Rendezvous with Rama

Liked this quite a bit, and was surprised by how well it held up.

Rendezvous With Rama is a 1972 science fiction classic, about a future human society exploring an extraterrestrial... I guess I'd call it an artificially-made planetoid. It's light on what you or I might consider plot, preferring to cover the exploration and the challenges such explorers might encounter.

What strikes me about Rendezvous is how well thought out everything is. There are virtually no silly plot twists borne of a desire to artificially inject drama – no one acting irrationally, no decisions being made on the basis of barely-plausible emotion, no one incompetent. That is so rare it's striking when it happens.

This is one of the early sci-fi novels, so don't expect it to be different from what it is. It's a relatively self-contained work, content to explore within its boundaries. It does that beautifully.