Part of the Worlds Without End Grand Master Reading Challenge
Much better than I expected, but as dry as I feared. I don’t usually think “this would make a great movie” when I’m reading a classic, but here I couldn’t help thinking “I wish Ridley Scott would work this up.” I suppose that means a debt is owed to Clarke once again, for his pioneering vision, if not his plywood characters. I can’t help preferring more current page turners like McDevitt’s Chindi, but he owes a debt to Clarke, and the latter’s science is likely more accurate. I finished reading Rama with a wish that it had been as “big” a book as its eponymous spacecraft, but aside from a pervading sense of unease and the harrowing sail across Rama’s Cylindrical Sea (with a female captain at the helm!) I didn’t get an epic feeling of adventure as much as I had wanted.
