How does one human condense Mr Clarke's life? Looks like Wikipedia has done it again: 'Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in parallel with the script for the eponymous film, co-written with film-director Stanley Kubrick;[2] and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World.[3][4] For many years, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.[5]'
And that is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg. He was born in England and due to lack of funds, became an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education instead of going to University. He then served in the RAF in WWII and it looks like this allowed him to earn a first-class degree in mathematics and physics at Kings College London. (I’m planning on doing that next year…)
NASA owes Clarke a huge debt as does Western Civilisation. He proposed the idea that satellites might possibly be of some us as telecommunication relays… Who woulda thunk it? Mr Clarke, of course.
I would also like to point out that he moved to Sri Lanka to lead a more ‘comfortable and open lifestyle’ that in the 1950s just wasn’t possible if you preferred the same sex. It has been claimed that it was to indulge an unhealthy appetite for the younger generation, this was found baseless by the Colombo authorities, so let’s just get it straight, shall we?
Plus, warm weather is always a pleasant thing isn’t it, she writes while sitting under a sun umbrella on the balcony under a cerulean sky.
He was named a grandmaster in 1986 (bit late on the uptake, world). He has won countless writing awards and is known as one of the Big Three is Sci Fi (the other two being Heinlein and Asimov).
I’m going to end here as there are a heap more Clarke books in my collection and I could go on. So I won’t.
Apparently the movie rights to this were optioned a while ago, but it is still in limbo-land - much like Rama (boom boom). It was written in 1972 and won the following awards: BSFA, Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus. Clearly it’s a crappy book.
What makes Rendezvous With Rama so interesting and engrossing for me is the physics of Rama. It took me a while to get my head around the logistics of how the gravity plays out in a spinning cylinder. But once you get it, it's wonderful. The concept of a sea that lies in a band around the centre of the cylinder, held in place by gravity with its own movement and tidal waves is marvellous. The mental effort of visualizing the cylinder world is well worth it.
Humanity has moved beyond Earth and occupies parts of the Solar System. Bodies that come through the system from the galaxy and beyond are named in the manner of cyclones and hurricanes today. The naming system has moved onto religious deities and the Indian pantheon was the latest system. Hence, when an unknown object is spotted heading towards our system, the name allocated is Rama. Once it gets closer, it is found to be heading towards our sun and is, curiously, an enormous, long black cylinder. Where the hell it came from and who created it is anyone’s guess. It is the first evidence of life beyond the Solar System. It has a diametre of forty kilometres. The mystery surrounding Rama is an ever-present threat in this novel. Not knowing its purpose or where the occupants are lends a creepy urgency to the story – the threat of the unknown. A nearby spaceship is sent by Earth to get to it before Mars can send a delegation or destroy it (they have become an aptly named aggressive race).
Commander Norton reaches Rama and they enter the cylinder through three airlocks. Everything to do with the cylinder or spaceship is now couched in terms of Rama. The Ramans like to do things in threes. Three airlocks, three spiral stairways leading from the centre of their end of Rama to the outer edge. The gradual changes that Rama undergoes are creepy and alien. His team slowly edge down one of the staircases, from zero gravity to the artificial gravity created by the spinning cylinder. Rama is dark, cold, and silent. There is a ‘belt’ of water that ‘splits’ the cylinder in half. On their side of the sea, there are low square buildings, no windows, no doors. All silent. On the other side of the sea are what looks like cities but again, they look to have no windows or doors. Rama has no occupants that they can discern. Are they all dead? Waiting to appear? On the other side of the Galaxy?
The crew begin to make their way towards the sea. As they do, Rama begins to wake up. Giant rods that are anchored at the other circular end of Rama glow with light and warmth. The sea, which is originally ice, melts and tidal patterns are observed. As the crew moves further into the city on their side of Rama, what look like mechanical creatures appear, scurrying to and fro, repairing and doing Rama-only-knows-what. They leave the crew alone but dismantle their equipment if they’re not around to keep an eye on it. These creatures all tend to be put together in threes. Three legs, three mid sections, etc.
Still, nothing ostensibly sentient appears. The sea is discovered to be a chemical soup, that is not hospital to homosapiens. The mechanoids dispose of all broken parts into the sea and it is clear that there are ‘creatures’ of some sort, whether organic or mechanical, in there. They try to traverse to the sea to reach the ‘cities’ but the wall on the other side of the sea is too high to scale.
Still the ‘real’ occupants do not show themselves. Theories are expounded: are the occupants long dead; the place is too clean to have ever been occupied, so are they in hibernation somewhere; are the Ramans waiting somewhere on the other side of the galaxy or universe for their ride?
The Solar System is in political turmoil regarding Rama and Commander Norton has to deal with transmissions telling him what to do and when. This is possibly the weaker part of the book. Rama is just too fascinating for me to want to be bothered with the political maneuverings. I just wanted to know about Rama.
Norton and the crew only have a limited time period in which to explore Rama. They can’t occupy it once it gets too close to the Sun. Mars also tries to send a device to blow up Rama that they have to defuse.
The characters, apart from Norton are very minor and not fleshed out. The book is too small for really getting into characters, plus Rama as a character dwarfs everyone else. It is the ultimate dark, mysterious stranger, full of unknown potential dangers.
In the end, they have to leave. We never get to find out if Rama has occupants other than the mechanoids. I’m still trying to decide if that’s a good or bad thing. Possibly a good thing – would they live up to my imagination? Maybe not, although I wouldn’t want to test mine against Mr Clarke’s. I’m sure whatever he thought of as a potential candidate would be far beyond what I could conjure.
This book deserves every award it has received. It forced me to think very hard about the logistics of Rama and I was rewarded for the effort tenfold. That is so rare in a book nowadays. IN FACT, it’s a rare thing for any sort of popular medium. More, I say!
No comments:
Post a Comment