. I found all kinds of thought provoking contradictions in its circular topography. Rama can actually cause you to ponder on space and time, specifically whether they are rather more circular than linear. We live on a world with a surface that bends away from us over the horizon, which makes us prone to thinking in terms of straight lines. But by turning things inside out, by taking away the horizon and letting the landscape sweep around overhead, we get a more intuitive model of how things might really be. So that was the positive. Now we come to the negative. I have seen Arthur C. Clarke’s prose described as “workmanlike” or “functional”. To describe my view of his writing, I suggest you imagine a technically minded 1970s school boy, with odd views on women, marriage, and - bizarrely - farming. After an A in a physics exam goes to his head, he decides to write an adventure story in which he and his thinly disguised friends explore an alien space ship. But, damn it, for the most part I still enjoyed the story because of that great revolving idea of Rama.

Books like this show that people are often more interested in ideas than good writing. There's even a name for a type of book which is built around a single idea, which can be expressed in a few words, or even in one word - it's called high concept. Lots of Hollywood blockbusters are high concept: Planet Of The Apes, Snakes On A Plane, Jaws, Speed. The power of an idea is sobering as you sweat over editing your adverbs. If you haven’t got an idea that appeals to people, then polished prose probably won’t help. But I suppose, on a more reassuring and philosophical note, if the universe is circular, then there’s a chance that even poor writing can go all the way round and meet up with an interesting story somewhere at the back. That’s what seems to have happened with Rendezvous With Rama

5 people found this helpful

Dave Bloomer

Straightforward story telling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 22, 2022

Verified Purchase

I read this book about 10 years ago and thought enough time has elapsed that I may have forgotten a lot of it. I had and reading it this time I felt ready for the steady pace of the story. I do enjoy Arthur C Clarke's work, this one being a very enjoyable read.

Saying it's a straightforward read isn't a dig at the book. It flows smoothly and reveals itself at a decent speed. It certainly doesn't drag at all.

So a big alien world/spaceship enters the solar system and man has a finite time in order to explore it. So it gets its human visitors and they explore the world as much as they can. The world of our humans in the future is nicely set out and explained. Even though it's set in the future, the future civilisation is expanded upon to make you feel fully versed in their world. Then the alien world is well explained and you feel as if you know it as well as the characters.

If I have one down point about it, is that we never get a real look at the aliens. This is the reason for saying that this review contains spoilers. They are hinted at a few times but never explicitly there, or described, except hinted at during the story. It is also a good thing in a way but it feels like your cheated a bit. Then again the characters are also denied it, so I'm not alone feeling let down.

It's a good read and with only the lack of alien beings, although we do get alien biots, it is worth your time to check it out.

Liam

Totally engrossing and easy read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 23, 2020

Verified Purchase

I don't do much fiction reading, but I do like Sci-Fi, and so I knew of Clarke already but I'd struggle to come up with the title of any of his works. I know I know... So it was with, perhaps, some luck I have started with this, and it makes me want to read more of his works.

The story itself is engrossing. The sense of mystery runs through the whole work, and in that way, it's ending is pleasing. You get many answers, including to some technical wondering of Rama, but never get a purpose of its visit. There are "chapters" of intense drama and excitement mixed with slow and purposeful exploration. The science in the book feels decent, and well researched, so helps pull you in.

The characters also feel real. They wonder if they should cheekily wave to camera's. They get excited sailing across an ocean. They wonder joking if women in space should be allowed, as their boobs distractingly bounce in zero G. One of the crew smuggles a piece of equipment on, and the book spends a whole chapter with the captain teasing it out of him and then we learn all about the crew member. Also when the 2nd in command gets a message and breaks protocol, and the series of wink-wink-nudge-nudge that happens as other people are subtly reminded that there's nothing to see here.

It's silly, but I felt often I wanted to know more about the characters. Why does the commander have 2 wife's, and how does Xmas look, for example. Did the guy ever win gold in the Lunar Olympics. I didn't expect that in a Sci-Fi book, honestly

I also enjoyed the squabbling scientists, including the revelation that the expedition only happens because the people voting have a vested interest ensuring that money isn't spent elsewhere possibly debunking their view of the Universe! You got to see the best and worst aspects of humanity in this, and as an extension of that I liked the way the Hermians weren't left as brutish people, they were humanised in a way, despite how they act.

This is a great read and I'm happy to recommend it. Book itself looks nice and reads easily, including type and layout and etc.

2 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Follow the Author

Rendezvous with Rama Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 1990

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Review

From the Publisher

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

Arthur C. Clarke

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries