Another recommendation, not a first contact story, but a very weird world and you wonder why things are how they are:
Inverted World by Christopher Priest
Rendezvous with Rama
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#42I 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…
> I actually like the Apple TV version, but it’s definitely its own thing.
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.
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#43For 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.
Children of Time was excellent, so thank for this recommendation.
I enjoyed Children of Time and also A Fire Upon the Deep, if you're looking for more recommendations.
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#44Anyone play the Apple II video game by Telerium? Slow, but it did evoke that sense of wonder
https://youtu.be/ITxhoiXiXRY?si=n21imKGMjqyjmQld
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#45If 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.
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…
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.
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#46Re: 2001
> 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.
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#47DO 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…
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.
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#48[dead]
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#49Earlier 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
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”
Re: Rendezvous with Rama
#50DO 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…
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 fir…
> “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”
Sounds like Tolstoy…