Rendezvous with Rama

nAstronauts explore an alien spacecraft hurtling toward the sun in this Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel --a stone-cold classic of hard sci-fi (The Guardian). n nAn enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth's solar system on a collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts are sent to explore the mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They find an interior stretching over fifty kilometers; a forbidding cylindrical sea; mysterious and inaccessible buildings; and strange machine-animal hybrids, or biots, that inhabit the ship. But what they don't find is an alien presence. So who--and where--are the Ramans? n nOften listed as one of Clarke's finest novels, Rendezvous with Rama won numerous awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Jupiter, and the British Science Fiction Awards. A fast-paced and compelling story of an enigmatic encounter with alien technology, Rendezvous with Rama offers both answers and unsolved mysteries that will continue to fascinate readers for generations. n nMr. Clarke is splendid . . . We experience that chilling touch of the alien, the not-quite-knowable, that distinguishes SF at its most technically imaginative. --The New York Times