From Chapter Nine of Rendezvous with Rama-
Furthermore, here is the device in operation:'The Southern Hemisphere looks quite different; for
one thing, it has no stairways, and no flat central hub.
Instead, there's a huge spike - kilometres long - jutting
along the axis, with six smaller ones around it. The
whole arrangement is very odd, and we can't imagine
what it means.
And, finally, here's a scan of the cover of Rama II:He had barely finished speaking when there was a
flicker of light behind him; by the time he had counted
ten, the first crackling rumble arrived. Three kilometres -
that put it back around the Little Horns. He looked to-
wards them and saw that every one of the six needles
seemed to be on fire. Brush discharges, hundreds of
metres long, were dancing from their points, as if they
were giant lightning conductors.
What was happening back there could take place on
an even larger scale near the tapering spike of Big Horn.
His best move would be to get as far as possible from this
dangerous structure, and to seek clear air. He started
to pedal again, accelerating as swiftly as he could with-
out putting too great a strain on Dragonfly. At the
same time he began to lose altitude; even though
this would mean entering the region of higher gravity,
he was now prepared to take such a risk. Eight kilo-
metres was much too far from the ground for his peace of
mind.
Sound and look familiar to you Star Wars fans? Well, here's an excerpt from
Ambush at Corellia, pages 243:
Assault at Selonia, pages 240-241:Far below, he could make out other conical shapes, much smaller than the cavern itself, yet still extremely large. There were seven of the cones, with six in a circle around the central seventh. All of them seemed to have the same height-to-width proportions as the cavern itself.
Well, Rendezvous with Rama was first published in 1973, long before the Corellian Trilogy was even conceived. However, that still doesn't establish whether the seven-element magnetic array was thought of before Clarke included it as Rama's mysterious gravity drive."You saw how it shoved those rocks back up as they fell. That confirmed what I suspected. This place is a repulsor, a planet-sized repulsor, powerful enough to move the whole world of Drall. It did move the world of Drall, once, long ago."
"What?" Ebrihim said. "It shoved some rocks out of the way. How could it move a planet?"
"Easily," she said. "You saw a giant swat at a gnat. Does that mean the giant is not able to do more? I knew from the first moment that I saw the images from the Corellian chamber that this had to be a repulsor. The configuration of forms is identical to the earlier Drallish repulsors, albeit scaled up tremendously."
So, does anyone have ideas on this? Was it just a case of one author copying another author's concept, or re-use of a scientist's daydream?[/img]
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