David Fincher angle of Rendezvous With Rama is what intrigued me the most. The director has been toying with the idea of making an adaptation for a number of years and whilst reading it I could already see it as being his 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, despite being a truly visionary work, Rama opens with fascination yet ends with as much questions left to answer as it posed to begin with, much like the final season of Lost. The work itself is astoundingly epic. A fifty kilometre long cylinder, codenamed “Rama”, is found floating into the perimeters of our solar system. A team of scientists are sent to investigate. What they find in side is another world fitting the dynamics of an O’Neil Cylinder, (type into google, the artist conceptions are facinating). What follows is a voyage of discovery as our heroes investigate the strange new world.
What is fascinating about this work is the logistics and the physics of having a world that occupies the circumference of a spinning cylinder. Through the centre of the craft, the gravity is zero, yet as they reach the outer rim, therefore the ground, it increases due to the spin. The science seems legit and endlessly enthralling.
However, the latter half of the book fails to live up to the initial intrigue. Once the ship comes alive, it loses its ambiguity and becomes less interesting than when the craft was effectively derelict. Whilst it remains a decent read, more avant-garde aspect of the ship’s design are never explained and at the end, it leaves never to be seen again, leaving the reader somewhat frustrated.
But it’s hard not to ignore the fascination of its set up and for that, Rendezvous With Rama is recommended. This is what I expect from a decent science fiction novel.
4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment