From the biblical Genesis, through medieval English romances such as "The Knight's Tale" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1387-1394), and countless other stories in the Western tradition, betrayal or fall from innocence in a garden has been a recurrent theme. Within the Rama tetralogy, The Garden of Rama plays most directly on the theme with the colony named New Eden and the Wakefield/ O'Toole family being driven from it. New to the motif, however, is the gathering of two other alien species within the Rama ship who are also contained within their own "gardens" and also dealing with their own social divisions, as the octospiders have their "alternates" who choose not to suppress their sexuality and live apart from the more ordered mainstream society. Also variant in the Clarke and Lee rendition of the motif is the remoteness of the unknown intelligence behind the creation and...