@AngriestGeek: It had everything to do with the rebooting of Bond Spiderman and Xmen 3 made bucketloads of money but the franchises had to be rebooted because of them.
Bond had got overly gadgetised to the point of Sci fi and so they rebooted it to be gritty and more realistic.
@Cellsong: Erm, there were also young white males robbing that store... also u got any proof for that 80% crime 10% population statistic u pulled out of ur arse.
@chaunce: The first dream is also Fischer's dream, but the 3rd dream was created by Eames as he was posing as Browning and it was supposed to be Browning's dream... I think.
@Josh Wimmer: No it wasn't the Spaceguard stuff per se more the build up and the phrasing used to Rama's discovery.
And again its just that the explanation comes first thing after the credits were as id prefer to start say with them approaching and entering Rama after the credits and flashbacking to explanation.
@Josh Wimmer: The introductory part of the book leading up to the reveal of Rama, talking about spaceguard, it had to happen eventually etc, i think is better than any cliched hollywood beginning such as like most answers it only raised more questions.
Also pacing wise u shouldn't start the film with an explanation such as Stenton's lightcurve infodump. Even Inception which was filled with infodumps didn't start with one.
@Moses Quetzalcoatl Bratrud: Dude u really need to learn some political theory fascism is on the extreme right wing socialism is on the middle of the left wing just because the Nazis were called National Socialists doesn't mean they were actually socialists.
There are many similarities between Conservatives and Fascists and while fascism isn't a conservative movement its got more in common with Conservatism than Fascism.
I do hope they return to MC because I want to know what that planet was and also they left many unanswered questions, such as in Halo 3 when you see that army of Sentinels and you never find out where they were going.
@Ett: The pacing and characters vary massively with each book as well as plotting etc, Consider Phlebas is one of the my least favourite in the series but I still quite enjoyed it and I would push and try the rest out.