The Rendezvous with Rama Series

Alright, my first Arthur C. Clarke posting. The entire Rama series is four books long. The first book, Rendevzous with Rama, was written in the 70's and the sequel trilogy (Rama II, The Garden of Rama, & Rama Revealed) was written about two decades later. Arthur C. Clarke co-authored the sequel trilogy with Gentry Lee.

The first book is about an forty kilometer long cylindrical spaceship that passes through the Solar System. Mankind has taken to space and the crew of the nearest ship is ordered to investigate the huge ship. They "rendezvous" with "Rama" (the name given the ship) and the book is pretty much about the humans exploring the ship. The storyline is actually pretty simple, and the book is really geared to be technology driven.

The sequel trilogy is much more character driven. The main character of the series is Nicole de Jardins Wakefield and the story picks up her life in her early thirties and explores her life. The characters of this series really come to life, and this is the kind of book that you can sit and re-read and enjoy again, like you are visiting friends you haven't seen in a while.

The story of the sequel trilogy starts with the return of the Rama craft 70 years after it was last in the Solar System. A team of scientists are sent to the ship to try to determine it's purpose. There's a lot of interaction and conflict between the different scientists, military personnel and obligatory reporters on the trip.

In the third and fourth books, the ship travels on to Sirius, back to Earth and on to Tau Ceti. I can't go into too much story here because somehow it will be a spoiler, I'll just say that there are aliens.

I just found out too that Gentry Lee wrote two other books set in this same universe, and now I'm going to have to look into them. Also, Morgan Freeman has signed on to do a big screen interpretation of the first book, but it is still in an announced status, and no news has been released since February.