Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama is a science fiction novel by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1973. It is set in the 2130s and involves a cylindrical alien starship fifty kilometres long and twenty wide that crosses into the solar system. A human expedition intercepts the ship, and the story comes to the reader through members of that crew. On release it took the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards.

In 2077 an asteroid hits the Po Valley in northern Italy and destroys several cities, which leads to the Spaceguard system being set up to watch for dangerous objects. Spaceguard spots an object crossing into the solar system in 2131, first labelling it 31/439 and then calling it Rama, the name of a Hindu god. Its course is plainly not natural.

Commander Norton and his crew dock, cut in, and find a world with its own weather, stairways, a sea and a sealed city at the far end. The cylinder spins fast enough to hold a gravity rim inside, and the ship has weeks to be examined before it falls past the sun. Nothing aboard answers them, the ship is not slowing down, and its course will take it past the sun and out again.

Clarke wrote the novel as a story of exploration rather than of conflict, and the questions it raises about the builders are not resolved within the book. The concept was extended with several sequels written with Gentry Lee, and the first novel remains a standalone story.