People have talked about turning Arthur C. Clarke ’s 1974 Hugo victor into a movie , but no one ’s done it . Should that variety , here are some thoughts on how a Rendezvous With Rama screenplay should calculate .
( And what I intend by that , Morgan Freeman , is thatif your plans ever get back on lead , PLEASE CALL ME . LongtimeEasy Reader fan . )
https://gizmodo.com/fincher-pulls-the-plug-on-rendezvous-with-rama-5062730
https://gizmodo.com/in-the-1970s-morgan-freeman-was-the-hygienic-lord-of-5598499
[ FADE IN to a shot of OUTER SPACE , inside the Earth ’s orbit around the sunshine ]
NARRATOR : For years , humanity has marvel whether it was alone in the universe .
[ In the snapper of the cover , a LARGE CYLINDRICAL aim , looking almost like an ordinary household boiler and spinning quickly on its axis of rotation , glides gracefully and speedily into view . ]
NARRATOR : In 2130 , we got our answer . But like most solution , it only raised more questions .
[ FADE IN TITLE CARD ]
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA
[ FADE OUT TITLE CARD ]
[ disappearance IN EXT . SPACEGUARD HEADQUARTERS ]
NARRATOR : Dr. William Stenton is an uranologist with Project Spaceguard , which tracks the flight of asteroids entering our solar system .
[ INT . STENTON ’S OFFICE . He is seated at his desk . ]
STENTON : To be reliable , we almost lack it . We watch about half a million asteroid , and consequently , most of the work is done by computers . So they keep on eye on thing , and we do n’t get alert unless anything weird happens .
The computers first acknowledge Rama — it was really prognosticate “ objective 31/439 ” at the time — because it was on a very unusual route . Most asteroids , like planet , have an elliptical eye socket .
[ computer graphic of typical asteroid field contrasted with RAMA ’s orbit onscreen ]
But 31/439 was on an alone unlike path — and it was move very , very tight .
And then there was the light curve . Now , a weak curved shape is basically a graphical record .
[ GRAPHIC of graph showing light-colored curve ball ]
Every celestial object has a sure brightness , thanks to the light it reflects from the Dominicus , and the degree of brightness will depart bet on what side of the objective is facing the sun . Because every side is live to have at least a slightly different shape — you do n’t get perfect proportion in nature . So you chart the different tier , and you ’ve got your light curve .
[ CUT back to STENTON ]
Well , Rama did n’t have a light curve .
So we knew something odd was last on . And this is the part where people always say , “ Well , why did n’t you just appear at it through your telescope . ” Because it seems very simple ! “ You ’ve father a bully with child scope . That ’s what it ’s for — just look at the thing ! ” But it cost 1000 of dollar bill per moment to get clip on one of the big scopes .
[ CUT to panning shot of FARSIDE 200 - cadence REFLECTOR TELESCOPE ]
mass recollect I can just walk over and look through the lens of the eye like with a scope in your backyard , but it ’s very expensive , and time is scheduled month and months in progress . And recall , we did n’t know what we were looking at with Rama . We thought it was uneven , but we did n’t know how left . And regrettably , you ca n’t just say , “ justify me , I do n’t know what just I ’m going to be looking at with it , but I ’d really like to employ the telescope today . ”
But fortunately — and this is just one of those strange instances where things derive together perfectly ; it makes you enquire if there is n’t some kind of order to the creation — basically , a 50 - cent piece of equipment failed on someone else ’s experiment . And so they could n’t utilize their clip on the telescope , and I set out fifteen minutes .
And later , when we looked at the images — well , it was very exculpated that Rama had been made by some levelheaded entity .
And that there was something inside of it .
The impulse to turn any half - decorous record book into a movie is intelligible , especially in the case of science fabrication . As rewarding as it is to picture quality and mount and the various trappings of a story in one ’s own head , there ’s something wonderful and delicious about get them made manifest for you . Basically , a movie edition ofAlex and his droogsor thegiant sandwormsorDoctor Manhattanis the closest you ’re going to get to meeting them in the flesh .
Now , that said , that impulse to adapt a Word of God for the big screen has become so automatic that it involve to be questioned , especially give way Hollywood ’s course disk . Once in a while , you cease up with A Scanner Darkly , but more often it seems like you get either The Running Man ( utterly entertaining , but disappointing to anyone who want to see the brightly unforgiving Stephen King chronicle brought to sprightliness ) or worse , I , Robot ( neither enjoyable as cinema nor close in any substantial fashion to the literature that prompt it ) .
Rendezvous With Rama , however , not only deserves to be a feature - distance move flick , it pretty much demands it . I mean , 90 per centum of the tarradiddle centers on the crew of the spaceship Endeavour ’s exploration of a small world build along the inner wall of a cylinder 50 kilometre long and 20 kilometer in diam . That ’s a sanely easy construct to grasp in the abstract , but just about impossible to visualize . If any one of science fiction’sBig Dumb Objectsdeserves the grandeur of the silver covert , it ’s Rama .
The prank , as anyone who ’s read the ledger knows , is that Rendezvous With Rama does n’t provide the sort of varlet - deform thrill that make studio executive ’ eye light up . Technically , it ’s a novel , but in point of fact it reads more like a draw - out thought experiment with some narration embellishments . There are no heroes in aCampbellian sensory faculty , no scoundrel except for some disgruntled politicians on Mercury , and there ’s no cardinal battle at all . There ’s just a team of highly competent explorers sent in to unravel any mysteries of Rama they can , who are so able and professional that they get the caper done and get out with barely a scratch .
The obvious solution here would be for Hollywood to do as it always does , and rejigger the germ material not but to fit the needs of a different metier but to foregather the low prospect it projects onto the consider public . Rather than just the expedition ’s loss leader , Commander William Norton of the Endeavour would become a full - on protagonist , and presumptively would wind up in a fiery romance with Surgeon Commander Laura Ernst , who gets perchance a twelve paragraphs in the book , sum . Some bunch fellow member would have to be a big hombre . perchance mildly judicious - ass Lieutenant Joe Calvert ? Or Lieutenant Boris Rodrigo , perhaps ? Since even though he ’s about the nicest guy in the whole novel , he ’s a member of the Fifth Church of Christ , Cosmonaut , and religion in blockbuster SF films is almost always the opposite of science and thus regretful ? Possibly he could be working with fanatic based on Mercury , result by the arch Hermian Ambassador , and would help them in their mistaken attempt to muck up Rama up .
It would be gravel if the movie went that path — or if it tried to work Earth ’s Pandoran protester into the storey line , or worsened yet , boast a panorama in which the cute prank of Endeavour ’s “ simps , ” or super - chimps , saved the day . But more to the point , it would be a tragical missed opportunity .
Rendezvous With Rama ’s glare stems from how arduous Arthur C. Clarke operate to make it feel real . Besides the fact that there ’s so much science in it and that the science holds up , there are a horde of understated elements and soupcon — like the brief mention of the Pandorans and the simps — that make a horse sense that the events of the Koran take berth in a large creation while still inhabiting a microcosm of their own . Which is pretty much how our own life ordinarily are .
And since the whole point of a documentary film is to home in on one small corner of living and show why it ’s relevant to the rest of the macrocosm , I ca n’t see how any other format would be advantageously suit to tell Rama ’s story .
Why put out devising a dear story or a battle of good versus wickedness that ’s just extend to infuriate devotee of the record and seem hackneyed to fledgeling , when rather of try out to ram the source stuff to fit the format , a good director could just go with a format that meet the fabric ? Documentary , after all , is the form of selection for telling stories about teams of hardworking professionals doing all sort of amazing caper , and for making scientific findings accessible to a deal interview . And the book would loan itself so well to repurposement as a faker - doc made shortly after humanity ’s encounter with the ballistic capsule — most of what the Endeavour crowd does is picture or photograph what they regain on Rama .
Plus , a documentary format would in reality add something to the account . We already bed the name of almost all the grapheme involved in Rama ’s story — now , instead of relying on Clarke ’s story , we ’d get to hear them tell it in their own words . And whereas science can be dry capable matter when it ’s conveyed via virginal prose — the Immigration and Naturalization Service and outs of Raman geography are where my eyes tend to glaze over , anyway — it really does derive alive when it ’s being explain out loudly , specially when the explanation is accompanied by video and graphics .
The toughest part of the job would be maybe building bit more of a story arc into the screenplay , but that should be manageable , and in the meanwhile , the individual segments of the plot are n’t hurting for filmable action : Jimmy Pak ’s flight to Rama ’s South Pole ; the abrupt starting signal of the hurricane as the spacecraft is warmed by the Dominicus ; the tidal wave on the Cylindrical Sea ; and of course of study , the passage from the darkness in which the explorers find out Rama shrouded to its glorious artificial daylight . The climax , of course of instruction , would be the crowd ’s long - delay push launching into one of the buildings on Rama — if it were part of a traditional SF action movie , their discovery would be a flake of a letdown ; in a documentary , it would palpate magnificently monumental .
As for the merchandising of such a film , I for one think mass would be concerned in see a documentary from the yr 2130 . The approach is already a familiar one — it ’s a bragging glob of District 9 , right ? and that ’s done awful well — and the sheer scale of the necessary special upshot would beat the hell out of the 1 that earned Avatar so much tending .
The goal result would definitely be something very different from most of the adult SF movies out there , but since Rendezvous With Rama is so very different from most of the self-aggrandising SF books out there , that would be rather meet , would n’t it ?
“ Blogging the Hugos ” appear every other weekend . In the next installment : The dispossess , by Ursula K. Le Guin , from 1975 .
https://gizmodo.com/ursula-le-guins-the-dispossessed-when-you-want-to-like-5607981
Josh Wimmer is a self-employed person writer in Madison , WI . He can usually be foundhere .
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