I was definitely captivated by the descriptions of Rama/a strange spacecraft that astronauts are sent to explore as it heads directly for our sun. And bemused by the idea that interplanetary colonization will allow men to have multiple wives & families/living on different planets. (Funny how/even in the future/guys just can't conceive of a world where women are the ones who get to have multiple mates...) Altho I cdn't really get a clear picture of the spacecraft in my head. (It's hard for me to imagine being inside a huge, cylindrical-shaped vessel with an ocean running around it's equator.) But the ending was SUCH a letdown! And this is the man who gave the world "2001"! Then again/I guess Kubrick really gets most of the credit for "2001" being so powerful. But why write a SF novel w/out ever letting the Earthlings encounter the aliens? I admit I'm not a big SF fan -- all I've read in the genre are Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" /Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" & "Kalki" by Gore Vidal. (I'm tackling Delaney next -- the library finally got it's 1 copy of "Dhalgren" back.) I'm not even sure I know the difference btwn SF& Fantasy. But I was really disappointed in "Rama". At least I'll know not to waste my $$ seeing the movie. Even w/Morgan Freeman slated to play the lead.

Obviously/hopefully your opinion has changed since your review. Even if you haven't invested the time to read the other three books I hope you know by now, from reading other bits of information given about the series, that the point of the Rama chronicles is not about meeting with or discovering the "aliens" that are vaguely hinted at (by the term "aliens" I imply the creators of the Raman vehicle). This series is more about human psychology applied to a science fiction universe than anything. Thank you for at least admitting that your Sci-fi and/or Fantasy knowledge is extremely limited.