Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1972) SFMW 65

'On a billion television screens, there appeared a tiny, featureless cylinder, growing rapidly second by second. By the time it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer that Rama was a natural object. Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it might have been turned on a lathe - one with centres fifty kilometres apart. The two ends were quite flat, apart from some small structures at the centre of one face, and were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when there was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comically like an ordinary domestic boiler.' (Loc. 191-95)

In this manner, Arthur C. Clarke introduces the titular Big Dumb Object  (BDO) of his Hugo and Nebula award winning 1972 novel Rendezvous with Rama.

One of the features of Clarke's fiction is his re-orientation of aspects of human arrangements that tradition has sanctified, and the interpolation of plausible extrapolations from current research. Rendezvous with Rama is no different, with its representation of polygamy (in all combinations; Loc. 586-88) and appealing, but effectively enslaved, superchimps or 'Simps':

Their rearing and education had probably cost as much as that of the average spaceman, and they were worth it. Each weighed less than thirty kilos and consumed only half the food and oxygen of a human being, but each could replace 2.75 men for housekeeping, elementary cooking, tool-carrying and dozens of other routine jobs (Loc. 776-78)

For all this, and as its title suggests, the main interest of the work resides in Clarke's description of the BDO itself. His description of the crew of the survey vessel Endeavour's exploration of Rama's interior is striking, and often suspenseful:

And now he understood the purpose of those mysterious trenches, the Straight Valley and its five companions; they were nothing less than gigantic strip-lights. Rama had six linear suns, symmetrically ranged around its interior. From each, a broad fan of light was aimed across the central axis, to shine upon the far side of the world. (Loc. 1279-81)

However, subsequent to the appearance of the organic automata that cleanse and maintain the BDO during its journey, the text loses much of its mystery, although it retains a good deal of interest:

'What we failed to take into account was the possibility of non-biological survival. If we accept Dr Perera's very plausible theory, which certainly fits all the facts, the creatures who have been observed inside Rama did not exist until a short time ago. Their patterns, or templates, were stored in some central information bank, and when the time was ripe they were manufactured from available raw materials - presumably the metallo-organic soup of the Cylindrical Sea. Such a feat is still somewhat beyond our own ability, but does not present any theoretical problems. We know that solid state circuits, unlike living matter, can store information without loss, for indefinite periods of time. 'So Rama is now in full operating condition, serving the purpose of its builders - whoever they may be.' (Loc. 2762-68)

Ultimately, readers may be disappointed to glean little from the work that can provide them with satisfactory answers to the two questions that exercise the minds of the crew of the Endeavour: 'Who were [the Ramans] -- and what went wrong?' (Loc. 501). This may be asking the wrong questions of Rendezvous with Rama, as one senses that Clarke's purpose was to invite the reader to capture and reflect on the sense of wonder developed within his description of the BDO's geography in this excellent addition to the SF Masterworks series, and take it with them beyond their reading of the novel, and into their own lives:

The nature and the purpose of the Ramans was still utterly unknown. They had used the solar system as a refuelling stop - as a booster station - call it what you will, and had then spurned it completely, on their way to more important business. They would probably never even know that the human race existed; such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult. (Loc. 3294-96)

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Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End (1953, 1990)

'They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the colour of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen's ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms' (p. 145)

Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 text, which the author tinkered with in 1990, begins with one of the classical tropes of written and cinematic SF, namely the appearance of spaceships over Earth cities. Rather than descending into the usual tiresome sequence of 'zapping the aliens' with its attendant consequences, Childhood's End take a rather more thoughtful turn.

The work is framed by a strongly anti-theistic and anti-authoritarian stance. Karellen, the alien ambassador overseeing the Overlords' tenure on Earth says: 'science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No-one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now' (p. 17). The author also goes so far as to suggest that existing political arrangements are descending into entropy: 'even before the Overlords came to earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end: no one can save it now – and no one should try' (p. 41)

The aliens reveal themselves after fifty years of sporadic communications and little else, and the reason for their reticence in manifesting themselves in their physical form becomes immediately apparent. The trust generated by their benevolent presence over the five intervening decades diminishes the shock of their appearance, as does their giving freely of their technologies. In so doing, the Overlords serve to create a society which 'by the standards of all earlier ages[...] was Utopia. Ignorance, disease, poverty, and fear had virtually ceased to exist. The memory of war was fading into the past' (p. 70).

With more opportunities to pursue creative endeavours, 'the general standard of culture was at a level which would once have seemed fantastic. There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he [sic] had' (p. 115). Nevertheless, the future prospects for such a society seem brittle to those who consider them: 'among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question: Where do we go from here?' (p. 117)

The disclosure of the Overlords' ultimate role within the narrative inverts the menacing threat that they originally seemed to pose, and instead makes them rather pathos-inducing figures: 'we have never been more than your guardians, doing a duty imposed upon us from – above. That duty is hard to define: perhaps you can can best think of us as midwives attending a difficult birth. We are helping to bring something new and wonderful into being[...] but we ourselves are barren' (p. 190).

Whilst it may denude the work of any sense of mystery that the first two thirds have worked reasonably hard to develop, Clarke ultimately leaves the reader in no doubt as to what happens on earth, setting out rather too baldly the events' significance from a wider galactic perspective. Because of the lack of light and shade the work exhibits in relation to its subject, saying any more about these revelations is not possible without saying too much.

Clarke's tone can be hectoring and haughty, his rhetorical gestures irritating, and his craft as a writer rather less than accomplished at times. However, as a fast-moving yarn delivering a big-concept payoff Childhood's End deserves it place within the SF Masterwork series.

Note: Childhood's End was the sixth entry in the 2001 hardback SF Masterworks series (first cover image above), and the third entry in the unnumbered SF Masterworks series (second cover image; 2010).

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