Episode: 4520
Title: Arthur C. Clarke: Rama and Sequels
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4520/hpr4520.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:13:09 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4520, for 2025-11-28
Today's show is entitled, "Arthur C. Clarke: Rama and Sequels"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:11:56
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "A look at Arthur C. Clarke's other famous series."
Hello, this is a hookah for Packer Public Radio, welcoming you back to another exciting
episode in our series on science fiction and fantasy, and what we're going to do this
time, continuing our look at Arthur C. Clark, is to take a look at the other series
that he is known for. It's a little bit different from the 2001 that we had previously
discussed. This is the Rama series, and it starts with a novel called
Drondivu with Rama published in 1973, and that kicked off this series. The setup is
that an object has been tracked entering the solar system at a high velocity, and
only one spaceship is close enough to investigate. As we have seen with Umoa Moa,
the scenario is accurate. Umoa Moa entered the solar system from outside, traveling very fast,
and there was no way to prepare and launch a mission in time to intercept and investigate the
object. In the case of Rama, we're in a future time, it's set in the year 2131, when travel through
the solar system is more developed, and there can be a ship capable of interception. Now that
ship is called the endeavor, it is duly dispatched, and finds Rama to be a perfectly smooth
cylinder, 50 kilometers long, and 20 kilometers in diameter, so clearly of artificial origin.
It is a spaceship of some kind, and the crew find a way inside through a triple airlock system,
and inside they find three identical staircases. The Rama is rotating,
which provides artificial gravity, and has two circular planes separated by a circular ocean.
The crew investigates, and as the Rama gets closer to the sun, it starts to warm up and come to life.
Now, if this creates problems for the crew, storms start to brew, and one crewman is stranded
when a static electricity field wrecks his airbike, leaving him on the other side of the ocean.
As they explore an island, which they call New York, they notice that the structures there
always seem to come in threes, but there are no openings in their purposes unknown.
Creatures start to appear, but again the pattern of three is noticed. A spider-like creature
has three eyes and three legs, and comes to inspect the crew in their equipment.
One such creature falls from a cliff and is destroyed, so the crew decides to dissect it.
And they discover it as a combination of mechanism and biologic material,
so they dub the creatures by-outs. They decide that these creatures must have been designed by the
Romans, whoever those are. As Rama continues to get closer to the sun, the planet Mercury decides
it is a danger, and launches a nuclear weapon, but the crew managed to intercept it,
and taking advantage of the time lag between Mercury and Narama, they disarm it.
But now it's getting too close to the sun to stay, so the crew leaves and goes back to the end
ever. Shortly afterwards, the engines of the Rama come to life, and it speeds around the sun
and out of the system in the direction of the large Magellanic cloud. But as it speeds away,
scientists on the Rama committee realize that Romans always do things in threes.
Certainly sounds like a setup for a sequel.
This novel won lots of awards, including the Nebula for Best Novel in 1973, and the Hugo for Best
Novel in 1974. There was a planned film version that got stuck in development hell before being abandoned,
but recently there was a report that it might be back on, with Morgan Freeman producing
and Dennis Villanov directing. There was also a computer game made by Sierra Online in 1996.
This was directed by Gentry Lee, who mostly took over the Rama series.
Now the next is Rama II, published in 1989, and it is listed as by Arthur C. Clark in Gentry Lee,
but as Clark confirmed Lee did most of the writing and Clark's role was limited.
Now this takes place 70 years after the first book, and Arthur's ready, when yet another
such vessel enters the solar system. A ship has been ready, and learning from the experience
of the Endeavor crew, they have some better equipment for the task. Their ship, the Newton,
carries a crew of 12, and addition to the equipment, but interpersonal conflict surries even before
they launch. Then the commander of the expedition is killed while they're still outside the
Rama Investible vessel, and they have trouble deciding who the new leader will be.
Also, they investigate, but three of the crew are left inside the Rama Investible
when it speeds away from the solar system. Now the writing here is very different,
and it is fair to consider this Lee's story rather than Clark's. In comparison to the first
Rama book, there is a bit more characterization, which was never Clark's strong suit, but then it
never won any awards either. But it persisted, so in 1991, the garden of Rama comes out, and in this
book, those three astronauts left behind on the Rama ship, they consist of one woman and two men,
the woman duly produces children by each of the men, three girls and two boys. In a journey of 12
years, they finally arrive at the star serious. Now, since serious is just under nine light years
from Earth, this suggests that the Romans have good engines, but no faster than light propulsion.
At serious, they find there is a ramen node where they undergo physiological tests for a year,
while the ship is being refurbished. Then the ship, the ramen ship is being sent back to Earth,
and the Romans request that the Earth send them 2,000 more humans to study.
This request is kept secret from the public, and instead the secret government agency comes up with a
cover story about a new Martian colony and starts gathering people. Okay, this already sounds like a
disaster in the making, but then the secret of agency starts to select convicts, promising them
freedom if they agree to be colonists. Well, now we know it's going to be a disaster.
They divide the people into 3 groups and put them on 3 ships named the Nina, the Pinta,
and the Santa Maria. Yes, that's exactly what he did. And the people who are mostly convicts
are starting to suspect that they have been hoaxed. Once they arrive on the ramen ship,
a mob boss seizes control of the humans and begins a war against one of the other species
on this giant spacecraft. The 3 original astronauts, from the previous novel,
and the 5 children, are powerless to stop this genocide, but it has not gone unnoticed. Another
species is paying attention and starting to make plans of their own to deal with this.
The Rama 3 spaceship is also paying attention, and has transmitted an emergency signal back to its
creators. And as one of the original astronauts is set to be executed, the book ends on a cliffhanger,
because of course it does. You can't end it here. Then Rama revealed 1993.
The astronaut Nicole Wakefield manages to escape the death in store for her at the cliffhanger
of the previous novel. At this point, the humans had met on the ship two alien species,
the octospiders and the Mermicats. Now these are interesting species. The octospiders had
led simple lives until a space-faring species made contact with them and everything changed.
They focused on biological technology and genetic enhancements, and were able to form
kind of a utopia of sorts for themselves. The Mermicats were named that by the humans because
they seemed to combine traits of both ants and cats. Now they could form a connection with humans
through a network of fibers that enter the human brain. And they do this to inform Richard Wakefield
of their fears from the aggressive humans and get them to take some of their eggs to a safe place.
The murderous mob of humans, of course, are continuing their attacks and they're now focused
on getting those astronauts from Rama too and their children. These folks flee to the New York
place as it was named in the original Rama, but then the genocidal humans come after them.
They then flee to the octospider colony, but then the humans start bombing that area.
The octospiders retaliate and then the Romans decide that enough is enough and send the humans
and the octospiders into hibernation for the rest of the voyage. Finally, the ramen ship reaches
Tau Setti, where another ramen node is located, which is devoted to studying races capable of
spaceflight. Overall, I would have to say that the first novel written by Arthur C. Clark is
deservedly a classic, but the continuation by Gentry Lee is eminently skipable.
It is a jarring change of direction and voice from Clark and not terribly interesting.
The whole idea of ramen's doing everything by three seems to have been
disappeared along the way. I would have thought that should have been a key focus of the whole thing.
So anyway, if you decide to skip those novels, I don't play you in the least.
Just for the sake of completion, Gentry Lee did three more novels
that are not directly part of the Rama plot, but they take place in the same universe.
They are bright messengers, published in 1996, double full moon night 1999,
and the tranquility wars 2000. Now, if you love everything connected to Rama and you are a
completeist, you will of course want to check them out, but that's not anything I have the ambition
to pursue. Arthur C. Clark has written some other standalone novels that are not part of any
series and some of them deserve attention. So that's where we will go next in our look at Arthur C. Clark.
But for now, this is a hookah for our Hacker Public Radio, signing off, and as always,
encouraging you to support Free Software. Bye-bye!
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