Rendezvous with Rama
Jul. 22nd, 2004 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuOn our recent trip to Seattle, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy, Twoson and I visited the Science Fiction Museum. One of the displays there was a wall-sized video display of various spacecraft from film, tv and literature as they docked with, undocked from, or drifted past a big space station. You can pull up video clips of the ships and information about them. One of the ships was Rama, from Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.
I hadn't thought much about that book in years. But looking at it on the video screen, I suddenly had an urge to read the novel again. And wondered why nobody had ever made a film of it. As it turns out, apparently a film is in the works. Morgan Freeman is involved in getting it done thru his production company. The original website info listed 2003 as a target date, but the most recent google hits suggest 2005 or later is more likely. It will be interesting to see if it ever actually materializes.
Meanwhile I went home and scoured my bookshelves, only to discover that apparently I no longer owned a copy of the book. I remembered that my original paperback copy (with the nifty fold out artist's conception of the interior of Rama) had long ago all but disintegrated, so I suppose I eventually tossed it. Well, no problem. I'll buy another. Except, of course, the bookstores don't stock it. They had the sequel, Rama II, of course. But not the first book. Well, hell. So I bought it and tucked it away for reading after I found the first one.
That took some doing. But eventually I turned up a copy of the original novel in one of Portland's many used book stores, as well as the third novel, Garden of Rama. I bought them. I reread Rama. I'm now reading Rama II. It's been--as I said--a long, long time since I last reread Rama. I had some interesting reactions.
I'm now reading, as I mentioned, Rama II. Written some years later and with a co-author, Gentry Lee. I am not impressed. Published in 1989, this book is a wordy tome. It follows the adventures of the cosmonauts sent to explore a second Raman spacecraft detected passing thru the solar system some 70 years after the first one. Unlike Commander Norton and Endeavour, this ship was specially prepared and crewed for the mission. They've got tools, equipment and vehicles for exploring the inside of Rama II.
I'm halfway through the book and so far the exploration of the alien spacecraft seems to be an annoying intrusion into the personality clashes and political backstabbing amongst the elite of mankind. It was a quarter of the book before the story left earth. We get an interminable explanation of how the society of earth in the past 70 years has evolved, as well as backstories of the various characters. Only then does the story move to Rama, a trip that takes the infinitely small space between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, where they've landing on the alien vessel.
So, yeah, they're exploring. Kind of. But mostly they're arguing over what to do, and who should do it, and who's in charge (after the original mission leader met with an unfortunate...accident). The mission surgeon suspects foul play, but does that stop her from searching "New York"---for a missing cosmonaut---alone with the prime suspect (who knows she has suspicions)? No. It does not. Does she at least show a healthy degree of caution about turning her back on said individual? No. She does not. For someone who is alleged to be one of the smartest people alive, she's appallingly stupid/naive.
Rendezvous with Rama was about Rama. Rama II treats the mysterious spacecraft as the setting for pedestrian conflicts between egotistical and/or greedy academics and journalists. Bleah.
snippy, Twoson and I visited the Science Fiction Museum. One of the displays there was a wall-sized video display of various spacecraft from film, tv and literature as they docked with, undocked from, or drifted past a big space station. You can pull up video clips of the ships and information about them. One of the ships was Rama, from Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama.I hadn't thought much about that book in years. But looking at it on the video screen, I suddenly had an urge to read the novel again. And wondered why nobody had ever made a film of it. As it turns out, apparently a film is in the works. Morgan Freeman is involved in getting it done thru his production company. The original website info listed 2003 as a target date, but the most recent google hits suggest 2005 or later is more likely. It will be interesting to see if it ever actually materializes.
Meanwhile I went home and scoured my bookshelves, only to discover that apparently I no longer owned a copy of the book. I remembered that my original paperback copy (with the nifty fold out artist's conception of the interior of Rama) had long ago all but disintegrated, so I suppose I eventually tossed it. Well, no problem. I'll buy another. Except, of course, the bookstores don't stock it. They had the sequel, Rama II, of course. But not the first book. Well, hell. So I bought it and tucked it away for reading after I found the first one.
That took some doing. But eventually I turned up a copy of the original novel in one of Portland's many used book stores, as well as the third novel, Garden of Rama. I bought them. I reread Rama. I'm now reading Rama II. It's been--as I said--a long, long time since I last reread Rama. I had some interesting reactions.
- It's a short novel. It was published back before everything had to be a massive, 100,000+ word tome.
- Because it's short, it necessarily skims over details that would be described in minute, uh, detail if the novel were to be written today. Events that would take many chapters and thousands of words now are covered in a single, relatively short chapter.
- This is not necessarily a bad thing. No doubt publishers believe--perhaps correctly--that readers paying $8.00 or more for a paperback expect the thing to be wordy, but that doesn't mean all those words are necessary to tell the story. Rendezvous with Rama could have been a much longer novel, and I wouldn't have minded if it had been, but it works perfectly well as is.
I'm now reading, as I mentioned, Rama II. Written some years later and with a co-author, Gentry Lee. I am not impressed. Published in 1989, this book is a wordy tome. It follows the adventures of the cosmonauts sent to explore a second Raman spacecraft detected passing thru the solar system some 70 years after the first one. Unlike Commander Norton and Endeavour, this ship was specially prepared and crewed for the mission. They've got tools, equipment and vehicles for exploring the inside of Rama II.
I'm halfway through the book and so far the exploration of the alien spacecraft seems to be an annoying intrusion into the personality clashes and political backstabbing amongst the elite of mankind. It was a quarter of the book before the story left earth. We get an interminable explanation of how the society of earth in the past 70 years has evolved, as well as backstories of the various characters. Only then does the story move to Rama, a trip that takes the infinitely small space between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, where they've landing on the alien vessel.
So, yeah, they're exploring. Kind of. But mostly they're arguing over what to do, and who should do it, and who's in charge (after the original mission leader met with an unfortunate...accident). The mission surgeon suspects foul play, but does that stop her from searching "New York"---for a missing cosmonaut---alone with the prime suspect (who knows she has suspicions)? No. It does not. Does she at least show a healthy degree of caution about turning her back on said individual? No. She does not. For someone who is alleged to be one of the smartest people alive, she's appallingly stupid/naive.
Rendezvous with Rama was about Rama. Rama II treats the mysterious spacecraft as the setting for pedestrian conflicts between egotistical and/or greedy academics and journalists. Bleah.
