Rendezvous with Rama

“For the first time in a hundred years an element of total uncertainty had entered human affairs. Uncertainty was one thing that neither scientists nor politicians could tolerate. If that was the price of resolving it, Endeavour and her crew would be expendable.”

The colonization of Earth’s neighboring planets and satellites has made the solar system so familiar for humans that they no longer regard it with wonder. This passage becomes crucial in establishing The Mysteries of the Universe as a theme by emphasizing the air of uncertainty surrounding Rama. This uncertainty extends to the stakes for the Endeavour’s crew.

“Dr. Bose could still recall the excitement of that time, when the lost treasures of the Greeks, the Romans, and a dozen other civilizations were restored to the light of day. That was one of the few occasions when he was sorry to be living on Mars.”

In this passage, Clarke observes humankind’s natural tendency for comparison. When confronting the prospect of extraterrestrial life for the first time, Dr. Bose, among many others, can capture how they feel only by thinking back to the closest analogue in human history. Imagining the sense of wonder that one might feel on such an occasion drives The Human Instincts of Wonder and Aggression as a theme.

“‘Pandora?’ asked the Hermian Ambassador quickly. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a crackpot movement,’ explained Sir Robert, with as much embarrassment as a diplomat was ever likely to show, ‘which is convinced that Rama is a grave potential danger. A box that shouldn't be opened, you know.’ He doubted if the Hermian did know: classical studies were not encouraged on Mercury.”

Apart from alluding to the Greek myth of Pandora, this passage helps build the world around the novel’s vision of the future. The idea that many people worry about Rama’s presence introduces an ambiguous form of doom that amplifies the ominous mood that hangs over the Endeavour’s crew as they breach Rama’s hull.

“The flare guttered and died; the moment of revelation was over. But Norton knew that as long as he lived these images would be burned on his mind. Whatever discoveries the future might bring, they could never erase this first impression. And history could never take from him the privilege of being the first of all mankind to gaze upon the works of an alien civilization.”

Norton’s first glimpse of Rama’s interior fills him with awe, underscoring the human instincts of wonder and aggression as a theme. This moment foreshadows the novel’s later characterization of Norton as someone who envisions himself in the historical tradition of great explorers, so this passage represents his entry into that tradition as the first of his kind to see signs of alien civilization.

“There must be enough material for centuries of research in this frozen carcass of a world. We’ve four thousand square kilometers to explore, and only a few weeks to do it in. I wonder if we’ll ever learn the answer to the two mysteries that have been haunting me ever since we got inside; who were they, and what went wrong?”

In this passage, Clarke establishes the limited parameters of the Endeavour’s journey into Rama. The difficulty of covering such a vast area in such a small amount of time implies that the odds of learning everything there is to learn about Rama is impossible. Even with the research questions they set out, Clarke prepares readers to anticipate an outcome in which the astronauts fail to answer either question. This passage therefore helps develop the mysteries of the universe as a theme.

“His responsibility was unique, and demanded a certain degree of isolation, even from his closest friends. Any liaison could be damaging to morale, for it was almost impossible to avoid charges of favoritism.”

This passage deepens Norton’s characterization by showing how isolated he is from the rest of the crew. Unlike Mercer and Calvert, Norton is so committed to his duty that he doesn’t think it wise or prudent to open himself up to others. He overcomes this by the end of the novel when he shares with Ernst that visiting Rama has haunted him.

“Norton had once visited the ruins of an Aztec temple, and the feelings he had then experienced came echoing back to him—amplified a hundred times. Here was the same sense of awe and mystery, and the sadness of the irrevocably vanished past. Yet the scale here was so much greater, both in time and space, that the mind was unable to do it justice; after a while, it ceased to respond.”

Norton echoes an earlier passage in Chapter 6 when Dr. Bose compared the discovery of Rama to the discovery of ancient tombs. In this moment, Norton realizes that such comparisons are meaningless because Rama is likely older and larger than any human civilization on Earth. This passage therefore introduces some irony for the archaeologist-astronaut because it emphasizes that much of humanity’s prior expertise in assessing antiquity may be irrelevant on Rama.

“Yet there was also something slightly spooky about them. Norton could never understand how men with advanced scientific and technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had heard Cosmo Christers state as incontrovertible fact.”

Norton experiences ideological tension with Boris Rodrigo, who is a man of faith. This tension underlies the novel’s action, allowing Clarke to draw a parallel between the attempt to understand alien civilization and the attempt to understand a higher being such as God. Clarke presents both as inexplicable, which helps explain the origin of faith.

“He had walked no more than a dozen meters when it hit him like a thunderbolt.

He knew this place. He had been here before.

Even on Earth, or some familiar planet, that experience is disquieting, though it is not particularly rare. Most men have known it at some time or other, and usually they dismiss it as the memory of a forgotten photograph, a pure coincidence—or, if they are mystically inclined, some form of telepathy from another mind, or even a flashback from their own future.

But to recognize a spot which no other human being can possibly have seen—that is quite shocking.”

Norton has a surreal experience while traversing the Straight Valley. While a previous passage rendered all prior archaeological expertise useless in assessing Rama, Norton’s sense of déjà vu in this scene creates a stronger connection with Rama. In this way, Clarke accentuates Rama’s enigmatic nature, demonstrating the mysteries of the universe as a theme.

“But at moments like this, Cook’s reassuring presence seemed very close. In the secret depths of his mind, he would ask: ‘Well, Captain, what is your advice?’ It was a little game he played, on occasions when there were not enough facts for sound judgement, and one had to rely on intuition. That had been part of Cook’s genius; he always made the right choice—until the very end, at Kealakekua Bay.”

Norton’s admiration for the historical British explorer Captain James Cook drives his reliance on Cook’s example for inspiration and the clarity to make the kind of judgments that Cook would. His familiarity with Cook’s work also enables him to acknowledge Cook’s flaws, however, including the decision that led to his death. While taking courage from Cook’s example, Norton also reminds himself to avoid Cook’s mistakes.

“During the first ‘nights’ on Rama, it had not been easy to sleep. The darkness and the mysteries it concealed were oppressive, but even more unsettling was the silence. Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.”

Clarke uses silence to amplify Rama’s eerie mood. He elaborates on the psychological impact of this silence to highlight the feelings that the Endeavour’s crew members experience each “night” on Rama. This leaves some ambiguity about whether what they hear or see is real or a substitute that their minds are creating.

“Who, or what, had switched on the lights of Rama?

This world was sterile, by the most sensitive tests that man could apply to it. But now something was happening that could not be explained by the action of natural forces. There might not be life here, but there could be consciousness, awareness; robots might be waking after a sleep of aeons. Perhaps this outburst of light was an unprogrammed, random spasm—a last dying gasp of machines that were responding wildly to the warmth of a new sun, and would soon lapse again into quiescence, this time for ever.”

This passage represents a paradigm shift in the exploration of Rama. Previously, the Endeavour’s crew members believed that they were exploring an ancient space tomb. Rama’s sudden reawakening proves that their initial assumption was far from the truth. This further increases Rama’s impression as an enigma by demonstrating that it contains much more for the astronauts to discover once the storm clears.

“I think we can rule out as naïve the fear of malevolent intervention. Creatures as advanced as the Ramans must have correspondingly developed morals. Otherwise, they would have destroyed themselves—as we nearly did in the twentieth century.”

Dr. Taylor infers the Raman imperative for peace by drawing comparisons to humanity. Tellingly, he refers to humanity nearly driving itself to extinction as a sign that it evolved as a civilization. This highlights a key point regarding the theme of the human instincts of wonder and aggression: that the aggressive impulse can signify a lack of civilization. Only by reasoning against this impulse can humanity demonstrate its civility. However, the Hermians’ actions overturn that argument when they nearly destroy Rama out of fear and xenophobia.

“‘In a couple of days! It took millions of years on Earth.’

‘Three hundred and seventy-five million, according to the latest estimate. So that's where the oxygen's come from. Rama’s shot through the anaerobic stage and has got to photosynthetic plants—in about forty-eight hours. I wonder what it will produce tomorrow?’”

This passage underscores Rama’s level of technological advancement. By comparing the water sample from before the storm to the one after it, the Endeavour’s crew learns that Rama is accelerating its bio-evolutionary processes in ways that mock Earth’s natural development and human advancement over several millennia. This emphasizes the mysteries of the universe as a theme by showing that the Ramans have mastered nature far better and faster than humanity has.

“The Ramans, it seemed, had brought the art of triple redundancy to a high degree of perfection. This was demonstrated in the airlock system, the stairways at the hub, the artificial suns. And where it really mattered, they had even taken the next step. New York appeared to be an example of triple-triple redundancy.”

Clarke summarizes how prominently the motif of threes has recurred throughout the narrative. This culminates in the crew’s excursion to the Raman New York, where “triple-triple redundancy” is the city’s central design feature. This observation highlights The Beauty of the Other as a theme by underscoring the Ramans’ reverence for three as a number that promotes symmetry and order. Through the redundancy, the Raman design shows how every individual piece in a triplet is composed of further pieces of three.

“He did not wish to behave like a technological barbarian, smashing what he could not understand. After all, he was an uninvited visitor in this world, and should act accordingly.”

Norton feels an imperative to respect Raman property, believing that giving into impulses of aggression would demonstrate a lack of civilization. This represents a reversal of colonialist tropes in adventure literature, whereby explorers feel the need to destroy property or commit transgressions against a native population to obtain a secret treasure. The assumption of this trope is that the adventurer is more civilized than the native, which Norton explicitly reverses in his line of thinking.

“Yet, if there were no hazards, there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure. Millions of men would gladly have traded places with him now. He was going not only where no one had ever been before, but also where no one would ever go again. In all of history he would be the only human being to visit the southern regions of Rama. Whenever he felt fear brushing against his mind, he could remember that.”

Jimmy echoes Norton’s earlier sentiments as he prepares for his solo sky-bike journey to the southern continent. The isolation he experiences becomes a defining feature of his subplot and character arc, especially as he beholds a wealth of discoveries that he can’t make sense of as a junior officer and without the proper equipment.

“So might a primitive savage have listened in awestruck ignorance to the low humming of a giant power transformer. And even the savage might have guessed that the sound he heard was merely the stray leakage from colossal energies, fully controlled, but biding their time.

Whatever this sound meant, Jimmy was glad to be clear of it. This was no place, among the overwhelming architecture of the South Pole, for a lone man to listen to the voice of Rama.”

When Jimmy hears the electric field building up at the south pole Horns, he mistakes it for the “voice of Rama.” This underscores Clarke’s point about the origins of faith and religion: A human being with little to no understanding of scientific phenomena may fall back on the presence of a higher being to explain their experiences. At the same time, the scientific enigma that is Rama baffles the most seasoned human scientists.

“He had never been interested in flowers in his whole life, yet now he was gambling his last energies to collect one.

It was true that this specimen was unique, and of enormous scientific value. But he really wanted it because it was his last link with the world of life and the planet of his birth.

Yet when the flower was in his grasp, he had sudden qualms. Perhaps it was the only flower that grew in the whole of Rama. Was he justified in picking it?”

Jimmy experiences a moral quandary when he comes across the flower on the southern continent. His desire to possess the flower as a reminder of his past signals his certainty that he’ll die on Rama. However, he recognizes the harm he would do to Rama if he killed its only existing flower. This supports the beauty of the other as a theme by underscoring the flower’s dignity.

“As he looked back across that mysterious and now suddenly sinister band of water, Commander Norton grimly determined that no one would ever sail it again. There were too many unknowns, too many dangers.

[…]

He would not tempt the gods of Rama again.”

This passage signals a shift in Norton’s attitude toward Rama’s mystery. Previously, he put his faith in the ability to learn more about Rama as a scientist. When Norton sees the lobster biots demolishing the starfish biot, he starts to regard Rama with fear and awe. This doesn’t mean that he has adopted a religious view but that he has accepted the limits of his abilities as a scientist.

“‘How would you like it if something landed on Earth and decided that you would make a nice specimen for dissection?’

‘I don’t want to dissect it,’ said Laura, not at all convincingly. ‘I only want to examine it.’

‘Well, alien visitors might have the same attitude towards you, but you could have a very uncomfortable time before you believed them. We must make no move that could possibly be regarded as threatening.’”

Following his experience on the Cylindrical Sea, Norton urges Ernst to show reverence to the biot creatures that have appeared across Rama. Norton’s argument embraces a reciprocal acknowledgment of dignity. This passage therefore thematically emphasizes mutual respect and pacifism as byproducts of acknowledging the beauty of the other.

“We recognized that it would be a tragedy—even a crime—to destroy an artifact as wonderful as Rama. If there is any way in which this can be avoided, without risk to humanity, we will be very happy to hear of it. We have not found one, and time is running out.”

To justify the preemptive strike on Rama, the Hermian ambassador invokes a false dichotomy between humanity and the Ramans, implying that both races are struggling against one another for limited resources. He shirks responsibility for the crime by briefly acknowledging the dignity of the Ramans, but he ultimately frames Rama’s presence in the solar system as a transgression against human rights. The ambassador distorts morality and ethics to satisfy his people’s xenophobia.

“To act, or not to act—that was the question. Never before had Commander Norton felt such a close kinship with the Prince of Denmark. Whatever he did, the possibilities for good and evil seemed in perfect balance. He was faced with the most morally difficult of all decisions. If his choice was wrong, he would know very quickly. But if he was right he might never be able to prove it.

[…]

‘The human race has to live with its conscience. Whatever the Hermians argue, survival is not everything.’”

This passage marks a turning point for Norton, signaling the moment when he chooses to act on Rodrigo’s suggestion to sabotage the Hermian missile, defying the chain of command to attempt to save Rama from near-certain destruction. The allusion to the famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet helps highlight the existential importance of Norton’s decision. If he instead chose to sit by as the Hermians destroyed Rama, it would irrevocably reflect on his character. Norton doesn’t want this on his conscience, which is why he chooses to act.