Rendezvous with Rama

, #1

Hardcover, 303 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 1973 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

ISBN:
978-0-15-176835-6
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OCLC Number:
596321
ISFDB ID:
1319

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4 stars (2 reviews)

In his best novel since the classic Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke has made something quite new and wholly engrossing out of a familiar, eternally irresistible theme, mankind's first encounter with a visitant from unimaginably remote deeps of space and time.

The new celestial body that appears in the outer reaches of our solar system in 2130, believed at first to be an asteroid, and named Rama bu earthlings, soon proves not to be a natural object. It is a vast cylinder—about thirty-one miles long and twelve and a half across, with a mass of at least ten trillion tons—that is moving steadily closer to the Sun. The five-thousand-ton spaceship Endeavor lands on Rama, and when Commander Bill Norton and his crew make their way into its hollow interior they find a whole self-contained world—a world that has been cruising through space for at least 200,000 years and perhaps …

48 editions

There is a reason it is still known

5 stars

Very little sci fi is still talked about decades later. And often, that which is, how the author was a huge asshole/sexist/etc. is a part of that conversation.

I haven't heard any of that about Arthur C. Clarke. And the book is still solid both in it's sci fi and its politics. If anything, it's more optimistic than more modern fair.

I really enjoyed it, albeit that it took a bit to get though.

Subjects

  • Rama (Imaginary space vehicle) -- Fiction