Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008)

Update: a day later.

I'm still thinking about this novel today. I don't know the history of sci fi, but if Clarke was the original of these recurring themes, then he definitely deserves props for that, much like he and Kubrik do for 2001: A Space Odyssey. I could edit my review below to be less disappointed, less persnickety. But then I'd have to do the same for other works (eg. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley). Yes, I've run into this dilemma before and probably will again: how show more to read older classic works that were The First but in whatever way don't meet today's scientific knowledge or societal advancements, or even taste? (Many old novels drive me up the wall with their strange, disjointed endings, like Frankenstein or even Robinson Crusoe and Mill on the Floss.)

If you have ideas on this conundrum, I would be most receptive--and not persnickety--to hear them.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

For all his trail-blazing imagination, Clarke's imagination went only so far. With his Grandpappy Sci Fi reputation, I thought he fell surprisingly short of being visionary. Not even outstandingly prophetic.

For me the prime example was that, in spite of being an atheist himself, he couldn't get away from a cosmic superpower entity, the Overmind. But not only that, it is an entity in communication with the novel's last interstellar beings standing, the Overlords who admired, obeyed, and lamented not being deemed worthy of being consummated into it. Clarke dismisses all the world's religions and gods only to envision another unfathomable, inexplicable One.

And apparently for all his powers of imagination, Clarke was unable to imagine a future without 1950s misogyny. Women are still "girls" and have no function outside the home in the plot.

Additionally, but more forgivably, the technology, compared to the world we live in now, was clunky and only vaguely and only sometimes on the mark with the real advancements made a mere 20, 30 years later. Not as prophetic as, say, cartoon Dick Tracy's watch in the 1930s.

He had a nice take on Time not being an arrow in one direction, and used it well in plotting his story. Truth be known, I don't read much science fiction so that could be quite old hat even when he wrote this work.

I noticed that many of the ideas here are foreshadows for the 1968 film (and perhaps his novelization of it as well), 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which, I might add, also includes misogyny and white-male-centricity.

"NOW A SYFY MINISERIES EVENT" is emblazoned on the cover of the copy I read. There's a pictorial snapshot that looks like they did something different with the original work, reflecting no scene I found while reading. I hope the 2015 miniseries included some contemporary sensibility updates.

In the end, we have to ask, what was Clarke saying about humanity. That there is some force greater than science, what we consider the paranormal? That we should pity the Overlords who have mastered science but can't procreate and thus don't have the capacity for a special mutation that would make them worthy of God, I mean Overmind, to want to absorb, instead relegating them to only being worthy of doing its bidding? Isn't all that straight from the pages of the Old Testament, and its seeming direction for the End of Man as well, or what?

Hmph. I expected more. Or different.

I gave it 2 stars because the premise was at least good enough that it kept me thinking ahead, even as it disappointed me. I give it another star for some cleverness, like the moment the Overloads appear for the first time to humanity in shocking recognizability. I got a big kick out of that, although he turned it into a less interesting premise I thought it hinted at. Also it was cool that humans were not allowed to be cruel to animals. Amen to that, although that didn't seem to be integral to the Overmind's grand plan but rather something that the Overlords uniquely endorsed. They were the epitome of peacefulness, and that is in contradiction to the Overmind's juggernaut--from a mere human perspective, that is--which they must ultimately obey. (Is that Purgatory?)

For now, I won't be reaching out to read more Clarke. For me, it includes the same endless, unanswerable issues that religious suppositions do.

Sadly, I'm also trying not to let this book change my previous high esteem of the abstract end of the Kubrick film that seemed to say something more, something less confused, than this earlier Clarke work did. show less

"Rendezvous With Rama" was my introduction to Clarke when I first read it, back in the mid-'70s, and I was enamoured of its hard-SF nature, its concise telling, its brilliant BDO, and the perfect final line. Upon learning that Denis Villeneuve was to helm a new film, I knew I had to revisit it with older eyes. I am both glad and chagrined that I did so, and the glamour is gone from my eyes.

The best parts of RwR are all those that involve Rama itself and its investigation; fortunately, these show more occupy most of the text. As the crew of the Endeavour experience each step into Rama, and every new object and circumstance associated with it, the reader shares them vicariously; also, the brief window of opportunity allowed by the shared orbit prevents Clarke and the story from wallowing in unnecessary side-plots (a trait I wish more current authors would adopt). Best of all is the indifference the human explorers meet: Rama's own story lies elsewhere.

However, sticking points in RwR are Clarke's shibboleths written large. His characters are thin, yes. What's much more galling and artificial is that once again Clarke shows that _who_ his characters are was always less important to him than _what_ they are. Clarke finds it necessary to identify the doctor as "Surgeon Commander" throughout the book instead of "Dr. Ernst" or even "Laura." Likewise, we have "Commander Norton," every other officer or sergeant by rank, and the litter of Honourable Mr Ambassadors, Professor Doctors, and Sirs that make up odious advisory committees. Clarke loved ranks, he loved titles, and he could not perceive a world in which use of such titles was not compulsory. Sorry, but people don't really _talk_ that way.

A final bone to pick concerns a minor thread in RwR, one Clarke may have been encouraged to include by the publisher for length and texture, but one that presents such an ethical violation that I doubt it would see print today. It seems the Space Survey has genetically engineered a slave population of sterile primates for use as menial labor aboard ships. They have no rights, cannot speak, are fully expendable (conditions for euthanising them is clearly discussed), and are somehow more cost-efficient than bots or drones. Actually, the crew have NO bots, drones, or RC tools or toys of any kind: why is that? Even Jacques Cousteau used RC cameras. Maybe GMO slaves made it all more science-fictiony? Shame on you, Clarke.

Altogether, this still rates a solid 3.5 because what female characters there are are pretty cool and capable, because Jimmy Pak is a fun character, and Rama remains among the Most Bodacious BDOs in the SF canon. show less

There's a scene towards the end of the sixth Harry Potter book where Harry and Dumbledore find a small basin of water with a much-needed magical item at the bottom of it. The water is cursed, though, and they can't simply reach in and grab the item, nor scoop out the water; the water has to be drunk in its totality before the item can be attained. And you just know that water's going to taste bad. Think the purified essence of a thousand Domino's pizzas and then multiply that by three. Yes, show more that bad. Anyway, Dumbledore realises what has to be done and makes Harry promise to keep feeding him the water, glass by painful glass, and not to stop no matter what happens. Well sure enough it gets unpleasant, immediately they start Dumbledore starts begging Harry to stop, weeping and ranting; Harry meanwhile pleads, cajoles, and lies to his headmaster in order to get him to drink one more glass, one more glass, one more glass. Reading The Garden of Rama is pretty much like that: I'd promised myself I was going to finish the Rama series and so had to get through this book, and so I persevered through it all, shovelling page after page of toxic drivel down my throat no matter how bad it got.

I'm afraid this review isn't going to have much structure or narrative flow. There were too many things wrong with the book to make this anything more than a long list of free flowing criticisms. Besides, the book didn't bother having any structure or narrative flow so feel free to pretend that my review itself is some kind of meta-criticism if you like.

Where to start? Well, the title makes no sense for one. In [b:Rendezvous with Rama|1930977|Rendezvous with Rama|Arthur C. Clarke|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1288718658s/1930977.jpg|1882772] the main characters rendezvoused with a spacecraft dubbed Rama. In [b:Rama II|10612691|Rama II (Rama, #2)|Arthur C. Clarke|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298827472s/10612691.jpg|1907786] an identical looking spacecraft, dubbed Rama II, came to the solar system to be investigated. And in [b:Rama Revealed|112517|Rama Revealed (Rama, #4)|Arthur C. Clarke|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171659410s/112517.jpg|828267] I assume the secrets of the whole Rama thing will be, well, revealed (although see below). So then, this book must be about some great big vegetable patch in the spacecraft, right? Alas not. A settlement built within the ship is christened New Eden, and they have plants and stuff there, but that's pretty much the only relation to any garden in the book. Maybe this first criticism is overly pedantic, but it seems the choice of title here was either overly mundane or meaningless.

Next on my gripe list is the acknowledgements section (yes, we haven't made it to page one yet). Gentry Lee thanks his wife for "conversations about the nature of the female" since the book is primarily told from Nicole Wakefield's perspective. Indeed the first part of the book is told as excerpts from her journal. So does Gentry Lee manage to transcend sex differences in this journal section? Do his wife's suggestions seamlessly meld into a convincing catalogue of thoughts from a woman trapped in an alien environment and getting pregnant left, right, and centre? No. No, no, and no. Instead we get utterly bog-standard first person prose, except every ten pages or so there will be a cringe inducing paragraph along the lines of "So my husband didn't put the toilet seat down today. What is it with men and not doing that? Huh? As a woman it really gets my goat. You know what I'm talking about ladies, oh yes." I've no doubt Mrs Lee gave her husband numerous insights into "the nature of the female" but he hasn't used them to make a believable character, he's just shoehorned a few of these bad stand-up routines into the main text.

And while we're talking about the believability of our esteemed protagonist Nicole, let me ask you a question, dear reader. If you had to start the human civilisation again from scratch, how many people do you think you'd need to ensure enough genetic diversity to make the new civilisation tenable? I seem to recall a figure mentioned in The Matrix Reloaded for the number of humans needed to rebuild Zion is twenty three. Stephen Baxter makes this a big plot point at the end of [b:Ark|2111628|Ark|Stephen Baxter|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510IXN1IsyL._SL75_.jpg|2117036] and agonises that forty six people with maximal genetic variation might just be okay. A quick straw poll amongst my friends with backgrounds in the biological sciences reckoned that quite a bit more than that would be needed. There's evidence that the human population fell to less than 15 000 once, and that maybe 500-1000 humans could breed their way away from extinction. So, with all that in mind, how many people does Dr Nicole des Jardins Wakefield, hero of Garden of Rama, think are necessary to breed their way out of trouble? Fifteen thousand, like the actual human population after the Toba eruption? Maybe one thousand, which some research suggests is a safe minimum? Perhaps only one hundred and sixty as determined by American anthropologist John Moore? Or only one hundred, as suggested by my biology friends after three glasses of wine and two minutes to think about the problem? Maybe Baxter was right with forty six, or the Wachowski brothers with twenty three? Well, Dr Nicole, what's your answer? Two.

I'm sorry, what? There are three adults on Rama at the start of the book — two men and one woman. Nicole and her husband Richard have two daughters at which point Nicole starts wondering about how her daughters are going to continue the species. Clearly they need a man, preferably one each. So, she decides, she needs to pop out a couple of sons. Luckily, though, "one of [her] major areas of specialty during [her] medical training was genetics, especially hereditary defects." Phew! Looks like she'll realise the futility of all this and stop dooming all these kids to a lonely future in space. But no! There's more. At this point of the book Nicole is 41 years old and worries how many more babies she can have. She decides she has to have a son and preferably with Michael, the other guy on Rama with her. So then the next generation will consist of two girls and a guy, all of them either half- or full-siblings. And obviously that's a genetically viable group if ever I saw one. To be fair, Nicole doesn't just want kids with Michael to get some more genetic diversity, that'd be silly, she also picks him because both of her husband's kids are girls, while two out of the three kids that Michael has had back on Earth were boys, so having a son would be pretty much guaranteed with Mike but nigh on impossible with Dick. And here was me thinking it was fifty/fifty with both of them.

So Nicole tells her (emotionally insecure and already quite jealous) husband she wants to get it on with Michael for scientific purposes, i.e. so their daughters will have a half-brother to shag later in life. And then she's surprised when he gets upset. Aggh! Stop, Harry, I can't take anymore! Later, after having had two sons with Michael, Richard shows up and she has a third daughter with him. Her main concern? That she's already paired up in her mind her two daughters and two sons, so daughter number three doesn't have a brother to make babies with. Aggh! No more, Harry! Please! The folly of the whole thing is only pointed out to her later by her thirteen year old daughter, who decides to marry seventy-two year old Uncle Michael, because marrying her half-brothers would be incest. Aggh! Enough, enough! And on a tangentially related note, Michael's two sons with Nicole sometimes refer to him as dad and sometimes as Uncle Michael, and similarly they sometimes call Richard dad and sometimes Uncle Richard. Why?

Part two of the book reveals the purpose of Rama, how it was made, and so on. Most of the big questions are answered, which leaves one major question: what exactly is left to be revealed in Rama Revealed? We don't yet know who the over-arching authority is behind the whole thing, but it's some alien or another and frankly I don't think "It turns out Rama was built by Zylorgs from planet Herpes" is particularly fulfilling. On the subject of Rama's mission, it seems fundamentally flawed. It's supposed to catalogue the spacefaring species of the galaxy by flying through star systems, luring these species aboard, and then taking them back to The Node. From there Rama is refitted with biomes to support larger numbers of these species and messages are sent to each of these species' planets to the effect of "We're coming back, prepare a few thousand of your species to come and live on Rama for an unspecified length of time. Then the whole thing flies back around the galaxy, picking up these species for observation. Frankly this sounds like a rubbish way for an ultra advanced society to study other species, as proved by the fact that Rama only "captured" its three humans by a huge fluke.

Rama's mission is only slightly less believable than Earth's reaction to it. The human race of the original Rendezvous with Rama has spread across the solar system and, excitable Mercurians aside, the biggest problem it seems to face is an overabundance of petty bureaucracy. Gentry Lee ruthlessly deconstructs this world in Rama II, with a huge economic slump occurring just after the first novel's events that sets Earth back a century or so and obliterates its space programme. By the time Rama II begins, seventy years after its predecessor, the slump has lifted enough for a mediocre space programme to exist, but the military still decide to destroy Rama when it comes near Earth. Their missiles are ruthlessly efficient at tracking the spacecraft as they try (and fail) to obliterate it, but in this book it's claimed that Earth had believed the craft was destroyed. Apparently they fired their nuclear missiles at it and then everyone started staring at the ground saying "Yup, I'm so sure we destroyed that thing I'm not even going to look up and check."

So when Earth is informed in the 2240s, forty years after Rama II, that they need to send two thousand individuals to Rama, do they rejoice at the chance to redeem themselves, to fix past mistakes, to send their best and brightest to discover the secrets of the Universe? No, the shady council that rules the world decides it's all a hoax perpetrated by those pesky Chinese, so they send their best and brightest and a whole ship full of rapists and murderers to Mars. If there happens to be a honking great spacecraft in the vicinity of Mars then they'll board that, if not they'll start a new Martian colony. Of course they don't tell all these people going to Mars that they might end up in an alien spaceship until they're actually in the alien spaceship.

Of these two thousand people it seems that about twelve are half-decent human beings, that's including Nicole, Richard, and some of their kids. Since the kids were in stasis for their entire teenage lives they all have to deal with being, essentially, a child in an adult's body. Gentry Lee obviously deals with this in a delicate and thought-provoking manner: Patrick is shy with girls, Eleanor is perfectly fine, and Katie becomes a nymphomaniac. Wow! Of these twelve normal people, half are unceremoniously killed in a scene near the end of the book, and the humans in the colony happily let a Japanese mob boss take over. No one seems bothered that there's little food, the weather system is broken, and a hundred other problems, because the mob boss starts a war with another biome in Rama. Such flagrant clichés can work if they're told well, alas that's not the case here.

Despite the three hundred or so five star reviews here on Goodreads, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who struggled to find the resolve to finish this book. The editors apparently had the same problem. As the book goes on more and more typoes start appearing: spelling errors, punctuation where it doesn't belong, and so on. One of the few solaces I could take was that this book is trashy pop science fiction, not hard science fiction, so powering through its six hundred pages was not difficult, just unpleasant.

With all that in mind, I'm now off to read Rama Revealed, hopeful in the knowledge that things surely can't get worse. Can they? show less

Childhood's End taps two themes that it's hard not to root for.

One is that we, human beings, have almost unlimited potential. We are meant to be more than we are. Clarke's story tells of "Overlords" who arrive suddenly, in incomprehensible spaceships, representing a civilization of a scale and technology well beyond our ken. But we have been recognized for our potential, to join and contribute to that civilization (provided we don't blow it, kill ourselves, and destroy our planet first).

The show more other is that we have in fact been selected and are being looked after, by a kind of father/mother who can shepherd us toward realizing our potential. Here, our "Overlords" are midwives, incapable of the same kind of potential as us but capable of seeing us through our adolescence.

These are invigorating self-images that Clarke plays out. And he builds an entertaining story around them, unfolding them for us.

I couldn't help likening Clarke's vision here to his own 2001 (check out the story "The Sentinel" that provides the basis for that movie) and, maybe more esoteric, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which Zarathustra similarly midwives the exceptional human from the "merely human" to the "more than human". show less