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 standards 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.

….At 0946 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 Eastern sky. .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.

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.. ….So began project Spaceguard.

I can’t think of a better way to introduce Arthur C. Clarke’s classic Science-Fiction work, Rendezvous With Rama, than with the above few paragraphs, excerpts taken from the opening chapter. More than anything, they set the stage for the story to follow, and they also give something of a glimpse into the man behind the novel.

First published in 1973, Rendezvous With Rama has seen more than twenty printings and has won three prestigious Science Fiction awards: The Hugo, the Nebula, and the John Campbell awards. It is generally recognized as one of the finest Science Fiction novels ever to be written.

In the year 2130, the human race has begun to colonize the Solar System, with well-established populations on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Saturn’s Titan, and Neptune’s Triton. Spaceguard protects them all from bombardment by meteors, comets, and asteroids, constantly scanning the heavens for any astral body that could impact upon Earth or one of the settlements.

Most of the detritus and debris of the Solar System is thought to have been located, with orbits plotted and safely stored away in Spaceguard’s massive computer system, when the human race receives a surprise: a very large object, never before catalogued, has entered the system and is headed on a trajectory that will take it around the Sun.

Curious, the United Planets send a probe to investigate, and discover that the object is not an asteroid or comet at all, but a huge spacecraft constructed by an unknown alien race. The ship, dubbed Rama, does not respond to communications, so it is decided that an exploratory mission will be dispatched to investigate her.

Inside Rama, an entire ecosphere is discovered, complete with air, weather, buildings, and even gravity simulated by centrifugal force that the ship generates through constant spin upon its axis. But Rama seems to be a dead ship; there are no life forms aboard her, and there are no signs that life has stirred aboard her for thousands, if not millions, of years.

As Rama nears the Sun, however, she begins to come to life, and her explorers and the human race as a whole struggle to discover the mystery of her arrival. Is she a derelict, latching onto the Solar System as the nearest habitable star? Is she a giant space ark, as some theorize, sent by a higher intelligence to save at least some of humanity from an unknown but impending catastrophe? Or is she hostile, the leading element of an interstellar invasion?

For the answers to these, and many more questions, please pick up a copy of Clarke’s masterpiece Rendezvous With Rama. This is a wonderful novel that you absolutely will not be able to put down. I certainly couldn’t, and I polished the entire book off, 274 pages long, in the same day I began reading it. Clarke’s unique style of writing is partly the reason for this: as he often does, he has written Rendezvous With Rama in many short chapters (46 to be precise), each leaving you wondering what will happen next. So much so, in fact, that it is an effort not to read the next one.

Part of the charm of Rendezvous With Rama is the way the book flows, unimpeded, through the events. The pieces all fit perfectly, and the result is an amazing story with good, hard science to back up the intriguing plot. Characterizations are the book’s weakest link, since the author spends little time developing them. We get a basic background on a few characters, but not enough to endear them to us overly.

It seems, however, that this is by design, because the real main character here is Rama herself. The bulk of the novel is spent examining her many wonders, describing how she works, and just plain making us wonder what she has come to Earth for. And this works, and works very well.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote numerous science fiction stories, but he may well be best remembered for Rendezvous With Rama. In part, that may be because this is such an incredible novel, but he has also been commemorated in a more practical sense. He was a pioneer in the art of alerting the public to the very real threat posed by the potential for impact upon Earth by an asteroid or comet, as the opening paragraph amply demonstrates. An effort to track such objects in the United Kingdom has been named Spaceguard in Clarke’s honor.

This is essential reading for any Science Fiction fan. At the same time, the novel is highly approachable to those who don’t normally read the genre. It is a book I cannot recommend highly enough.



Recommended: Yes