I'm not fundamentally opposed to the use of AI to generate accompanying imagery, but in this case I think it detracts significantly from the article. The interior of Rama is misrepresented: the scale is completely off and the geometry is nonsensical. The clustered "cities" London, Paris, and Rome are not represented correctly. Too many more issues to name. Disappointing.
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.
I'm glad someone else said this because I was right about to.
One of the things I love about Rama 1 is how it squashes the idea of a human centric universe where everything has to occur for reasons knowable by us. Rama is truly alien, inscrutable and fulfilling a purpose we don't get to understand. As soon as it enters our solar system, its gone for good, leaving a lot unanswered.
> They would have been reasonable scifi books (for their time) if they hadn't attempted to follow up the classics.
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
The sequels are pulpy and quite sleazy to be honest. I read them some decades ago but there are ex-beauty-queens in a tiny human colony who must have sex with everyone else to keep the population going or some such stuff. You moved from top-grade cosmic level thought to whether X or Y is sleeping with Z. It's not that the subject is not meaningful. It's just like if you were reading about WW2 in some book and the first part talks about Hitler's invasion of Poland in a strategic sense and then everything else is about the affairs among the officers' wives or something.
> “the first part talks about Hitler's invasion of Poland in a strategic sense and then everything else is about the affairs among the officers' wives or something”
I always thought that, out of the Clarke novels, “Songs of Distant Earth” would make a good movie adaptation.
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).
As much as I love "Songs of Distant Earth", I suspect a Hollywood version of it would amount to "giant lobsters vs space marines", whereas in the book they're a minor sideshow.
I tend to agree. I've always thought it would work well as a TV show in the more heady days of streaming (let's say 2012 - 2020) when networks and studios where it still felt like they had some room to take more risk. It's more towards the end of the last TV "golden age" but an adaptation like something like Apple's take on "Tales from the Loop". Not brash or loud or too formulaic but somehow still got made
Foundation as a series is already somewhat uneven and less than “pure.” Asimov pulled a Lucas and cluttered it with sequels and prequels that muddled it with connections to his robot novels. Then there’s the additional books by other writers. And if you want to get real picky, Second Foundation gets real pseudoscientific with the pseudo-psionics compared to the first two books.
Counterpoint, I very much enjoyed the sequels (all but the last). They added three dimensional characters, especially women and explored a variety of aspects of first contact. They're a believable examination of how humans recreate the same social ills over and over, given the opportunity for utopia.
I'd all the Southern Reach trilogy (quadrilogy? now) to this list. It's more on the cosmic/eldritch side, but similar sense of unknowable.
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.
"a fall of moondust" would translate extremely well to screen, and "the martian" has shown that it's the kind of movie that would do well enough in terms of reception.
The first Clarke I read as a kid and still one of my favourites. It hasn’t aged well, not least because it was written before we landed on the moon and now know its surface isn’t like that.
back in 1994, when I was 9 years old, one of my favorite albums that got me into electronic music as a young boy was the concept album "Songs of Distant Earth" by Mike Oldfield.. Also the remixes by Jam&Spoon.. I think he released some kind of weird software about it too.. I think its time to finally read the book.
"Wonder" might be the wrong way to describe it, but Blindsight by Peter Watts gave me the same feeling of "this is incredibly alien and I have no idea what will happen next".
Other books with a similar plot structure and deeply alien vibe:
- Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (recommended elsewhere in this thread)
the comment on the blog recommending "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is also an excellent shout. One of the more original titles I've read in recent years that gives that feeling
I'm looking forward to The Hail Mary Project movie, the book has all of the elements to let it be good. But I think there's a reason Rama never got filmed or animated. It's more of a travelogue than an action adventure, and at best ends with a cliffhanger that Clarke never resolved. Ringworld may be in the same category.
I really enjoyed Rendezvous with Rama when I read it as a sixteen year old. The sense of awe, the scale, the mystery: it was great. But nothing much happened and the story didn't really go anywhere interesting.
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.
It was a great story, right up until the lack of an ending. As someone who reads lots of books, I will NEVER understand authors who don’t wrap up a story.
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!”
> I too got bored, as you said the book did not seem to go anywhere.
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.
For those who already read Rendezvous with Rama but need their alien aliens fix I can highly recommend "Shroud" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is a similar theme with modern writing and convincing aliens as is pretty much expected by now from Tchaikovsky.
I'll admit I'm quite anxious for Children of Strife. Children of Time is an all-time favorite, but each subsequent book in the series was a bit of a disappointment. Fingers crossed this one turns the tide
I kind of agree with you on that... and I kind of understand why.
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).
For me, not so much a decrease in quality but more of an evolution as the landscape of sentient beings expands. The paired covids in the last book, were a great addition.
Don’t normally buy a hard cover or kindle (I like the paperback) but I may do that for book 4 “Children of Strife”
I liked shroud a lot, but the ending felt very ungratifying. It's like Tchaikovsky wrote himself into a corner and didn't really know how to wrap it up nicely. I find this to be true of some of his other books as well.
Tchaikovsky has written some of the best books I have ever read like Children of Time and Children of Ruin and also some of the worst books I have ever read like Cage of Souls.
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.
Clarke’s book The Lost Worlds of 2001 goes into a lot of detail about the process (and is a great read in its own right). His take was that the book should say “a novel by Arthur C Clarke, based on the screenplay by Stanley Kubrick” and the movie should say “screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Arthur C Clarke”.
I think Kubrick was very much the dominant force in the partnership, but they did work quite closely together.
Been following this movie's development for over 20 years. I give props to Morgan Freeman for trying so hard all this time to get it made. Denis Villeneuve would be a great director for this, and he could make it work.
I decided to get back into reading two years ago and I picked this as one of the first ones to get started with, given it was a small book. I absolutely love Arthur C. Clarke's style of helping you visualize the grand scenes.
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.
Making it a movie would ruin it. Unless it was more of a
“Literary” film like 2001 and even then a fancy director
would have to stray from the original to make it work visually and add conflict. Just read it. I believe in Rama’s premise. Aliens just wouldn’t be interested in us in the same way we’re not interested in local squirrel population. Rama answers the “great filter” question. Where is all the intelligent life going in universe? Right under our noses doing its thing while we do ours. Maybe on our AI will be interesting to aliens.
Some thoughts on the novel: its strengths and weaknesses, why it's so different from other first contact novels. I'd love to hear people's views of the novel.
Like the other poster wrote, interesting mystery/plot, poor characterization shared with all of his work I have read - one thing that sticks out was the overly long bit about the man’s fascination with his female partner’s breasts in zero gravity could be taken as weird.
I remember hearing that Morgan Freeman was going to star in the Rendezvous with Rama movie. I also remember hearing once that they were making a 2061 and 3001 movie. Not quite sure which series I enjoyed more.
If he'd stopped after one, it would have been fine. He decided to do a series. It got weird. I still read them but the original is a decent standalone and you won't die unhappy if you never read the following.
I am a big fan of both films, and have over many years come to the firm conclusion that, while 2010: The Year We Make Contact could never live up to its best-films-of-all-time predecessor, it’s both a terrific film on its own merits and could be tweaked even today to be better.
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.
Officially, all the Rama sequels were co-authored by Clarke and Gentry Lee. Clarke claimed that Lee did virtually all the writing and he was only a consultant, although AFAICT the only source for this claim was in an interview many years after they were published, presumably after Clarke was aware of their negative reception, so who knows how much of that is true vs. reputation management.
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.
In my mind, the prose of the sequels were so unlike Clarke when I read them as a teen that it created a long stint of aversion towards spending time on anything with co-authors. I owe Rendezvous a lot though; had I not discovered that book as a kid, there's little chance I'd be reading recreationally today.
The sequel series was one of my favorite sets of books. It’s markedly different from Rendezvous, but I found them an enjoyable read. It was contrived at points, but the series had my favorite ending for a character.
I always felt that Gentry Lee kidnapped Clarke and forced him to be his co-author.
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.
I feel the stories got successively smaller from 2010 and on. 2010's epilogue hints at the developments after 20,000 years, and 2061 and 3001 feel small in comparison.
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.
I remember 3001 mainly for the bit about deism vs theism, which is one of my favourite throwaway passages in all of sf.
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."
I read it as a young teen, and I remember trying to imagine what it might look like to enter a cylinder that large.
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.
Some of my early renderings Renderman (high school), Povray (college), and Art ( https://www.abemegahed.com/software/ - at the very end) were trying to visualize the scale of Rama and Ringworld.
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.
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.
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
Sounds like Tolstoy…
I didn't go in with the expectation that they'd be just like Rendezvous with Rama.
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).
https://www.tetragrammaton.com/content/eric-roth
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.
https://youtu.be/gRivMEEZZE8?si=S1ZCDAg9Sl37jwoX full album
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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).
Don’t normally buy a hard cover or kindle (I like the paperback) but I may do that for book 4 “Children of Strife”
> 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.
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.
The same could be said of 2001.
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.
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.
Although it seemed implausible in the setting that humanity wasn't immortal given some of the technology.
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".
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."
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_(video_game)
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.