Reviews

• 巨大な茶筒 その名はラーマ

  巨大な茶筒が地球に接近します その名はラーマです 筒が廻ることで重力を作っています ガンダムに出てくるスペースコロニーの原型です 異性人の巨大な宇宙船ですがラーマの目的は何か 続きは原作を読んで下さい クラークらしい壮大な内容の作品です

• Bought it for my nephew. I loved this book and I'm sure he will too.

• Ce livre est pour moi l'un des meilleurs de Arthur C. Clarke. Il nous raconte la découverte et la visite d'un vaisseau spatial à la dérive dans une ambiance très immersive. Cette ambiance ainsi que des images fortes sont gravées dans ma mémoire. J'ai lu ce livre en version originale, et je le recommande à ceux qui découvrent la lecture en anglais: c'est court et d'un niveau très abordable.

• Arthur C. Clarke was a master. I’ve read this one several times now, but probably not for about twenty years. As time goes by, science fiction from the classic era gets filtered over and over until not too many books are still standing. This is definitely one of them, in a small group that maybe also includes Clarke’s Childhood’s End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Much of this one is an adventure story, a throwback for current readers to a time when the wonder of space exploration and first discoveries of alien life was all you really needed or looked for. We passed through, hopefully, an era of high action, high pace where plots hit you with cosmic scale catastrophe and intrigue every chapter. By comparison, Clarke’s plot here rides a fairly even keel. An object has been detected, passing through our solar system. At first it is thought to be an asteroid or comet, but its orbit and behavior give it away. It’s technological. It’s headed for a high speed pass around the sun, and we’ve detected it early enough to mount an exploratory mission, in this year of 2131 when much of the solar system has been colonized and interplanetary space flight is relatively routine. Commander Norton, through whose eyes much of the story is seen, commands the Endeavour to a docking with the object, now named Rama. Rama is a large, cylinder-shaped object 50 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide. That’s big. Big enough to be a generational ship of some sort, or who knows what, given that we have no idea of its origin or purpose. The story is the story of Norton’s crew’s mission to explore Rama and determine as much as they, and supporting scientists, can during the time it is safe to fly along with Rama, as it approaches the sun and then either heads back out of the solar system or alters course in some to-be-determined way. The plot peaks are mostly produced by Rama — its unexpected and enigmatic features and behavior. The plot is also sustained by political and personal conflicts and agendas among the politicians and scientists on Earth and its colonies. To be honest, on my reading, those conflicts and personalities are background, I won’t say background “noise” but close to it, buzzing around the adventures of the Endeavour and its crew. There’s no superhero stuff, although some heroics certainly, and no monsters, although there is certainly danger as well. To really get into the spirit of the book, you have to let yourself fall into the experience of first contact and the wonder and mystery of a truly alien encounter. Not to give too much away, but we don’t meet the Ramans themselves. Also in my reading, that’s a strength of the book (as it is in Clarke’s 2001). As readers we are left to imagine the Ramans, with an uncertainty of 100%. That’s the thing about aliens and their artifacts. They are alien. I can’t let this go without mentioning the parallels between Clarke’s story, written more than fifty years ago, and the real-world passage of ‘Oumuamua through our solar system in 2017. The parallels are eerie, especially if you buy into Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb’s claims that ‘Oumuamua exhibited signs of a technological artifact itself (I don’t).

• Rama es un mundo absorbente y misterioso, el libro te atrapa y no te deja marchar hasta que las incógnitas no se van desvelando poco a poco. El rigor y la atención al detalle de Clarke son clave a la hora de imaginar y describir Rama, y es lo que lo hace tan interesante.

• Incredible story that was easy to follow. Intriguing premise then makes you ask questions along the way.

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