Rendezvous with Rama

Astronauts explore an alien spacecraft hurtling towards the sun in this Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, a stone-cold classic of hard sci-fi.

An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth's solar system on a collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts is sent to explore the mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They discover an interior stretching over fifty kilometers, a forbidding cylindrical sea, mysterious and inaccessible buildings, and strange machine-animal hybrids, or 'biots,' that inhabit the ship. But what they don't find is an alien presence. So who—and where—are the Ramans?

Often listed as one of Clarke's finest novels, Rendezvous with Rama won numerous awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Jupiter, and the British Science Fiction Awards. A fast-paced and compelling story of an enigmatic encounter with alien technology, Rendezvous with Rama offers both answers and unsolved mysteries that will continue to fascinate readers for generations.

Mr. Clarke is splendid. We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes science fiction at its most technically imaginative.