Saturday, March 31, 2007

"Rama Revealed" (novel): Microbes replace electricity!

Imagine replacing all the electronics & other electrically powered machines around you with living genetically engineered animal equivalents:

  1. Smart portable lighting made possible with huge fireflies!
  2. An engineered equivalent of camel for replacing cars that moves fast, has its back shaped to make comfortable seat, & you can "tell" it about destination & route for driving!
  3. Medicines & diagnostic probes delivered to appropriate places in your body by "programmable" microbes to which you can "tell" what exactly is to be accomplished inside the body.
  4. Imaging equipment made possible with conniving engineered animals.
... list goes on, but you get the idea?

This is the third & final of the sequel trilogy to Clarke's original "Rendezvous with Rama".

The bio-magic is included only as a detour in this essentially a fantasy novel. While the novel is by & large readable with some realistic & futuristic thinking sprinkled all through, overall it just cannot compare in readability with at least the first 3 Harry Potters.

Last 10% is mostly garbage, with some theories that I found rather too fantastic. But first 90% doesn't bore, & has some good action.

Its end reminded me of Rescue Party's galactic administration entrusted with their duties by powers beyond the beginning of time.

Fact sheet.
Rama Revealed, novel, review
Authors: Arthur C Clarke & Gentry Lee
Genre: Fantasy with some science fiction
First published: 1993
Rating: B

Series: "Jupiter Five" (A), "Rendezvous with Rama" (A), "Rama II" (C) , "Garden of Rama" (B), "Rama Revealed" (B)

See also:
  1. "Rama series summary"
  2. "Influences" section of "Rescue Party"
  3. Similar bio-magic is found in a much earlier novel - "The City & the Stars".
  4. If you are among the devout, you might even like the end - about God & His role in Creation. Here are other stories with religion as a theme.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought the end of this final piece of the Rama story was excellent, and an almost necessary way for the entire story to end. Nicole, in her final hours, discovers that the ships, their inhabitants, the universe... all was created by God.