Cheap Reads

About a year ago, Humble Bundle put on a sale of over a hundred Battletech books for $45. As ridiculous as it is to have giant, walking machines as the best fighters in the galaxy, I still love the stories and universe. And that is one hell of a deal. I don't read as much as I should so over the last year only two or three had been read. Last week I read five. It's nice to just have them on your phone.

It's also helping my mental health, not so much that I am reading more, but it's keeping me away from non-stop doom-scrolling and reading of the atrocities happening in the world. But the Battletech universe is also a very political one. It's all about the great houses fighting each other and the background politics involved in this. So, after the five books last week, I needed something a little different. That's when I found the Rama series for $13 on the apple store. These are books I've read before but I read them in the order of book 3, 2, 4 then 1. And it was also years ago. I got a physical copy of the third book when I was a teenager.

So, I dove in again as a refresher. I remember certain things from the books but missed some of the story. The first one is by Arthur C. Clarke and the other three are written by Gentry Lee with Arthur C. Clarke using his imagination. I remember being drawn in by the aliens of the third one but the first one that was solely by Arthur C. Clarke really is something different. While the last three follow a story line of characters going through first contact and such, the first, Rendezvous at Rama, is hardly a story.

It is a team exploring an abandoned ship that is passing through the solar system. The characters are very much a side part of the story and seem to be there just to make reading a little easier to track. The book is really just an exploration and description of an alien ship, much of which we never find out how they work. It's wonderful.

It also makes me realize how much of my most recent D&D campaign I stole from it as I set everything on a Rama like space station in order to limit the size of the world.

I recently talked about trying writing, and aside from sarcastic stuff, I'm not overly good at it. Having characters talk to each other never flows for me. But, Rendezvous with Rama shows that maybe you don't need talking. There is talking in the story, but much is just describing what the characters are seeing.

All said, most books are written from a characters point of view, even Rendezvous with Rama. But, maybe we should change that. Just write a description. The Lord of The Rings would be much shorter but still immensely interesting without the story. People want a hero though, I guess. So I'll just save the worldbuilding for worldbuilding.