I think it's worth pointing out that AC Clarke never really cared too much for his human characters. He was far more interested in their environment. Many of the narrative constructs of AC Clarke novels reflect this: he'll come up with any mechanism he can to explain his environments instead of experiencing them through first person.

He got really good at it with Rendezvous. The basic story is "here's a big damn generation ship, let's explore the mechanics." He's got the bottom-up perspective from various human explorers, none of which we stick with for any real time when they're in the ship. He's got the captain, who expounds orders from the UP in such a way that they're condensed for the audience. He's got the UP, which can postulate about raw physics. And he's got their arrangements in space, which allows him to talk about the physics of the rest of the solar system.

Compare and contrast with Lem's Solaris or Roadside Picnic from a few months ago - the Russians were in your face about mysterious alien technology. What is it? You don't know; you're a linguist. What is it? You don't know; you're a stalker. That style doesn't work for Clarke - even in his first person stories like A Meeting With Medusa he throws out these long first-person flights of narrative fancy where it's clear the perspective you're getting is:

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

I think that, more than anything, is the big change Clarke would run into were he to rewrite Rama today. Tom Wolfe changed everything; stream-of-consciousness and limited first person became much more accepted than 3rd person omniscient. I doubt Clarke would get to pull the old sci fi saw of "one world government, rampant polygamy, religion subverted by science BECAUSE I SAID SO" that makes up so much of Clarke's, Heinlein's and Asimov's ouvre. In fact, I don't need to guess - Clarke teamed up with Gentry Lee to do sequels to Rama and they're fucking terrible. They're also much more first person, much more engaged with (terrible) characters and much less filled with a grandiose top-down exploration of mystery than Rama or Childhood's End. If you look at it, even Clarke started to flip on this; Songs of Distant Earth and the latter Odyssey books are more character driven... but also prone to bizarre flights of "Conde Nastism" where the old 3rd-person omniscient GodNarrator just lays down some exposition.

That said, I don't know that I'd take a different approach with Rama. I initially suggested it because Blindsight owes so much to it, yet bungles everything that Clarke gets right. The POV in Blindsight is positively claustrophobic, which works when your characters are likeable, yet I would gladly watch Watts' characters experience a "Will it blend?" video. The "interplanetary politics" aspect of Rama is a narrative device that allows the author to expound on his cleverness, while the "intersocietal politics" aspect of Blindsight is a cheap shot that allows the author to pull plot developments out of his ass.

For me, Rama is a perfect example of explorers confronting a mystery and finding it benign. A point Harry Harrison made in just about every book he wrote (notably the Stainless Steel Rat series and especially the Deathworld trilogy) is that interstellar warfare is a null concept. The resources necessary are too vast and the plunder possible is too limited to bother. David Brin, when he writes "malevolent aliens" does not write of conquerers, he writes of assassins extinguishing whole species long distance as an afterthought.

I fundamentally distrust the notion of a space-faring race crossing light years just to fuck with us. It's xenophobic, short-sighted and stupid. V was based on the premise that lizard people would cross the universe to take our water (yeah, hydrogen & oxygen! I know!). That's pretty much the default position in sci fi - "mars needs women." It's bullshit. "We, your overwhelmingly superior space-faring overlords, have expended supernovae worth of energy for the express purpose of parking our impressively malevolent jump ships in orbit to get in your grille." The good sci fi - Rama, District 9, Alien Nation, etc - either postulates a future in which alien contact is either accidental or the consequences of circumstance.

That's why I like Rama. "Don't mind us, just coming through, your star was in a good spot on the way to somewhere we actually want to be." That's why I liked Roadside Picnic - "Don't mind us, we just needed to take a leak on our way to Rigel IV. BTW, careful with the beer cans, the edges are sharp." I think it takes an extremely limited intellect to look out at the stars and think "those fuckers are coming to get me" and a distinct lack of imagination to justify it with "because they don't like my face."

*

NAUSCAA NAUSCAA NAUSCAA

Which version? I own the Japanese; I haven't seen the American dub. Well, I haven't seen all of it. It's easy enough to find online and it's got Patrick Stewart doing voices.

I really enjoyed this one myself. Clarke's writing in the beginning seemed very dry and distant, but it settled into something more comfortable.

Spoilers?: I had some ideas about the function of some of the things in Rama that nobody in the book seemed to mention. It seemed like an obvious possibility was that Rama had some sort of hydroelectric power system using the cylindrical sea, which was why it sprung to life once it melted.

The book has the right mix of mystery, alien-ness and exposition to it. It doesn't ruin it by solving everything and leaves you with the sense of wonder you have at the start. Also one of the few sci-fi works I've encountered with a benign alien presence, or at least indifferent.

For next club I'd vote for Nausicaa.

Very much enjoyed. Things I especially liked: minimal character development, as others have mentioned (so I didn't like the final chapter particularly ... Clarke does tend to make missteps with human interaction in his sci fi); the gradual familiarity with which the astronauts treated bits of Rama and the way they were learning as the reader was learning; the juxtaposition of huge ideas and lifechanging events with everyday pettiness in the UP council, because that's how it'll be if we every encounter aliens; attempting to visualize the Raman interior. Also, the enemy's gate was down long before Card came along.

Some parts felt like a let down -- it's a pretty "soft" story, with an indifferent intelligence, which is realistic but leaves the story barren of the climactic contact you are led to expect. This is fine with me on the whole.

Another thought I had -- always have when I'm reading the sci fi masters -- is that they packed more interesting ideas into a single work then I may have in my entire life. Loved the dragonfly.

Doing my Human Nutrition and Dietetics flashcards, will edit this to an insightful comment within a few hours.

Arthur Clarke = Badass

1. I think that the planetary politics was realistic in the types and number of viewpoints. Some people will want to study it, some will want to destroy it, and who wants what changes based off their circumstances, but they are the most likely outcomes.

2. I think this book has aged really well. Commander Norton gave me this feeling of kinship with readers of the 'Gentleman-Adventurer' era of fiction. R w/ R is the futuristic counterpart to Allan Quatermain, Phileas Fogg of Around the World in 80 days, and to some extent Bilbo Baggins. As to the level of technology, that was never really my focus while reading R w/ R, because Clarke uses the tech as a means to an end, as a vehicle for characters and story. The tale of the settling of the American West is about a cowboy, not his horse.