The problem I have with Arthur C. Clarke's and, to a much lesser degree, Asimov's brands of science fiction is that they often paint such a clean image of the future: vibrant democracies, happy people, great technology etc. Don't get me wrong, their books are not all happiness but, in comparison to other science fiction works they describe a more successful future.
After a number of asteroids either hit the earth or come too close for comfort the residents of earth and the human residents of the other colonized planets in the solar system decide to deploy a high tech early warning system to keep track of all the nearby asteroids. This early warning system detects Rama (which is an arbitrary name based on much the same system as, for example, we have today for hurricanes) a previously uncatalogued asteroid that has just entered the solar system and is on a path to go past many of the planets and shoot around the sun and out of the solar system.
Intrigued by this newcomer, the authorities send a manned space craft to land on the asteroid and to study it in more detail. Upon landing on Rama the astronauts discover that it is not an asteroid at all, rather it is a cylindrical space ship that is about 50KM long and some 8KM wide and is spinning from end to end. They manage to get inside the cylinder and discover a marvelously complicated but uninhabited world which they set about to explore.
Clarke's strength as a writer has always been his imaginative, believable and detailed view on future technologies, this book is a great example of the execution of his strengths. He describes the landscape, technology, mystery and atmosphere in breathtaking and yet accessible detail. His weakness as a writer, in my view, is that he cannot marry the tech with an interesting story involving the human actors in the book. It's like watching a movie with awesome technology but with cheesy lines and acting. He leaves a number of fascinating story lines just hanging: the entire mission to Rama is governed by a sub-committee of the now inter-planetary UN which has all sorts of diplomatic intrigue associated with it but Clarke doesn't really deal with that at all; similarly at one point, the renegade colonists on Mercury, launch a missile directed at Rama which is disarmed by the astronauts sent to Rama but Clarke doesn't deal with how the people from Mercury react to this affront.
You should read this book for the tech but not the story line.
1 comment:
Yeah, I think if you consider this book a big "What if we were to really meet something truly alien?" it is really cool. Just the sense of wonder and exploration, I found to be really enjoyable. But you are right in that there isn't much of a storyline beyond that.
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