Inside Out World (1973) (Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
Date:	19/06/01 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stretches your imagination, Scientifically fascinating.

Disadvantages: The purpose of Rama remains an unsolved mystery.

Science-fiction writers are not renowned for their character development, and Arthur C. Clarke is no different - introducing characters as and when they are useful to the plot (even as late as chapter 36!) He does provide nuggets of background information about them, but the emphasis here is on action -
into which the reader is plunged right from the outset.

Following a massive meteorite strike on Italy which sinks Venice in the year 2077, an early warning system - Project Spaceguard - is instigated. Half a century later, Spaceguard detects a large fast-spinning object tearing towards the solar system.

Named after the Hindu God Rama, it turns out to be perfectly cylindrical and hollow - and therefore NOT a natural object.
And so the human race has its first contact with extra-terrestrial life, but should Rama be treated as an emissary or a threat?

By this time, man has colonsied Mars, Mercury and various moons, and Clarke envisages political differences caused
by differences of lifestyle in these varying environments.

Only one spacecraft is capable of intercepting Rame as it speeds through the Solar System and so the Endeavour and its crew find themselves diverted to "Rendezvous with Rama".
The crew, unprepared for such a mission, have to improvise as they explore the vast interior and they only have a limited time before Rama gets too close to the Sun for comfort.

What they find there is mind-blowing - a world INSIDE Rama.
This is an extraordinary concept which Clarke has concocted,
and he explores it with his usual scientific accuracy. The most memorable feature of this inside-out world is the sea which bisects it - running all the way around the inside of Rama. The idea of being inside a world and seeing the sea not disappear over the horizon but curl UPWARDS and flow OVER YOUR HEAD staggered me when I first read this book as a youngster.

One crew member, Lt. Jimmy Pak
, has smuggled a 'sky-bike' aboard Endeavour - imagine a cross between a hang-glider and
a bike designed to operate in low-gravity environments - and of course near the axis of Rama there is little or no gravity at all.
Thus he flies over the sea to the 'southern' continent of Rama.
But something goes wrong and he is forced to crash-land there with, seemingly, no hope of rescue; and he finds he's not alone...


I was given a copy of this as a child in the 70's only to find that pages 97-128 were missing and pages 129-160 were repeated!
Mum wrote to the publishers, who offered to replace it, but we decided to hang on to it just in case it was worth something...
Well, you never know, pigs might fly one day.

Rendezvous with Rama is described on the cover as:
"the only novel ever to have scooped all the major SF awards"
and rightly so, it is one of Arthur C. Clarke's three best books.
(The Fountains of Paradise being one of the other two.)

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