DO NOT READ THE SEQUELS

One of the few cases where they actively ruin the first book, to the extent you take them as true sequels. Clarke basically licensed his name and plot to Gentry Lee, who proceeded to ruin the sense of wonder by explaining everything, often in deeply unsatisfactory ways. They would have been reasonable scifi books (for their time) if they hadn't attempted to follow up the classics.

Star Wars prequel/sequel situation.

I'm glad someone else said this because I was right about to. One of the things I love about Rama 1 is how it squashes the idea of a human centric universe where everything has to occur for reasons knowable by us. Rama is truly alien, inscrutable and fulfilling a purpose we don't get to understand. As soon as it enters our solar system, its gone for good, leaving a lot unanswered.

> They would have been reasonable scifi books (for their time) if they hadn't attempted to follow up the classics.

I agree with everything except this. The sequels are by far the worst books I've read this decade. The memories of reading them actively causes me psychic damage. I wish I could Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind myself just to extract the distaste from my brain

Yeah, the sequels really were very different and in hindsight not very good. Not to mention kinda too forcefully trying to show how almost everyone is a a corrupt asshole - both humans and large ass well as those almightly aliens sending the Rama craft so they can basically keep samples of sentient population as pets. :P

Yeah, really the original Rama book was it - just image how sequels to the Matrix movie would look like, those could have been even worse!

Lucky for me I didn't read the sequels. I had my own theories about the purpose of Rama. Some theories are best left as theories in your heads to fuel ideas and imagination.

It's been a long time now, but from what I remember, you're not wrong. It's often a mistake to try to explain too much in sequels, which they certainly do.

Also they seemed to have a weird obsession about who was going to have sex with who to minimise inbreeding in the next generation. Maybe I'm doing them a disservice by not remembering so well, but I recall that seeming pretty weirdly prominent.

The sequels are pulpy and quite sleazy to be honest. I read them some decades ago but there are ex-beauty-queens in a tiny human colony who must have sex with everyone else to keep the population going or some such stuff. You moved from top-grade cosmic level thought to whether X or Y is sleeping with Z. It's not that the subject is not meaningful. It's just like if you were reading about WW2 in some book and the first part talks about Hitler's invasion of Poland in a strategic sense and then everything else is about the affairs among the officers' wives or something.

I enjoyed the sequels but they're a completely separate story to me, and I don't think I'd read them again.

I didn't go in with the expectation that they'd be just like Rendezvous with Rama.

Nah we're not doing prequel hate in 2026

As someone who was saved from reading the sequels due to online warnings, it's good to see that the next generation is being warned off of them also.