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Buried inside this terse read of a novel are the little nuggets of grand speculation that helped Rendezvous with Rama win both the Hugo and the Nebula in its year. This novel is a first contact story without any real first contact. The ultimate question – are we alone in the universe – is answered with a decisive no when the so-named Rama probe, a huge black cylindrical ship – enters the solar system. But, devoid of any sentient life, or perhaps or any life at all, the question then becomes, what else is accompanying us in the universe?

This book was written in 1973, when the American victory in the space race increasingly paled when faced with Earth’s increasingly apparent “limitations.” Set in 2130, Rama is Clarke’s imaging of what the space race could have gotten us. A world that was forced to pull together to protect itself from attack of space-born objects discovers and explores the Rama probe when it first appears in the solar system’s orbit. People are no longer identified by their nationality, but by their planetary statuses, and Clarke makes light of the UN, poking fun that it could have over 100 members while the planetary committee can barely function with under 10. Indeed, at one point while exploring the Rama probe, one of the characters remarks that the Ramans must have morals or they would have destroyed themselves, as humans almost did during the 20th century, an obvious allusion to the Cold War detente the United States enjoyed with the Soviet Union at the time.

But what is Rama, besides a curious allegory for Cold War relations? Rama is a massive, hallow space probe outfitted with many strange but seemingly useless features on its inside that begin to reveal their purpose as the probe awakens to life. Clarke was a  golden age hard science fiction author, and calling him a stickler for details is an understatement. Rama is nothing but a cold, scientific adventure story – even his human characters are never more than mere conduits to the futuristic dream ship that Clarke creates for them to explore. This can make for some dry or even frustrating reading, as Rama’s interior is described with intricate detail but all the greatest mysteries about her – i.e. who are her creators – are left unanswered.

And that is the way Rama must be left – as an exploration novel emblematic of a time when Americans looked to the stars with not just hope but also cold realism in their eyes. In Clarke’s future space pulled humanity together and allowed us to colonize the stars, just as in real life it drove two nations toward the pinnacle of scientific greatness. There is the requisite sexism,  but women also serve on Commander Norton’s exploratory crew, and are allowed to hold important roles on the ship. It’s also a book for fanboys and space geeks and anyone else who wonders whether or not we’re alone in the universe, and if not, what our companions are like. In Rama answers are only found in the things that the Ramans invented, but as there are many sequels, I can assume more is revealed about their nature in later books. Perhaps Clarke’s terse prose opens up a bit as well.

The preface to my 2009 edition of this Nebula winning classic does my work for me in historicizing this novel. Silverberg writes that A Time of Changes came about as a response to America’s transition from the straight-laced conformity of the 1950s to the counterculture and free love of the 1960s and 1970s. A Time of Changes stands as an allegory for that transition set on a far distant world in a distant future, where men have depleted the resources of Earth and colonized the stars.

Settled by a taciturn, religious (almost puritanical) people, on Borthan it is illegal to break the scared Covenant, a religious doctrine that prohibits the use of the pronouns “I” or “me” and isolates people emotionally from themselves and others. Kinnall, our protagonist and a prince of Sulla, one of the provinces on Northern continent where most people reside, narrates the reader through his own journey of self-discovery, guided by an Earthman and realized with the help of a hallucinogenic drug that lays bare the souls of those who take it in a basic orgy of emotional sharing. Emerging from this stupor, the first impulse is to say, “I love you,” which is also the ultimate crime on Borthan, as it breaks down barriers between the self and others.

A Time of Changes presents astute world-building, and remains dedicated to the strict social rules set for its characters, but doubting these rules is an integral part of the journey for the characters and the reader. Just as the reader is questioning why Borthan’s residents remain so strongly dedicated to the Covenant, Kinnall is wondering it himself, writing a desperate manifesto meant to convince Borthanians that the way of rightful existing is through self love and love of others, the two most taboo indulgences on Borthan. In this way A Time of Changes is not just a stand in for the counterculture or the drug culture that grew out of the 1960s, but is an exploration of religion itself. The Earthman, Schweiz, takes the drug because he is trying to experience God. He envies the Borthanian’s easy dedication to religion, and nothing in his wandering of the stars has convinced him God exists. Scheiwz thinks he might find God through complete and unfettered connection with others. For Kinnall, the drug brings him closer to God by tearing apart his own religious beliefs. God is self love and the love of others, he finds.

A Time of Changes doesn’t have much to hide in its allegorical story of one man’s transformation from conformity to a belief in free love. It’s easy to read this book onto the historical narrative of the counterculture and the 1960s and 70s. The treatment of women in this novel also dates it – all women are sex objects, pure and simple, even Kinnall’s bondsister, who he is supposed to feel only platonic feelings for. It is their only function. During the free love period in the 1960s, women found that free love often meant their objectification, as they were merely sex objects for the men practicing open sexual mores upon their bodies. This objectification is one of the experiences that drove feminism and women’s quest for sexual equality. Silverberg is unable to grant any of the women in his novel agency – their bodies exist purely for the pleasure of his protagonist. Sadly, as some of the more recent science fiction novels I have reviewed demonstrate, this is still the case in many texts.

A Time of Changes is an interesting read. It forces us to ask ourselves how much our own culture mirrors the Borthanian culture of isolation and mistrust. It also asks us to examine the value of sharing love and emotional experience with those around us. I oftentimes felt that Silverberg spent more time telling the reader about Borthanian mores than he did demonstrating them, so that the impact of Kinnall’s ultimate martyrdom felt less destructive than it should have. But the settings in the book were lovely and the allegory intriguing. Even after 30 some odd years, this book provides valuable insight into the way we view ourselves and each other.

The first book I ever attempted to read by Arthur C. Clarke was 2001, a novelization based on a film based on a short story. I’ve never seen the movie, but I found the book to be boring, put it down, and never finished it. This was all at least five or six years ago. Fast forward to 2012 and I picked up Fountains of Paradise anticipating some of the hard science fiction coupled with existential crises that I anticipated from Clarke’s work. This book was written a bit after the Golden Age, when Arthur C. Clarke cut his teeth, and at the tail end of the wild and fancy speculation of New Wave authors. As a result, The Fountains of Paradise is a strange blend of hard science fiction and far eastern folklore, drawing lines from a fictionalized classic Sri Lankin setting to twenty-second century Earth and the aspirations of one man to physically link the earth to the heavens.

The Fountains of Paradise won both the Hugo and the Nebula for its year, and as I plodded through the book I found myself at a loss to identify anything that might make it deserving of such accolades. Over time it’s certainly paled in comparison to his other winner, Rendezvous with Rama, as well as beloved nominee Childhood’s End. I’m not sure how the larger sci-fi community at large rates this book retrospectively, but from where I stand there’s nothing groundbreaking of interest here.

The fixed center of Clarke’s novel is the space elevator that engineer Vannevar Morgan is bent on building in order to reduce the complication of rocket travel so that humans can colonize and explore space and the solar system with a greatly increased ease. Unfortunately for Morgan, the best place on earth to anchor such an elevator is on the top of the fictional mountain Taprobane, which for centuries has been home to an order of seemingly immovable Buddhist monks. These monks and their order have survived the onslaught of disasters and the ambitions of violent kings, and at first it appears they may be the only thing standing in the way of Morgan’s giant leap for mankind.

In a way, one of Clark’s goals in The Fountains of Paradise is to make an explicit connection between Earth’s history and the science fiction future that he creates. Morgan sees the space elevator as a necessary step forward in man’s need to invent, grow, and explore. The monks, conversely, represent a stagnant past, even though in the text they are venerated, in a way, for their willingness to uphold tradition. In a strange twist, it is a series of superstitious omens that causes the monks to abandon the temple, allowing Morgan to build his elevator.

This interaction reveals the subtle tension between the mystical and the scientific that underlies the entire books. The nature of god and fate form the quiet core of mankind’s search for life and truth among the heavens. While the temple on top of Taprobane stands for mankind’s spiritual link to the skies, it retreats in the face of man’s actual physical invasion of the heavens through the use of science. An interesting, almost throwaway plot, complicates the dialectic between religion and science, as an alien space probe has just happened to drift through our solar system around the time Morgan is planning and building his elevator. Viewed as a fount of knowledge, particularly because it represents a supposedly advanced culture, the probe is assaulted with questions, the most important of which turns out to be whether or not there is, in fact, a god. Frustratingly for Clarke’s humans, the probe’s answer is evasive enough to be both tantalizing and unsatisfying.

Fate plays a crucial role in the building of the space elevator as well, beyond facilitating its ultimate construction. Much of the action of the latter half of the book focuses in agonizing detail on the plight of a group of scientists who get trapped on the elevator following a near-catastrophic accident. For some reason Morgan is the only one who can save them, and while their fate in lays in the balance, his ultimately does as well. In a cruel twist, Morgan dies saving them before his space elevator is completed.

The present, the past, and the future, the scared and the profane, spirituality and science, tradition and exploration – all these dueling themes weave their way through Clarke’s novel. None of these are unfamiliar territory for readers and writers of science fiction, but as presented here they’re not necessarily more or less thought-provoking than in any other average novel. A random cast of seemingly superfluous characters makes finding the novel’s center difficult, as do random jumps in time and shifts from folkloric writing to hard science fiction. All these elements can be combined in success, but The Fountains of Paradise reads a bit like a half-formed draft with some lovely bit and many others that need re-evaluation. As I’ve said before, my own reaction may be in part because many works I’ve read are derivative of this book, which sometimes can have the unfortunate effect of devaluing the source material. Either way, this book is an unchallenging read that could have been much better. The terse style of the Golden Age seems to fall flat here when met with a more folkloric and spiritual attempt at writing and thinking about science fiction with the many intricate threads Clarke attempts to weave into his story of one man’s attempt to reach the stars.

There are many different kinds of science fiction stories, so many that scholars seem to have reached a consensus that the genre’s boundaries are impossible to define. One woman’s work of science fiction is another’s work of historical fiction, for example. Frustrating as this fact may be for a bunch of academics trying to pin down defining features or for bookstore clerks trying to figure out just where exactly to shelve a book, the boundless conventions of science fiction allow authors incredible freedom to create whatever kind of world that they want and to run with it, wildly if need be.

Larry Niven’s classic, Ringworld, is a rich mix of hard science, deep space, and far future science fiction that would border on outright space opera if its plot weren’t so plodding and dull. I realize that some of you consider me to be some sort of heretic for applying those to adjectives to this revered and award-winning novel, but for me it simply failed to impress. In this sort of deep space exploration tale that travels to a landscape both utterly alien and impossibly plausible, the appeal of the novel rests on two key factors: the deftness of the world building and the appeal of the author’s characters. This can be a tricky balance, as a technological marvel like the eponymous Ringworld often becomes a character in and of itself in novels like these. Likewise, the reader vicariously encounters this inanimate character through the eyes of whatever intrepid (band of) explorer(s) the author has assembled for the voyage, and so our reactions to whatever marvelous thing there is to be encountered is closely linked to theirs. Further, in the best works of science fiction, inter-group dynamics run parallel to story of discovering and exploring a new world, and in the most masterful of works these dual stories intersect to form one work of truly breathtaking art. Ringworld tries and fails to do any of these things. Instead it reads as a deep space Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that switches hard science for wonder and monotony for adventure, keeping intact only the blatant chauvinism with little sign of the intrigue, wonder, and heroism that makes you want to look the other way when faced with the denigration of woman (and did I mention all the aliens are white, too?).

The premise is interesting enough: an advanced race of aliens called the puppeteers has discovered the Ringworld, a modified form of a Dyson Sphere in the shape of a ring, and have dispatched a motley crew of unclearly qualified adventurers to explore it. There are a lot of complicated politics going into why this mission is being started in the first place, almost all of which are more interesting that what happens when the crew actually gets to Ringworld and starts poking around. Of course, these tidbits, such as the fact that the galaxy is slowly but inevitably exploding, are merely a very intricate string of (perhaps unnecessary) devices Niven invents to get his protagonists to Ringworld itself. Inexplicably to a curious reader, they’re not even planning on landing on the surface until they crash land, which forces them to explore the giant surface area in hopes of discoveing a means to re-launch their ship into space. Even then they spend most of their time flying above the landscape and arguing with each other about honor or something equally petty.

In writing Ringworld, it’s very clear that Niven attempted to weave a tale that was not only fantastic but believable, which almost falls into a subgenere called hard science fiction, where all technology is supposed to be believable and based upon known science. Ringworld exists in a nebulous gray area in this regard, as Niven spends a great deal of time throughout the novel creating fantastic “technological” marvels such as floating cities, and then coming up with equally lengthy and nonsensical explanations for how any of his miraculous inventions operate. If you create something amazing enough in science fiction, readers are predisposed to suspend disbelief to a certain degree, but Niven writes himself in circles that not only nearly destroy the believability of his far future, high tech society, but serve to bore the reader out of their mind. The explanations aren’t informative and they don’t make sense, and there’s still a lot of that wonderful “Of course!” device being used, where characters over and over have “A ha!” epiphanies that instantly solve problems based upon some sort of assumed future science that the reader must accept is true because look at all these other circles the other jumped through when explaining flying bicycles!

Once our characters crash land on Ringworld essentially nothing happens. They all bicker a lot and spend a great deal of time flying over Ringworld’s surface, not really interested in exploring anything at all beyond things that might get them back into space. In fact, the plot is increasingly focused on the interaction between main character Louis Wu and his female companion, Teela, who was chosen to join the mission for her literally inbred luck (the puppeteers playing genetic gods with alien species is a plot that comes almost out of nowhere and fades almost as quickly). Wu is 200 years old and very confident with the idea that he knows everything. Conversely, Teela is 20 and has never known pain, something Wu finds to be high contemptible. Despite her naiveté and the 180 year age difference, Wu has no problem fucking her silly, and in fact, the only reason he “allowed” her to attend the mission at all is because he wanted someone to have sex with. Which she baited him with. So we have now established that she is officially a sex object.

Perhaps I should state right here that if there’s any reason I find Ringworld interesting it’s as an example of the blatant chauvinism, if not outright misogyny, that often suffuses science fiction works, even to this day. I think as a piece of science fiction in terms of exploring strange new universes and using aliens as stand ins to explore intra-human dynamics Ringwold  fails because it is boring and repetitive in both regards. Ringworld’s premise is so compelling that a synopsis is thrilling, but it completely fails to live up to its premise once you actually open the book. There is no wonder here. We as readers only fly over the scenery along with our explorers, praying for a crash landing so that we can maybe look around a little. Just as in a Burroughs novel, the only natives around are savages, but we don’t even get a true chance to explore the remnants of a failed society that our protagonists compare to gods.

No, what this novel is actually about is Wu’s hatred of Teela’s perpetual happiness and luck. She resembles and is distantly related to a woman who broke his heart, and in the end Teela breaks his heart too. Wu thought he was using her sexually, but it turns out she was using him (albeit completely unknowingly) to get to the Ringworld so she could go native and fall in love with one of the men there. Even more exciting for those of us reading down the misogyny checklist, due to native custom Wu must sell Teela to her new lover as a slave, and because sex is predicated on ownership, he is basically selling her as a sex slave. And Teela is completely okay with this exchange. She has literally been objectified by these men. The only female character in almost the entire novel and her only purpose has been to have sex with one man until he sold her away to have sex with another. In fact, Wu has always described Teela as alien, and eventually, when she goes off with the alien to be his sex slave, she actually does become an alien. As Wu states, she is more alien to him than the actual aliens in their traveling party. All because she preferred to have sex with someone else. A literal dehumanization.

Having lost one whore, Niven simply introduces another, a native woman of Ringworld who is a professional prostitute, as in she was trained in sexual arts to pleasure 33 men over long space voyages. Just as in a Burrough’s tale, Wu has now gone completely native, but the power dynamic between himself and Prill must be carefully maintained. Prill is a superior sexual lover to Wu, which is unacceptable in this narrative. Women exist to be protected and fucked, and when they diverge from this narrative they are either obstructionists, insane, or dead. Prill’s superiority is quickly neutralized, and she becomes his willing “partner.”

It is very difficult for me to read a book that so openly sexualizes and objectifies women. It’s not that these trends are new – they run rife in all forms of media and culture. 1970 is getting a bit out of my own temporal realm of study, so contextualizing the misogyny beyond generalizations is a stretch for me. I think it is fair to say, however, that the treatment of women in this novel is an outgrowth of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution did bring greater sexual freedom, but it was not some happy free for all, and it was not egalitarian. More often than not it meant that women were supposed to be completely sexual available to men; the sexual revolution, in other words, helped lead to a new, mass objectification of women. Feminists at the time included sexual rights, equality, and respect for sexually liberated women in their own manifestos, as they do today, but here we can see the stud/slut dichotomy at work. Throughout Ringworld, Wu’s sexual prowess if not only boldly on display, but is wantonly described, but it’s simply assumed that he will be this way. That he should be this way. It makes him a human male. The two female characters also have their sexuality boldly on display, but they are literally whores. They are also aliens or, their sexuality dehumanizes them. Stud/slut.

This kind of thought process isn’t really excusable, but we can put it in its time, though unfortunately its time is still with us. The thing about Ringworld is that there is no other reward here. Perhaps in 1970s, when this book was released, this kind of far space exploration of a technological marvel was new, or mind-blowing, but the fact that we barely get to see any of Ringworld in action and the descriptions we do get are dry, boring, or incomprehensible leaves me feeling unconvinced. In 1977 a far better work called Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, would come along and, in my opinion, punch Ringworld right off the map. That book mingles an exploration of complicated inter-gender relationships with explorations of unknown alien technology in a way that is both deep and riveting. Ringworld blunders through space and spends most of its time dwelling on how women are the bane of one man’s personal universe when instead it should be exploring the new, endless possibilities its unfulfilled scenario creates.