Rendezvous with Rama
blog.engora.com
blog.engora.com
One should cherish one's own internal visualizations formed from reading the text; one should be cautious in viewing other artists' conceptions of the same material, lest your own model of the book's setting be tainted by unfaithful representations. When the imagery is this bad, it's a disservice to the book's legacy.
One of the few cases where they actively ruin the first book, to the extent you take them as true sequels. Clarke basically licensed his name and plot to Gentry Lee, who proceeded to ruin the sense of wonder by explaining everything, often in deeply unsatisfactory ways. They would have been reasonable scifi books (for their time) if they hadn't attempted to follow up the classics.
Star Wars prequel/sequel situation.
Sounds like Tolstoy…
I admit it's been a long time since I read them (maybe 20 years), but I certainly don't remember anything quite like this. I remember it more like the other poster here said: they basically said everyone was corrupt. In a nutshell, Rama comes back to Earth with instructions that a bunch of humans need to come aboard to live out their lives there. But instead of sending their best, some parts of Earth send their worst: criminals and such. So pretty quickly there's several different "cities", with one of them basically run by some crime boss. One of the main characters' daughters gets involved with the crime boss somehow and murders him before killing herself, as payback for killing her father. Later, the human habitat goes to war with the aliens in one of the other habitats, because the humans had broken through to their side and invaded them for some reason I forget. There was even one plot point that the father had hacked into the ship's environmental controls because the humans insisted on having wood-burning fireplaces, even though this messed with the environmental control systems. Instead of just not burning fires, the basically forced him to change the system to accommodate their fireplaces.
But I don't remember any sex slaves. Maybe I forgot that part.
Unlike others in this comments tree, I liked the other books. These go against the typical space exploration journey where you have humans on their ship surrounded by technology they're familiar with and on which they can fully rely. Here, characters are uncertain of their future - they don't know where they're going, have to adapt to the surroundings, discover the unknown and face downsides of human beings. There's none of that familiar splendor of "going boldly where no man has gone before" or heroic actions, great fights in the outer space. Lee's contribution shows us as small, even unsuited to live among others - here and there.
On the other hand, I'm not fond of his other books where he tried to continue this universe: "Bright Messengers" and "Double Full Moon Night". These felt like distilled, fast-tracked version of "Rama" with more religious overtones because of two characters included.
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Clarke's own books and these which he co-wrote with other authors have potential for adaptations for the big and small screen. "Rama" series taken by good writers and directors could become a new hit comparable to "Lost" show - which if you stretch some things, feels somehow similar.
I didn't go in with the expectation that they'd be just like Rendezvous with Rama.
I agree with everything except this. The sequels are by far the worst books I've read this decade. The memories of reading them actively causes me psychic damage. I wish I could Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind myself just to extract the distaste from my brain
Also they seemed to have a weird obsession about who was going to have sex with who to minimise inbreeding in the next generation. Maybe I'm doing them a disservice by not remembering so well, but I recall that seeming pretty weirdly prominent.
Yeah, really the original Rama book was it - just image how sequels to the Matrix movie would look like, those could have been even worse!
I felt similar about the recent authorized sequel to Andromeda Strain.
It didn’t feel like the same universe to me. More like someone was told the book flap description of the first book and a few character names and just wrote from there.
Meanwhile, many books I read nowadays on kindle routinely have 8 books in a series.
I wonder what makes this happen? Is it that self-publishing that just spits things out with less friction? Less editing and/or second guessing? AI helping? Expectations?
Rama may turn out unrecognizable after the Hollywood script jockeys have been through with it, as happened to Foundation. (I actually like the Apple TV version, but it’s definitely its own thing.)
For sci-fi takes on truly alien first contacts, Lem’s “Solaris” still holds its own, and the Tarkovsky movie is its own standalone classic (again something very different from the book).
I do, too, but I had to accept that the books basically gave us names; and that's about it.
The books would have been a complete snooze-fest, if they had been accurately rendered.
SPOILER WARNING
My interruption is that Area X/The Crawler is a probe built to study and build a bridge back to its creator. Area X is expanding because it's the inside of a wormhole. But whatever is on the other side is long dead, and the probe is acting on instinct.
Maybe it's that whole sense of wonder thing. When you have no idea why this thing was built and sent here, it's easy to imagine it was something exotic, amazing, high and mighty, wholesome, etc. When it's revealed that the reason was quite ordinary and kind of distasteful to modern human sensibilities, it's kind of a let-down.
The Phillip Glass soundtrack particularly elevates it too.
It would be surely minced thru to fit all the standard of the industry - and that's the fear I'm having while craving for screen adaptations of books today.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Others have noted that a faithful adaptation would have been a snooze-fest and inconsistent at best. There's lots of cases where a movie/TV version departed greatly from the source material, and was better for it.
>Rama may turn out unrecognizable after the Hollywood script jockeys have been through with it
It's being helmed by Denis Villeneuve, the guy who did Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, and the new Dune movies. If anyone can do a good job with it, he can.
>For sci-fi takes on truly alien first contacts,
Don't forget Villeneuve's "Arrival".
Yeah. The idea of the genetic dynasty with brothers Dawn/Day/Dusk, as well as how Demerzel fits in has been pretty great, and none of that was in the novels.
Denis Villeneuve (Dune, Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, Prisoners, etc) is set to direct and is writing the script as well:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama#Film
Though it may be a little while since he first has to release adaptation of Dune Messiah, and a Bond film is probably next:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Villeneuve#Upcoming_proj...
While he is a bit snobby and complaints too much, you can't deny he really envisioned huge amount of things to come. His imagination is next to none, and probably some things he described we will see only in the distant future, or maybe during the singularity, if it happens.
Other books with a similar plot structure and deeply alien vibe:
- Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (recommended elsewhere in this thread)
- Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
I know there's one I'm forgetting.
Shroud is great, easy recommendation. Another of Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay, also great, also very alien.
Solaris by Lem is perhaps the one above all. Lem wrote several of these "inscrutable alien first contact" novels: His Master's Voice, The Invincible, Fiasco, and Eden are basically all variations on this theme, each one unique and highlighting a different aspect of humans' inability to understand the universe. The last three are a little dated now, but still enjoyable to read. HMV is rather dry, a Borgesian essay on an investigation into an alien signal, with lots of references to fictional scientific papers. (Len also wrote two collections of very Borgesian essays that are basically reviews of fictional books: A Perfect Vacuum and Imaginary Magnitude. They're interesting and funny, but I wouldn't put them among his most entertaining work.)
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky is also a masterpiece. They also have a few stories about unseen aliens manipulating the history of humanity by placing traps or transforming humans into infiltrators. The Max Kammerer books (e.g. Beetle in the Anthill) involve this storyline and are very good, probably not well known today.
I tried Tchaikovsky (both Children of Time and Shroud) and found him to be completely unengaging as a writer. Just really dull writing and flat characters. Watts and Reynolds are much better writers. Watts in particular can really pack a punch.
Don’t normally buy a hard cover or kindle (I like the paperback) but I may do that for book 4 “Children of Strife”
The first book was an exploration of humanity in the stars. While there was contact, it had more the traditional science fiction footing that we're familiar with.
The second book was getting into the exploration of the mind and other minds. While the first book touched on the mind - with spiders being more relatable to how we think... the 2nd book presented us with something more alien in how the octopus thinks... and something even more alien.
The third book was downright confusing until the end and was more of a philosophy book about the mind. Can one mind be in two bodies? What entails thought? What is identity? ... and for that matter, what is reality?
The 2nd and 3rd books are good (and interesting) science fiction, but they go much deeper into exploring philosophy than many other science fiction books and use the scaffold of the universe to explore the mind rather than technological advancement. The upgrade of technology and how that changes things isn't the focus of the story - as one would expect in more traditional science fiction, but rather an exploration of a new mind. That change in the expectation from the first to the second (and third) book has some wish for more of that first book with the challenges of humans (as we can understand them).
Book 1 is a first contact story with survival. Book 2 is a psychological mystery about alien cognition (and a bit of horror to it too - "we're going on an adventure" gives me shivers). Book 3 is much more of a puzzle around unreliable narration and reality.
For me, I enjoyed the first book. I was confused by the 2nd book because of the change in the "it's not about the technology and survival anymore...". The 3rd book confused me on the first pass through it. The second time going through it and understanding where things were leading and being able to pick out the changes made more sense... even though I was expecting a book about the mind rather than science (the first pass through I thought it was more about the crow's minds).
I eagerly read the sequel, hoping it would unveil the mysteries, but it felt like it was not written by Clarke at all (I suspect Lee wrote it all). Instead of wonder, sci-fi and reveal, it was more about the human relationships of the astronauts and less about the sci-fi.
I tried to rationalise those humans were from a world very different from my own, but not even that worked. It was like watching a reality show with uninteresting people.
It’s like someone telling you a story and you ask, “and then what happened,” and they reply, “nothing; that’s the end of the story.” No one appreciates that, but people rave about authors who leave “open-ended interpretations!”
As I can in 2026 gorge myself on "mysterious things doing mysterious tasks mysteriously", now an entire sub-genre of its own, I'm pretty sure the impact if I read it for the first time today would be somewhat muted by comparison.
I am also reminded of the J. J. Abrams "mystery box storytelling" technique. Rendevous with Rama was perhaps one of my first encounters with the technique, so I have fond memories of it. But in 2026 I find myself tired of the "woo woo there's a mystery and we're not going to tell you what it is" because in the end, all mystery boxes are fundamentally the same, and I've seen enough of the mystery box. It has its place in history but if a random person who has never read sci-fi of this era wanted a recommendation to start with, this would be way, way down on my list, unless you explicitly want to read things significant to the genre.
But as I've tried to make clear by my repeated references to the present time, that's my 2026 review. For the time it was a fine book.
Let's hope it happens soon... finally.
His books are more plot driven and the characters are pretty flat, but it's so damn fun to read through!
Morgan Freeman has been trying to get the movie adaptation made since early 2000s and wants to play Commander Norton. I had read that Denis Villenueve (the same director from the new Dune movies) was attached to direct the adaptation, but it seems like his schedule is really busy. He recently finished filming Dune Messiah and then he's got the next James Bond movie to deliver.
Only thing that my hangry self took issue with -
"When I first read this as a teenager, I came away with a huge sense of wonder... When I re-read it many years later as an adult, I didn’t quite get that same sense of wonder, but maybe that’s because I’m more jaded now.
Wonder seems to have fallen out of favor with sci-fi writers."
Has it? Approaching it de novo, it sounds much more likely that you are immune to wonder - i.e. apply Occam's Razor to: A) I don't get wonder from this book that used to give me wonder B) I don't get wonder from recent SciFi books.
Then there's the second thing, ignoring Occam's Razor: "Recent SciFi books don't have wonder" doesn't follow from A and/or B, it's another premise that could justify B.
FWIW I feel the same way re: wonder getting older. My excuse is we've just seen too much training data, i.e. some things don't have an explanation and that's fine and there's nowhere to go with it.
Always was thinking about writting some simulation for it, but it was always "someday" ;-)
In the other books characters are put into hibernation so they could travel at high speeds. Perhaps atmosphere was removed and only minimal breathing mixture was provided for the passengers.
By the way, I think SciFun had an episode on this channel about O'Neill cylinder
The same could be said of 2001.
Although it seemed implausible in the setting that humanity wasn't immortal given some of the technology.
8<-------------------
"You said that all the old religions have been discredited. So what do people believe nowadays?"
"As little as possible. We’re all either Deists or Theists."
"You’ve lost me. Definitions, please."
"They were slightly different in your time, but here are the latest versions. Theists believe there’s not more than one God; Deists that there is not less than one God."
"I’m afraid the distinction’s too subtle for me."
"Not for everyone; you’d be amazed at the bitter controversies it’s aroused. Five centuries ago, someone used what’s known as surreal mathematics to prove there’s an infinite number of grades between Theists and Deists. Of course, like most dabblers with infinity, he went insane."
2010 is a good follow on to the 2001 book, and answers some of the questions the first book left while expanding the mysteries and the sense of wonder.
My wife and I still quote it when answering questions such as what's for dinner.
"Something wonderful".
But yeah, they're awful. I read them when I was 12-13 and it was one of my first introductions to the idea that sequels to great books could be so bad (and then for some reason I went on to read the Brian Herbert Dune prequels, which are even worse). Read the first one, and pretend it stopped there.
Clarke was so much of a better writer than the [2010|Rama] sequels indicate. He would not be able to screw it up so thoroughly without extensive "help".
Clarke also made some good partnerships - Richter 10 is a very good book. Sadly, the partner died and never worked with Clarke again. Gentry Lee would be my main suspect.
What it needs, fundamentally, is the Blade Runner treatment: Kill the expository voiceover, tighten up the edit, make the ending less sentimental and more mysterious.
I would completely redo the sets and get rid of CRTs everywhere, add understandable displays in Russian to the Leonov, and re-add the 1:1 flat displays to the Discovery. Also, remove the keyboards, which weren’t there in 2001.
Which is a shame, because the story is great. The "aha"! moment the ending gives is a huge rush.
> Clarke wrote the movie screenplay with Kubrick
I don’t think this is true? I thought the two of them sat together and worked out the plot, and then Kubrick went off and wrote the screenplay and Clarke went off and wrote the novel. So neither is really “based on” the other.
Anyway though, Rama is great, yes. I’m skeptical of the idea of a movie adaptation but Denis Villeneuve is probably the right one to try to pull it off.
I think Kubrick was very much the dominant force in the partnership, but they did work quite closely together.
There's a lesson there for AI I think. We anthropomorphize AI in the media but perhaps the more realistic possibility is that AI is a fundamentally different type of intelligence that may never be fully human-like.
I remember having fun doing it, which might not be something I could amuse myself with 20 years later since it's hard to hold on to that kind of childlike wonder unless you're on a hallucinogen.
The scale of it was... well... astronomical.
This does not improve.
Inverted World by Christopher Priest
Maybe it no longer needs to be said in this day and age, but Clarke was accused, credibly, of being a pedophile (or, to diminish it with a technicality, hebephile).
It is not quite as abhorrent/chilling as the also credible accusations against Marion Zimmer Bradley--but only because she was teamed up with a Jeffrey Epstein like character.
Genuinely curious, where does the credibility come from? As far as I can remember it turned out to be an outright slander by a tabloid paper.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/sep/12/sciencefiction...
No idea if he was as much of an insufferable egomaniac as that article makes out.
Some decades ago I think it was assumed that homosexuality and paedophilia were pretty much the same thing. Hopefully we are a bit more enlightened now.
Yeah that’s still a thing, unfortunately.