This was a fascinating piece of hard-SF, featuring some of the most scientifically exotic alien life I've encountered so far. It manages to lay out an engaging neutron star world, usually by showing rather than telling in a tour de force of world building. Even when it describes high physics, it doesn't fall prey to explaining theories as if in a textbook. And the science itself is a big part of the excitement!It was a little slow to start (discovery of the neutron star), but I think the transition was a good idea in the long run. It was good to have background for the eventual expedition. The Cheela as "human-like" as they could possibly be, given their physiology and nature of their world. It helps to drive home the fact that their systematic complexity is on par with that of us. I had to keep reminding myself that they're made of a different form of MATTER, with massive size/time/anatomy differences. This similarity also provides the reader with a way to identify with the Cheela and actually care about their exploits. I found myself smiling every time I remembered that a mountain they struggled to scale was actually only centimeters tall. How Egg's magnetic field affected the Cheela was another fascinating source of challenge for them, especially near the beginning. The extreme time mismatch was also a really interesting literary device. Because we readers share a reference point with the human scientists (the Slow Ones), we get to watch the development of civilization in "real time" without feeling distanced by the passage of time from human perspective. Reading about large timescales (generations/eons) can sometimes disengage the reader, but there was no danger of that here. On top of this, it puts things in perspective for us. What if our activities are just as fleeting to some ancient and much slower entity as the Cheela's are to us?It also makes one ask - are there universal principles to developing a civilization? Just enough dynamism in the environment to force adaptation and struggle over resources, just enough of a squeeze to require planning and corporation? Does the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer to synthesizer follow the same basic formula to some degree in all societies?Something that stuck out at me was how gender (rather lack thereof) works in male/female Cheela society. It is the one big difference in their social organization compared to most of human history. In this race, it is the elderly of both genders who care for the eggs and young. I was pleasantly surprised not just by the nonexistence of gender roles, but the prominent roles female Cheela played in furthering civilization. (For example, the "Leonardo Da Vinci" of the Cheela and prominent military leader was female, as was the inventor of mathematics/tribe leader who led her people to what would be the cradle of civilization. Even the original discoverer of agriculture was female. Interestingly, after meeting the humans and becoming a very advanced civilization, males seemed to become somewhat dominant. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, though. Anyway, I was almost tempted to call it a "feminist" book, but I really don't think it actually relates to human feminism at all, mainly because of differences between our physiology. The human scientists were OK, fleshed out enough to fit into the story. But they clearly weren't the stars of the show. They seemed human enough, a tad superhuman. I cared just enough to be upset if they came to harm, and they made a good enough reference point. I imagined myself being on the ship with them rather than being one of them.To address the plot, it is of course a little unconventional. And that's awesome! I do wish the stakes had been raised a little around the climax, though, beautiful as the sequence was. That itch is more than satisfied in the sequel though, believe me.Overall this book pushed a lot of my buttons. The prose wasn't flowery, but It didn't need to be for me. Enjoyable.
On the one hand, here we've got an extremely interesting high-concept sci-fi story — quite "hard" sci-fi up until they get so advanced as to be incomprehensible — written by a real physicist and aerospace engineer.On the other hand … well, it also reads like it was written by a physicist, and not by an author. Every sentence is short and simple (unless it's detailing a scientific concept), to the point where I felt the need to check to make sure this wasn't meant to be a book for young children.The simplistic language works rather well for the aliens (at least, in their pre-technology state) but makes all the human segments feel incredibly weird. Human dialogue is awkward and stilted (including their thoughts to themselves), there's a lot of "say, don't do", and the characters are one-dimensional, with the crew being a sort of "ensemble Mary Sue" — perfectly intelligent and beautiful (always pointed out for the women) and educated and multicultural, no conflicts, and completely interchangeable with each other, as illustrated by this ugly infodump:All had at least double-doctorates despite their youthful ages. Jean, Amalita, and Abdul each had a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a doctorate in one aspect or another of electrical engineering. “Doc” Cesar Wong (the only “real” doctor on Dragon Slayer) had the unusual combination of an M.D. in aerospace medicine and a Ph.D. in supermagnetics. Pierre himself had a Ph.D. in high-density nucleonic theory, and doctorates in gravitational engineering and journalism. Seiko, at 32, had them all beat. At last count she had four doctorates and expected to earn another as the result of their trip. Although each was a specialist in one aspect or another of neutron star physics, they had cross-trained so that each one of them could carry out any portion of the detailed science schedule that Dragon Slayer’s crew was on.(Never mind the lunacy, hubris, and karmic danger of going to a star you've named the "Dragon's Egg" and calling your ship the "Dragon Slayer". In fact, all the terminology is a bit suspect, e.g. the aliens naturally calling their own planet "Egg" long before they meet the humans who do the same.)Even the one screw-up the humans make on the entire trip — a loose piece of external debris that could've created interesting tension and conflict as the mission went on — is immediately and fully dealt with via some dangerous jetpack acrobatics and never spoken of again. It's more an exercise in discussing gravity gradients than a real plot aspect.The aliens, meanwhile, read a lot better under this writing style. A style that feels awkward and foreign for humans is a perfect fit to make the aliens seem more alien. My only complaint about these parts would be that there's a lot of dead-ends in the plot. For example, they accidentally learn what is essentially the secret to eternal (or at least, longer) life, but there's only one serious attempt to use it later in the book, and then they just give up on it and go back to living for 15 human minutes at a time. Or they talk about finding Napoleon and Machiavelli to have interesting ideas — ominous foreshadowing? — but it turns out to be a throwaway line, with no visible effects.All this is balanced by the fact that the plot really did keep me reading, wanting to know what happened next. And the ending is certainly interesting, if maybe not particularly climactic. But it really does read like "a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel" (reportedly the author's own words).I'm torn between giving this three or four stars — it's a bit more than just "I liked it" but it's hard not to notice all the flaws. Given that I was rather surprised at the quality of something that rated highest on my recommendations list, I think I'll stick with three to balance that.
Do You like book Dragon's Egg (2000)?
I'm hard pressed to find a better example of hard SF that Dragon's Egg. I think I could actually feel my brain stretching to picture the world Robert L. Forward was describing. What kind of life could possibly live on the surface of a neutron star that rotates on the order of 10,000 revolutions per minute and with a gravity nearly a trillion times that of the Earth? How big would they be? How would they communicate? How would we know they're there? How could we possibly communicate and interact with them?Sure it's not the best writing. The man was a physicist and an aerospace engineer. But this book was a thrill to read.
—Ben
This is now one of my favorite hard science fiction books, up there with Forever War. The concept is very novel, and it explores several mind-bending scientific ideas that are fascinating to think about:- the effects of ultra high gravity- the idea of nuclear reaction "chemistry"- non-visual primary sensory inputs- the sociology of a society that develops 1000x faster than we do, and what it would look like to interact with such a society.There are a few minor flaws where certain science is ignored, e.g. the relativistic impact of humans being in a high-gravity environment, or the gravitational impact of a neutron star passing through our solar system. Additionally not much time is spent developing the human characters, which is understandable because they provide more of a setting than a plot (due to the time differential, we focus much more on the alien society than the human experience).However, despite those minor gripes, this book provides a fascinating study of worlds and societies that are very unlike our own, and that makes it both a great thought experiment and an enjoyable read.
—John Zila
Es el primer libro que leo de ciencia-ficción dura (tras mi fallido intento de leer "Mundo Anillo" de Larry Niven) y tengo que decir que me ha quedado muy claro de que se trata esta "hard sci-fi". Pues creo que no me equivoco al afirmar que este libro, escrito por el "científico de fama mundial en el campo de la astronomía" Robert L. Forward, es uno de los mejores ejemplos de este subgénero.Como tal, hay que reconocer que se trata de una obra muy elaborada a nivel científico. Los geeks interesados por los viajes interestalares, el relativismo espacio-temporal y demás, sin duda disfutarán de la narración sumamente técnica de Forward.Pero para los que no somos tan geeks o al menos no nos interesa tanto el exacto funcionamiento de los mecanismos ficticios y no-ficticios descritos en el libro, las partes que abandonan el sentido de la trama para centrarse en estos pormenores como si de un manual se tratara, pueden llegar a aburrirnos y sin duda, hacen de una narración ya de por sí bastante lenta, más espaciada aún.Por esto último aviso a los impacientes de que los primeros capítulos pueden llegar a ser relativamente ambiguos y faltos de sentido dramático, pero después la narración mejora paulatinamente.Resumiendo: para los no acostumbrados a la ciencia-ficción del tipo "dura" no lo recomiendo al menos que tengan bastante paciencia, pues la narración resulta bastante lenta.
—Víctor
