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When Aliens come calling....Two novels on first contact by Arthur C. Clarke Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End

As noted in a previous review on the works of George Turner, authors often become enamoured with a central idea and magnetically return to it in many of their novels. As Turner's fetish was the wonders of human genetic manipulation and the dilemmas associated with a technological society, Arthur C. Clarke's is first human contact with aliens and their technology.

A. C. Clarke is one of the great and celebrated figures in science fiction literature. Naturally he is best known for the movie made from his novel 2001 : A Space Odyssey. Two other novels; Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End were equally well received as literature when they were published, but are not really a part of the popular consciousness.

Every few years it is rumored that someone is preparing to make a movie of Rendezvous with Rama, but to this date no one has. As literature it is ths reader's opinion that Rama is the best novel Clarke has written, and one of the best Sci-Fi novels of all time. Like 2001, and Childhood's End, Rendezvous with Rama begins with humans minding their own business when a mysterious Alien presence intrudes. In Rama, observatories detect an asteroid approaching the inner solar system. It's not long before it is discovered upon closer examination that the asteroid is not a natural structure, but rather a vast 30 mile long cylinder.

A human spaceship is sent to rendezvous with the alien spaceship dubbed "Rama"; a name whose only significance is that the Greek and Roman pantheon had been exhausted and namers had moved on to Indian names (what next? "Steve"?). As the captain of the ship prepares to land on the alien ship's surface he muses:

"There was also a sense of danger here that was wholly novel to his experience. In every earlier landing, he had known what to expect; there was always the possibility of accident, but never of surprise. With Rama, surprise was the only certainty."

The industrious humans catch the huge spinning cylinder, and make their way to the cylinder's vast hollow interior. They do this without inflicting any damage, in fact it seems as if the cylinder is simply waiting for humans to enter. Doorways on the cylinder are present, the interior has a compatible atmosphere, and the artifical gravity resulting from the cylinder's rate of spin is quite adequate. Is it an invitation or a trap? Unoccupied, but hardly empty, the large bulk of the story is involved with the human exploration of the interior and human response to the unknown.

Clarke's genius is his ability to confront the reader with engineering mysteries whose meaning he slowly reveals. This reader found the story electrifying; every scentence going across like a screaming headline.

"Once again he was face-to-face with the fundamental mystery of Rama, and this time it was impossible to evade it. Norton was a reasonably imaginative man, but he would never have reached his present position if he had been liable to the wilder flights of fancy. Yet now, for the first time, he had a sense, not exactly of foreboding, but of anticipation. Things were not what they seemed; there was something very odd indeed about a place that was simultaneously brand new and a million years old."

The story ends with the humans abandoning the alien spaceship prior to its leaving the solar system to continue its travels. Never any direct alien contact, humanity is still profoundly touched by the unspeaking technologies whose purpose we can only guess at.

On the other hand, the novel Childhood's End puts aliens directly into our faces. They have a big spaceship, they speak our language, they have wings, and they seem superior to us in every way, but these aliens are not angels. The "Overlords" as they are called, initially seem to have many similarities to the Talons from the TV series "Earth: Final Conflict" complete with a resistance:

"They felt, with good reason, much as a cultured Indian of the nineteenth century must have done as he contemplated the Raj. The invaders had brought peace and prosperity to Earth - but who knew what the cost might be? History was not reassuring; even the most peaceable of contacts between races at very different cultural levels had often resulted in the obliteration of the more backward society. Nations as well as individuals, could lose their spirit when confronted by a challenge which they could not meet. And the civilization of the Overlords, veiled in mystery though it might be, was the greatest challenge man had ever faced."

At this point I was thinking "ah hah! This is where Rodenberry got his Earth Final Contact idea"; but this is were the similarity with the TV show ends. As in Earth Final Conflict, the Aliens bring new technology, but instead of bringing humans to new heights of perfidy,in Childhood's End it merely makes us slothful as work becomes an optional pastime:

"There were plenty of technologists, but few original workers extending the the frontiers of human knowledge. Curiosity remained, and the leisure to indulge in it, but the heart was taken out of fundamental scientific research. It seemed futile to spend a lifetime searching for secrets that the Overlords had probably uncovered ages before".

Childhood's End takes a huge twist in its final 60 pages. It becomes apparent that the Overlords are woefully misnamed and the role of humanity is not as slaves, or food, or canon fodder like so many "alien gone bad" fictions. Prepare for an Asimovian ending.

Praising Clarke is like praising Asimov. It's so easy to do and so many have already done it that words just seem to lose their value. In writing Clarke's style is more like George Turner's than Asimov. Clarke doesn't just write, he writes with occasional beauty and philosophy:

"There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded".

"For what you have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys - yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it."

"In the centuries before our coming, your scientists uncovered the secrets of the physical world and led you from the energy of steam to the energy of the atom. You had put superstition behind you: science was the only real religion of mankind. It was the gift of the western mankind to the remainder of mankind, and it had destroyed all other faiths.....The origin of the universe might be forever unknown, but all that hapened since obeyed the laws of physics."

Of the two books reviewed here I think Rendezvous with Rama is the better science fiction. Rama has a high reliance on on facinating and plausible alien science and engineering while Childhood's End is more of a societal fiction, but like eating chocolates, it will be difficult to read just one of Clarke's novels.