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Rendezvous with Rama

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Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#61

Post by shagie »

Pepe1vo wrote: post #21
jayGlow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fourth book in that series comes out later this week if you haven't been keeping up with him

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).

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#62

Post by mattschaller »

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.

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#63

Post by twoodfin »

rbanffy wrote: post #24
ggm-at-algebras wrote: post #4

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. The same could be said of 2001.

2010 is also good. The movie is also competent, but it could never fill the shoes 2001 left.

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.

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#64

Post by nradov »

pavlov wrote: post #22

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 i…

The latest episode of Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast has an interview with Eric Roth who adapted the screenplay for Rendezvous with Rama.

https://www.tetragrammaton.com/content/eric-roth

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#65

Post by the_biot »

pavlov wrote: post #22

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 i…

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.

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#66

Post by teamonkey »

zem wrote: post #40
pavlov wrote: post #22

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 i…

"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.

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#67

Post by garciasn »

jeltz wrote: post #20
oniony wrote: post #12

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 h…

I too got bored, as you said the book did not seem to go anywhere.

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!”

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#68

Post by cal_dent »

the_biot wrote: post #65
pavlov wrote: post #22

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 i…

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

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#69

Post by qubidt »

ternus wrote: post #34

DO NOT READ THE SEQUELS 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 pr…

> 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

Re: Rendezvous with Rama

#70

Post by shagie »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #10

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.

The scale of it was... well... astronomical.

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