Rendezvous With Rama

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Rendezvous With Rama is a Science Fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, in which a giant asteroid comes shooting through the Solar System, circa 2131 AD. By the time it's realized that the visitor is actually a hollow artificial cylinder, only one human spaceship can even briefly reach the object and explore it before it slingshots around the Sun and returns to the depths of space. Captain William Norton and the crew of the Endeavour discover that the structure, dubbed Rama after one of the major Hindu gods (the Roman and Greek naming reserves having long been exhausted), is actually an entire miniature world stuffed with ever-more-amazing technology, which Clarke spends the bulk of the narrative detailing. The novel garnered much acclaim and won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Although Rendezvous ends with a large Sequel Hook, Clarke never seriously intended to write a follow-up, and many people agree that he shouldn't have. In fact, the three belated sequels were not written by Clarke, but by a friend of his, Gentry Lee, with Clarke merely providing ideas and support. While Rendezvous with Rama was pretty high on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness, the sequels fell squarely on the soft side. The science is largely overshadowed by commercial conspiracies, government corruption, scientists having sex, and Lee's views on religion. It also changes the nature of the setting to some degree, ratcheting it significantly farther to the cynical side and turning up the Used Future level. Your Mileage May Vary, naturally.

The books in the series are:

• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
• Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
• The Garden of Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
• Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

A movie version of the first novel has been languishing in Development Hell for decades.

"Rendezvous with Rama" includes these tropes:

• Alien Geometries: There's a sense of this, the interior of Rama using cylindrical coordinates. 'Up' and 'down' are towards and away from its rotation axis. Gravity reducing to zero at the hub doesn't help.
• Big Dumb Object: Rama
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: "Rama needed the grandeur of Bach or Beethoven or Sibelius or Tuan Sun, not the trivia of popular entertainment."
• The Federation: The United Planets, which has seven members: Mercury, Earth, Luna, Mars, Ganymede, Titan, and Triton. The fact that most of these are moons, not planets is Lampshaded in the story.
• The Great Politics Mess-Up: Chapter 38 begins with: "According to the history books - though no one could really believe it - there had been a time when the old United Nations had 172 members." At the end of 2010, The United Nations had 192 members.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The book opens/begins with the deaths of 600,000 people and the near-destruction of North Italy... on September 11, 2077.
• If Jesus, Then Aliens: The members of the Fifth Church of Christ Cosmonaut, who believe Jesus was a Sufficiently Advanced Alien.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The Ramans prove to have absolutely no interest in Earth, or any other planet in the solar system.
• Lost Technology: In Space!
• OT3: Mercer, Calvert and their unnamed wife back on Earth.
• Reactionless Drive
• Sequel Hook: "The Ramans do everything in threes.".
  • Unintentionally so, though, as stated by Clarke himself. The fact that the series ended up comprising four books seems to support that.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens
• Time Abyss: The Rama.
• Uplifted Animal: The superchimps.