Book description
Rama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System, A perfect
cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through
space, Rama is a technological marvel, a mysterious and deeply enigmatic
alien artifact. It is Mankind's first visitor from the stars and must be
investigated . . . Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1974 Winner
of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1973 Winner of the John W. Campbell
Award for best novel, 1974 Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1973
Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born in
Minehead, Somerset in 1917. He studied at King's College, London,
receiving a BSc in physics and mathematics. During the Second World War
he served in the Royal Air Force and was part of the team that developed
the early warning radar defence system, an experience recounted in his
1963 novel Glide Path. A paper published in the October 1945 edition of
Wireless World on the subject of geostationary satellites is widely
recognised as having 'invented' the telecommunications satellite system.
Clarke began publishing SF in 1946 with 'Loophole' in Astounding Science
Fiction magazine, and soon established himself as one of the major
science fiction voices of the 20th century. He won the first of three
Hugo Awards for short story 'The Star' in 1956, and his 1973 novel
Rendezvous With Rama won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial
Awards. He is, though, best known as the writer and co-creator with
Stanley Kubrick of the groundbreaking SF film 2001: A Space Odyssey. A
year after the release of that film, Clarke found himself beside US
broadcasting legend Walter Cronkite, commentating on the historic Apollo
11 mission to place a man on the moon. Awarded the SFWA Grand Master
Award in 1985 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998, Arthur C.
Clarke was a giant of modern SF and one of the premier thinkers of our
time. He died at his home in Sri Lanka in March 2008. To discover more
about how the legacy of Sir Arthur is being honoured today, please visit
http://www. clarkefoundation. org
