Rendezvous With Rama
Cover of the first British edition
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| Author | Arthur C. Clarke |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bruce Pennington |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Rama series |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher |
Gollancz (UK) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (US) |
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Publication date
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Jun 1973 (UK) Aug 1973 (US) |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 (UK) 69,048 words |
| Awards | Locus Award for Best Novel (1974) |
| ISBN | (UK) |
| Followed by | Rama II |
Rendezvous with Rama is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a 50-kilometre (31 mi) cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries. This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and it is regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography.
After an asteroid falls in Northeast Italy in 2077, creating a major disaster, the government of Earth sets up the Spaceguard system as an early warning of arrivals from deep space.
The "Rama" of the title is an alien starship, initially mistaken for an asteroid categorised as "31/439". It is detected by astronomers in the year 2131 while it is still outside the orbit of Jupiter. Its speed (100,000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate it is not on a long orbit around the sun, but comes from interstellar space. The astronomers' interest is further piqued when they realise the asteroid has an extremely rapid rotation period of 4 minutes and is exceptionally large. It is named Rama after the Hindu god, and an unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos to intercept and photograph it. The resulting images reveal that Rama is a perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and 54 kilometres (34 mi) long, and completely featureless, making this humankind's first encounter with an alien spacecraft.
The manned solar survey vessel Endeavour is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after it first comes to Earth's attention, when the alien ship is already inside Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Bill Norton, enters Rama through triple airlocks, and explores the vast 16-km wide by 50-km long cylindrical world of its interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remain enigmatic throughout the book. The astronauts discover that Rama is hollow, and that its inner surfaces hold vast "cities" of geometric structures that resemble buildings and are separated by streets with shallow trenches. A mammoth band of water, dubbed the Cylindrical Sea, stretches around Rama's central circumference. Massive cones, which the astronauts theorise are part of Rama's propulsion system, stand at its 'southern' end. They also find that Rama's atmosphere is breathable.
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