Meeting with Rama

Posted on Edited on Disqus: Word count in article: 4.2k Reading time ≈ 4 mins.

I have admired the Foundation series for a long time, and this is the first complete Clarke novel I have read.

Translation

Let’s talk about the translation first.

About two years ago, I firmly decided not to read translated versions of the original text. I hadn’t read the earlier version called “Rendezvous with Rama,” so I couldn’t compare the two. For this edition, there was no feeling of discrepancy as I had imagined. As for the name Rama, it is definitely not accurate because the original text says:

now they were working through the Gindu pantheon. And so 31/439 was christened Rama.

Cover

And I really like this cover. When I first received the book, I thought it was something like a gravitational lens, and I was completely misled. I didn’t expect it to be Rama.

Technology

Overall, the only thing that doesn’t quite fit is the fact that on the interstellar spacecraft, the labor is done by chimpanzees. Based on the current level of technology, these tasks should be performed by robots similar to those in Interstellar (as you can see, the Rama civilization is also like that). The physiological functions of humans described in the book haven’t improved much compared to now. It’s hard to imagine that humans would still be the same when they travel to distances as far as Pluto (in the book, Pluto is still considered a planet rather than a dwarf planet). You have to know that even when I fly for 11 hours to Europe, I think I’m going to die. If I were on this kind of interstellar journey, I would already be a corpse by the time I arrive.

So if humans don’t evolve and upgrade as described in “Life 3.0,” humanoid robots like those in “NieR: Automata” would be more suitable for interstellar travel.

Everything else is great. For example, although the intelligent life of Rama doesn’t appear in person in the end, it can be inferred that they are similar to humans. Even now, the mainstream scientific view is that carbon-based life is more likely because:

  1. Large molecules need carbon and silicon as connectors.
  2. Silicon needs very high temperatures to become active.
  3. In the entire universe, there is ten times more carbon than silicon.

And in Rama, the tasks are performed by robots, specific in function and weak in artificial intelligence, without consciousness.

Rama People

The book only described the creatures inside the crystal in the chapter about the Crystal Temple (I’m sorry, when I see glass, I mistakenly typed “crystal,” and when I see temple, I typed “shrine” ⛩️). Why do I speculate that these are the higher-level intelligent beings of Rama?

Because if you see a 📱 in the universe, you would never think it was formed naturally; it must have been created by some intelligent life.

Nuclear Bomb from Mercury

When I saw it, I was actually worried that Rama would be destroyed. But for me, the people from Mercury were not wrong, and their words made sense.

If we pause here and consider it as a thought experiment, the final outcome is that Rama really did occupy the near-sun orbit. There was a chance to preserve human civilization, but it disappeared because of one person’s hypocrisy. The person who detonated the nuclear bomb is not a hero but a criminal.

Survival is the primary need of civilization.

Furthermore, for humans who have just ventured out of the solar system, it is not much different from when they first left Africa. Facing a dangerous environment once again, how can we treat space the same way as modern civilization on Earth?

Do not go gentle into that good night.

But from the fact that in Rama, the sun is only 5 million kilometers away, and they open the protective shield to gather energy, deviating from Newton’s third law, this nuclear bomb is not important. Instead, it highlights that it is still a struggle at the level of the human species.

Civilization

Human evolution has caused a lack of concept of size that is beyond the everyday level.

Based on the description in the book, it is 50 kilometers long and 20 kilometers in diameter, making the circumference 62.8 kilometers. What does that mean?

  • It is 0.003% of the territory of my country.
  • It is smaller than the area within the 6th ring road of Beijing (2,267 km²).
  • It is smaller than Shanghai (6,340 km²).
  • It is smaller than Shenzhen (2,050 km²).
  • It is smaller than Hong Kong (2,754 km²).

Think about it and feel it for yourself.

Think about the current population of these cities. So this area is sufficient to support the population base needed for a human-like civilization, not to mention the reduced gravity inside Rama. Now, skyscrapers in cities are only a few hundred meters tall, but Rama is 10 kilometers tall, which is two orders of magnitude difference. So the actual capacity should be measured not by surface area but by volume. Moreover, Rama should be just one of them, after all:

Rama is the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu.

The list of avatars in the Dashavatara varies by region: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Balarama, and Kalki.

Translated by gpt-3.5-turbo