Rendezvous with Rama, Again

I fully expected to live as an adult on the Moon, or beyond, when I was a kid.

Alas . . . 

Maybe that time will come. Not within my lifetime, however.

But thanks to science fiction, I can still dream it.

Two books still manage to capture my imagination. The first is "The Lotus Caves," by John Christopher. Yes, the living in, then escaping from, the aforementioned caves is exciting. But I like the bit beforehand, where life on the Moon appears so pedestrian to its residents as to be boring.

Boring.

Living on the Moon.

I suppose it would be after a time, given the limited capacity we have for wonder on a daily basis.

Then there's "Rendezvous with Rama," by Arthur C. Clarke.

Not the Gentry Lee-ed sequels. I've read one, and it was terrible.

But Rama. There's the stuff. And every time I read it, the more I think I might have followed the Cosmo Christers and Boris Rodrigo's idea that Rama was an ark, meant for those to be saved.

Though that clearly was not the case -- and even at that time, Earth et al appeared not to have the spacefaring resources to get people to the ark in a timely basis if that were the case.

But that's all speculation, of course.

Right now, all I can hope is that Morgan Freeman follows through with his plans for a Rendezvous with Rama movie. Though even there I am not optimistic and believe it won't happen in my lifetime. Freeman has been talking about the movie since the early 2000s. And the book isn't a complicated one. A script ought to be pretty easy to generate, if they stuck with it. The story moves along at a brisk pace, and would not need embellishment (although moviegoing weenies don't appear to like space-based think pieces, else Interstellar would have done better).

There are a few Rama-oriented videos on YouTube. None of them worth posting here, particularly as most of them don't appear to have read the book, or at least forgot about it, in the throes of making their videos.

This is a story that has to be done right, or not at all.

Of note: I appear to have a first edition of this novel. Pretty cool.