Minimal

Panning Rama

I’ve just experienced some kind of revelation (nothing illegal, mind you). I think I know what it’s like for countless unfulfilled women when having sex with their partners. There you are, building up to what promises to be a fantastic crescendo, only for everything to come to an abrupt halt. You can forget your moment of joy, it’s all over. And how do I know this? I’ve just read Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

That book has to be the best definition yet of the term “anti-climax”. Last week, I nearly blogged about how much I was enjoying it and how I’d rediscovered the joys of science fiction, but now I’m just another textually frustrated reader. For all of the glowing reviews it received (including the 1974 Hugo and Nebula awards), it really has the least satisfactory ending to any book I’ve ever read.

Ok, yes, there is a series of books following this one, but each should surely stand alone. I get the sense from reading about the allegedly-inferior follow-ups that they were an after-thought. Perhaps Clarke later realised how poorly he’d concluded Rendezvous? Maybe he would’ve been better off making a kind of literary director’s cut — a book with an improved ending — rather than trying to compensate for the inadequacy of the original with unsatisfactory sequels?

Whatever, I’ll not be hurrying to get more of his work if that was some of his best. All this from the writer of 2001, as well. :(