Rendezvous with Rama: It's a Tube! It's an Ark! It's...Oh, that's the last page.

Welcome to Meech Eat Books' premier literary meal! Where we roll up our proverbial sleeves and chow down on some serious fiction goodness. On the menu for today is Arthur C. Clark's Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Hardcore Sci-Fi Orgy Rendezvous with Rama. Bon Appretit!

Rendezvous with Rama was first published in 1972, to the ecstasy of all the pimple-faced teenagers who had previously blown their intellectual loads reading Clark's famous 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. Due to all the fervor with men landing on the moon and such things, science fiction was as hot as Murcury's terrestrial surface. After it's release, Rama became an instant classic, and is still considered a cornerstone of the genre.

In Rama, we join the valiant crew of the spaceship Endeavor in their quest to discover the secrets of Rama, a giant metal phallus that has mysteriously invaded the virgin skies of our solar system. A lot of the allure of this book is the authenticity of the exploration experience; there's very little melodrama involved, so the excitement of the many discoveries is realistic and intense. Just being able to visualize the world within Rama--which is constructed along 360 degrees of an enormous tube, where the "Cylindrical Sea" extends, essentially, up and around the wall onto the ceiling--is kind of an experience within itself. For those who need constant action and intrigue in their novels, this isn't really one for you. One could see the pace as pretty plodding at times, but that isn't really the point. This is a book that poses questions, but doesn't necessarily answer them.

But, Clark does put in some zingers to keep you on your toes. The entire exploration period is on a ticking clock, being that Rama is on a crash-course towards the sun, so Endeavor only has a certain amount of time to discover all they can before jetting it out of there. Also, back on the Moon, the United Planets (an outer space version of the United Nations, complete with the heroic Americans (Earth) and the quirky, homocidal foreigners (Murcury)) are discussing every tidbit that comes back to them from Endeavor, and eventually the Hermians (from Murcury), decide that there's a chance that Rama just might pop an intergalactic cap in their asses so they shoot an big f***-off nuclear warhead at it--just in case. You can find out how that turns out on your own.

Probably the most hair-pulling, frustrating, yet brilliant part of this novel is that by the end, you are left with almost nothing to go on except some three-legged eyeball things and miscellaneous junk from an alien Self-Storage bunker. The puzzled crew of the Endeavor leave Rama pretty much like this:

Captain: So guys, what do you think that was all about?
1st Mate: No flipping clue, Sir.
2nd Mate: Beats the shit out of me, Sir.
3rd Mate: Sir, I think that it was an intergalactic ark, sent from Jesus to take aboard all the saved souls and transport them to his paradise in another galaxy, far, far away.
(pause)
Captain: Really?
3rd Mate: Ah hah ha...no, not really.
Captain: Oh.
(pause)
Doctor: OMFG! Soylent green is PEOPLE!

Okay, so that last part didn't happen, but something similar does. Kind of. Anyway, Rendezvous With Rama is definitely worth the read, not only because it's a sci-fi classic, but it's a thought-provoking book that follows all its own rules.

Tastiness: Mystery meat. Tastes good, but I don't know why...
Special Sauce: Originality, mind-bending visuals, philosophical quandries.
Recommend? Yes.