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Dragon's Egg and Starquake | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Robert L. Forward | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
This book is actually a compilation, a combination of two books. I really hope I don't need to tell you the titles.
The main premise is so unusual it may be unique. A rogue star is passing through, or nearby, our solar system. This is worth a scientific expedition, especially since it's a neutron star, whose electron shells have collapsed under the pull of gravity from tremendous masses. Unknown to the humans settling into orbit around the star, however, is the fact that life has actually managed to evolve on such an inhospitable surface!
Oh, it's not our kind of life. Life there relies on very different precesses and moves at a very different time scale. The life of the native Cheelans can be measured in seconds or minutes, but they live lives as full as ours. Their civilization evolves quite literally in front of the astonished astronauts' eyes.
The book is full of anthropological insight of how early discoveries may have been made, and it's just as full of science as hard as Forward could make it. And he can make it very hard indeed, for he is an accomplished scientist and writer.
This is one of the most unique first contact books you'll ever read. If you like hard sci-fi and first contacts, and have any interest at all in anthropology, this is the book for you. And if you're missing any one or even two of those interests, you might want to check it out, anyway.
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