Anderson Rearick III’s Reviews > Rama II > Status Update

The world of this novel is off center from the one depicted in “Rendezvous with Rama” The solar system economy has gone through several crashes and huge ecological disasters leading to the fall and rise of new political powers. This is constantly reminded to us by the fact that the astronauts in this novel are called cosmonauts. The US is now but a back burner and the Kennedy Space Center is now being rebuilt

Clarke’s description of a world-wide economic disaster in 2134 seems profoundly plausible. The crash also took down the planetary culture we saw in the first novel.

With the appearance of another spacecraft in our solar system, the reader meets a new crop of space explorers. These characters seem less well oiled than the first crew, more inclined to take personal risks..

This novel begins with a forward by Clarke himself. His narrative has an almost casual quality (he swears he never intended to write a sequel) in which he seems seems to accidentally find his way. He goes on to describe his novelization of 2001 and 2010. Clarke also describes his meeting and earlier working with Gentry Lee who I am guessing added the more R rated elements to Clarke’s narratives warned of.