Rendezvous with Rama

[Walden2]

Since at least 2000, a film version of Arthur C. Clarke's SF classic
Rendezvous with Rama has been promised by Morgan Freeman. While
we wait, here is a clip made by film student Aaron Ross:

http://discoveryenterprise.blogspot.com ... -rama.html

This story is known for describing a major planetoid hit in Europe
taking place on September 11, 2077 (the novel was published in 1973).

This destruction led to the formation of Spacewatch to ensure no
more such nasty surprises, which led to the discovery of the giant
black cylinder from an unknown alien civilization later named Rama.

I did not care for the second novel in this series (it was so not Clarke)
and didn't bother with the rest. Why can't some people leave the
classics well enough alone?

[Windwalker]

Since at least 2000, a film version of Arthur C. Clarke's SF classic Rendezvous with Rama has been promised by Morgan Freeman.
//
I did not care for the second novel in this series (it was so not Clarke) and didn't bother with the rest. Why can't some people leave the classics well enough alone?

I saw the Ross short, given the means available to him he did a very good job. I personally never liked Clarke very much as a writer, though his ideas are very exciting and his prediction of Europa as a second source of genesis is uncanny.

As for remakes/revisits, the phenomenon is universal. People assume that what worked once will work again (hence the clones of bestsellers or sequels of blockbuster movies, most of which bomb).

[Walden2]

If you are referring to Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, in
the 1968 novel he chose Saturn's moon Iapetus as the
place of TMA-2, which was uncanny because he predicted
a big bulls eye pattern right on the terminator of its light
and dark hemisphere - and there is!

BTW, Cassini is making a really close pass of that bizarre
moon tomorrow.

Clarke chose Europa for the subsequent 2001 novels after
the Voyagers revealed its true nature in 1979.

[Windwalker]

Clarke chose Europa for the subsequent 2001 novels after the Voyagers revealed its true nature in 1979.

I didn't read any of the 200X novels, I only saw the two films ---2001 and 2010 (I preferred the latter, despite the classic status of the former). That's why I thought he had singled out Europa to begin with. So, less of an uncanny prophet than I thought...

P. S. Perhaps in homage to Clarke, Jack McDevitt in The Engines of God has humanity discover its first alien artifact on Iapetus -- a sculpture of ice, depicting the sculptor (actually, sculptress, though its gender determinant is quite unimaginative as well as biologically unlikely... namely, prominent mammary glands on what is clearly not a mammal).