Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973.

A movie version of the first novel has been languishing in Development Hell for decades, with Denis Villeneuve being set to take a crack at it after filming the sequel to mh:greatestmovies:Dune: Part One and ready to produced by Alcon Entertainment, with the release date is something in 2020s decade.

Plot
Set in the 2130s, the story involves a 50-by-20-kilometre (31 by 12 mi) cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The idea about the story involves a 50-by-20-kilometre (31 by 12 mi) cylindrical landscape alien starship that enters the Solar System, while told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries is really creative.
 * 2) Rama is a huge starship that has traveled presumably for millions of years without showing any signs of wear or damage except for a large smear on one side where something evidently collided with it. It uses a Reactionless Drive to perform a gravity slingshot within the outer atmosphere of the Sun to gain speed and head off in the direction of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. All of this, according to human science, is utterly impossible.
 * 3) The book may be too long, but it is actually enjoyable that it can be finished sooner than expected.
 * 4) The ending is pretty satisfying as it teases the sequel with that quote "The Ramans do everything in threes.".
 * 5) *Unintentionally so, though, as stated by Clarke himself. The fact that the series ended up comprising four books seems to support that.
 * 6) The planet sized, spinning, cylindrical world of Rama is the star of the story, featuring a sea that circles the inside of the cylinder looks amazing and stunning. Its pretty darn big, too.
 * 7) Every function of Rama is fitted with safety systems, each with triple redundancy, and the "biots" that maintain it all are seemingly programmed to avoid interaction with obviously living creatures. The end result, whether or not the Ramans intended it, is that its very easy for a different spacefaring culture to explore the vessel at relatively little risk. The sequels reveal that such explorers have settled such vessels multiple times.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) At times, it doesn't have much characters development.

Reception
John Leonard of The New York Times, while finding Clarke "benignly indifferent to the niceties of characterization," praised the novel for conveying "that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes sci-fi at its most technically imaginative." Other reviewers have also commented on Clarke's lack of character development and overemphasis on realism.