I read this book: Rendezvous with Rama

While look­ing for our book club books at Coun­ter­point I came across Ren­dezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for $3. I really like this guy, Arthur C. Clarke. This is the third (fourth?) book I’ve read that he has writ­ten. Okay, the oth­ers were 2001: A Space Odyssey (obvi­ously) and Islands in the Sky. I watched the film adap­ta­tion of 2010, but that doesn’t count. Also, the film wasn’t that good. Though it was made 16 years after 2001 the spe­cial effects are far more prim­i­tive. But that’s not the point. I read Ren­dezvous with Rama and it was very good. I liked it very much. I read it in (essen­tially) two sit­tings. You should really read it.

This book has it all, all the ele­ments. It’s really the per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion for its genre. It has adven­ture (Wild at Heart haha­hah), it has uncer­tainty, it has the unknown. That’s one thing I really like about Arthur C. Clarke. It is a theme in all his works I’ve read. The uncer­tainty, the unknown. No mat­ter how advanced and futur­is­tic soci­ety becomes, we never know more than our Solar Sys­tem first­hand. Our Solar Sys­tem is quite large, and col­o­niza­tion of plan­ets hap­pens, but we still are always curi­ous. There is always the infi­nite uni­verse. It is pretty darn overwhelming.

To explain the plot briefly, Rama is a 31 mile long space­craft. It has been trav­el­ing for per­haps mil­lions of years. The clos­est it has been to any star was more than 200,000 years ago. It is an enigma. It is unknown. As it is trav­el­ing through our Solar Sys­tem the crew of the Endeav­our has 3 weeks to explore it. That process rep­re­sents the core of this book. There are many sur­prises. If you read this book, keep in mind that the Ramans do every­thing in threes.