A Collection of Sequels

I haven't read much recently. It's a bit of a pain, as my to-read pile has become a bookshelf full. Unfortuantely I got a bit stuck in my last book, which was the sequel to Rendevouz with Rama, cleverly entitled Rama II.

Sadly, I was not as captured by it as I was by the first book. It didn't help that large sections of the first part were written in a 'future history' style which is either brilliant or awful, in my opinion. I loved Last and First Men, (Olaf Stapledon,) which an entire book of future history. This time I haven't been enjoying it. It probably hasn't helped that it is following a time in our future history where, following a global boom, the global financial system crashes and collapses, leading to nearly a centuries worth of famine, death, disease, etc etc before mankind gets things sorted. It's a bit close to home. (Though at least they had colonised other planets by this time.)

Anyway, I have three more lots of sequels to read now. First I have the the third in the Heechee series by Fredrik Pohl. The first book, Gateway is one of my favourite books, and I was thrilled to discover there was a series. I enjoyed the second book, so I have high hopes for Heechee Rendezvous. (I'm doing alot of rendezvouing of late, it seems.)

Then, I have the third in Scott Orson Card's Ender series, Xenocide. Again, I loved Ender's Game, and I enjoyed the sequel, so I am looking forward to this one.

Then, I bought an entire series of books, in a bit of a mad moment. But I have a young adult book by John Marsden that I have owned since I was about 14, called Tomorrow When the War Began. It's about a group of teenagers who go camping in the wildness for a week and come home to find their country has been invaded. It ends with quite the cliffhanger and I have been waiting ten years to find out what happens. I think they were only published in Australia and America, and by the time I got to amazon they were all out of print. But they have been reprinted and now I have them all.

If I could only stumble across the third book of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series my life would be complete...

Book: The Other Side of the Sky, Arthur C Clarke

This is a collection of short stories, and some of them are very short. Unusually I loved every one of them. Completely unique, suprising ideas. Lots of twists at the end. And humor! I'd forgotten how much I loved sci-fi humor. Many years ago a bought a big collection of humourous sci-fi stories, poems and cartoons entitled Laughing Space in some charity shop somewhere, and it's one of favourite books to dip in and out of. Much of Clarke's stories have a humours slant, usually because humans are small, silly insignificant creatures and the universe is big and unpredicatable and awesome.

It's also many me think about my nano novel, which is scifi. Clarke can do alot of worldbuilding in a short story, and I need to think about how I'm going to do that in my novel. My worldbuilding has been very thin on the ground, despite me spending a long time ironing out the details of my settings.

Book: Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke.

Today I have read two books. TWO! I have gone through several weeks lately of not reading at all, except for comfort re-reading, so two books in a day seems a bit excessive. I read one book, and then I was planning to go to the cinema, but there was nothing on I wanted to see. So I read another book.

Anyway, the first book. This is not a review, I'm not good at those. This is just a list of things I love.

Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke.

This book was published in 1974, and the back of it informs me that it cost 50p. Also, it was not for sale in Canada, and the Australia price of 1.50 was recommended but not obligatory. I love getting bookmooch books.

Arthur C Clarke is one of the giants in sci-fi writing, and I haven't read nearly as enough of his books as I would like. In fact, I've just mooched the sequel to this book and a couple of others by him.

Rendezvous with Rama is about set in 2131, when we have colonised other planets/moons in the solar system, but not gotten much further than that. We are also a bit obsessed with charting the paths of asteriods after one destroyed most of Italy a while back. The scientists discover a new, large asteriod, so large it is assigned a name instead of a number: Rama. (They've run out of Greek and Roman gods, so started using Hindu mythology.) Except upon closer inspection, it's discovered to be a long metal hollow cylinder, heading towards the sun. The nearest spacecraft is sent to investigate it before it swings around the sun and head back off into deep space.


I love this book. I love that the main drive of the plot doesn't come from the characters endangering themselves and other by making stupid or self-centred decsions, until you want to scream that they should never have let anyone that stupid and blind into space, goddamnit. This is a book all about the mysteries of Rama and the alien races who built it. Each chapter seems to slowly reveal more and more without there being many answers. There are a few, but no one seems to agree on anything. The crew exploring just happened to be the nearest ship, so none of them are terribly training for this, but they are doing the best they can, because they know it is important.

I love that the captain is obsessed with James Cook, and how it constantly affects his decisions - he's very aware that history will remember him, but he's willing to take risks to explore. I love that he trusts his crew to get on with things - like I said, there are no loose cannons on his ship.

I love how thought out and real the universe it's set in feels; the colonies and the United Planets and the irritating politicians and scientists. The delay in communications. The failing attempts to lower the population of earth, that is mostly a half-hearted joke to people.

I love the hints at what the aliens and alien culture we get, just enough to start forming ideas, but nothing very solid of concrete (much like in one of my other favourite books, Gateway.)

And I love the ending. (Highlight to read spoilers.) I love that everyone was so worried Rama would bring alien invaders or attack us or generally be bad, and Rama just wanted to refuel, and then moved on and didn't even realised we existed.

I am looking forward to reading the sequel(s?)