Rendezvous with Rama

Hugo Award 1974, Nebula Award 1973, Campbell Memorial Award 1974, Locus Award 1974.

First published in 1973, when it won every sf award in sight, Rendezvous with Rama awes readers with the spectacle of humanity's first contact with an alien civilization - a seemingly dead spacecraft whose scope and scale boggle the imagination.

In 2130, the Mars-based radars set up to track asteroids discovered something new. The object came from beyond Pluto - a gigantic, geometrically perfect cylinder that had been voyaging the void for a least 200,000 years. The long-feared, long-hoped-for alien encounter had finally come, but the opportunity wouldn't last long, for Rama was on a fast one-way trip round the sun.

The job of exploring the intruder when to Commander William Norton, whose cautious, unflappable demeanor attested to his long experience in space. Yet ever he wasn't prepared for Rama's overwhelming size. Thirty miles long and twelve miles wide, its seamless, windowless hull offered no clues to the mystery inside. When he entered its vast interior, Norton's sense of wonder and anticipation mixed with fear. For clinging to Rama's walls was a self-contained world - cities, valleys, lifeforms, seas - with not a soul at home.