Product Description
In a moving story of sacrifice and triumph, human scientists establish a relationship with intelligent lifeforms--the cheela--living on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star where one Earth hour is equivalent to hundreds of their years. The cheela culturally evolve from savagery to the discovery of science, and for a brief time, men are their diligent teachers . . . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (41)

life on a neutron star
La vie humaine sur une étoile à neutrons est impossible. La gravité y est tellement importante que le diamètre de l'étoile ne mesure que 20 km, que le champ magnétique est immense et que les réactions chimiques normales y sont remplacées par des réactions nucléaires. Nonobstant la vie y est possible et y a donné naissance à des 'cheela', êtres minuscules dont on découvre la préhistoire, puis leur histoire jusqu'à la découverte de la science et à leur rencontre avec des astronautes terrestres.
Un mélange d'épopée médiévale et de conquête de l'espace.
Un roman unique, poétique, burlesque. Ebouriffant.

Wonderful first contact adventure
Lately I've had a hankering for hard science fiction that concentrates on first contact with biological aliens rather than techno-sci fi. So many of the newer genre novels revolve around artificial intelligence or enhanced humans with sophisticated implants. Sometimes these hit the spot, but other times I yearn for less gadgetry and more interspecies storytelling. A few days ago, I ransacked Amazon's sci fi titles (old, new, and yet-to-be-published) to find the perfect book to satisfy my current wishes. Then I remembered a pair of titles I'd already purchased here but hadn't read yet: Dragon's Egg (Del Rey Impact) and its sequel, Starquake.

DRAGON'S EGG has deservedly received many plaudits since it was first published in 1980. It's a grand tale of a human expedition out to a neutron star that is passing approximately 2300 AU from earth. The star, with a 67 gee gravitational field on its surface, is home to sesame seed-sized intelligent creatures called cheela. These tiny amoeba-like beings live a standard lifetime in about thirty to forty-five of our minutes. Their story, from hunter-gatherer times until they surpass mid twenty-first century human science, composes most of this novel. How the human explorers presence affects cheela development, and how the two races find a way to communicate is a crucial component.

The late Robert Forward wrote a fabulous, detail-rich story in DRAGON'S EGG. Now I'm ready to plunge into STARQUAKE and familiarize myself even further with the cheela.

A wretched writer with amazing ideas
Has science fiction grown too tame?We pride ourselves on a greater realism these days, on a willingness to explore limitations as well as possibilities, negatives as well as positives.We enjoy the camp value of the old glittering space-ships and many-tentacled monsters, but we like to think of ourselves as a bit too sober and grown-up for all of that.It seems at times a writer must give an embarrassed little cough for introducing something as innocuous as an FTL drive.

Where, you might ask, are the wild ideas?

And so, maybe, a friend hands you an old copy of Robert Forward's tale of life on the surface of a neutron star--60 billion gravities and all.A truly alien world.A wild idea if ever there was one.

But as many incredible ideas as Forward had, as gifted as his we was with world-smithing and scientific speculation, the man just couldn't write for a damn.His prose clumsy, bloated, turbid; his characters shallow, dull, possessing either a single trait or none at all; his dialogue worst of all, connected in no way to any real human utterance.I can't tell you how microscopic life forms that evolved on the surface of a neutron star talk, so fine--we'll cut him some slack on that.But if a copy of this book ever lands on an inhabited neutron star, I bet they'll laugh themselves silly, too.

The essense of reading Robert Forward is to be forever torn between fascination and loathing, admiration and ridicule.The sweeping canvas of his imagination, yes, but in the foreground, these awful crude little stick figures drawn in clumsy crayon.

I think, in the end, you power through it, at least for "Dragon's Egg," because the ideas _are_ wonderful, and, towards the end, there is at least one moment of pure joy as the plotline mounts to its climax.You just skim the dialogue and pay as little attention as possible to the characters.The sequel, "Starquake" simply doesn't bring enough new material to the table to merit the effort.

I'd point to Larry Niven as someone who, while firmly in the current of Science Fiction, still thinks psychology and sociology are interesting and worthwhile objects for contemplation, as opposed to just chemistry and physics.He also pays attention to the craft of writing--the arrangement of the words and phrases and sentences to make something worth listening to in its own right.Forward was woefully deficient in craft.He doesn't seem to have been aware that writing _is_ a craft.He was content to just hack and chop until he'd come to the end of his (admittedly very clever) idea.Nothing would have profitted him more than a couple of undergraduate classes in creative writing, or maybe a subscription to Writer's Digest.

_Dragon's Egg_ is a qualified recommend.Beyond that--you have been warned.Consider _Flatland_ if you haven't yet had the pleasure, or A.K. Dewdney's sadly obscure _The Planiverse_, or Niven's _Ringworld_ books, or Iain M. Banks' Culture series.

I love Cheela!
I have just ordered my second copy of DRAGON'S EGG--the first has been read to pieces. This has rarely happened before.
Forward's science credentials are impressive, but on top of that he manages, like very few sci-fi writers, to create believable and sympathetic aliens with their own world view and their own social structure. Actually, the aliens are more "real" than the humans! The "hard" science is made readable and believable, also a rare thing.
I am by no means a scientist. Still, Forward does not lose me.
This book will, I suspect, remain one of my all-time favorites. I highly recommend it

Early favorite...
One of my first books by this author that got me hooked...

MJL ... Read more

Product Description
Starquake, the sequel to Dragon’s Egg, takes place on the surface of a neutron star.The gravity is 67 billion Earth gravities.The native “cheela”, the size of sesame seeds, live a million times faster than their human friends in orbit.After a starquake, the humans have only one day to save the remains of cheela civilization from extinction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

The fun goes on -but not as far.
You have got to love the challenge Forward sets out for himself in the Dragon's Egg, and in this sequel, Starquake. He has a mid-21st century crew of astronauts sent out from Earth to discover and interact with the most exotic of species, living on the most exotic of worlds. The "Cheela" are intelligent beings inhabiting the surface of a neutron star. They eat and think and fight, and romance, and even cultivate "plants" and "animals" much as we do. However, due to the forces inherent to nucleonic matter, the Cheela are barreling through time (as defined by the pace of sequential events) at a clip one million times faster than humans. They experience the changing stages of social evolution just as rapidly. The inter-species interaction itself is brief: the two novels span just two Earth days and thus hundreds of Cheela generations. In these short hours, the neutron star civilization has time to rise up from barbarism not once, but twice, and the Earthlings and Cheela each experience their own epic disasters requiring that they spend some of their time rescuing each other. The story of Dragon's Egg was brilliantly original and bold. It was a thrilling ride, with the reader witnessing the mutual discovery of the most disparate life forms by each other, and was filled with wild inventiveness. Furthermore, the first book exemplified Clarke's axiom about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, and showed how widespread social belief in magic can a drive a people in very strange directions.

But the novelty of Dragon's Egg has worn off a bit in Starquake. One feels that Forward was compelled to complete his challenge in full, with a multitude of physical material and social interactions explored. Epic history is made through via every sort of species-specific and inter-species act of heroism. To further facilitate this, some lucky individual Cheela escape their brief 45 minute life-span limit, and via a convenient rejuvenation process live on for multiple generations to stay with us much of the tale. Unfortunately, even in such creative surroundings: with monopoles, black hole dust, millimeter mountain ranges, trillion Gauss magnetic fields, all set on an 8000 K stellar surface, a familiar problem of some Forward novels comes to bear in Starquake. Its thin plot is peopled with superficial characters who can not fight their way out of the sea of technical explanations and details inundating the story (earning it the "hard science fiction" mantle), to carry our interest very well.

Not as great as Dragon's Egg, but still good
Dragon's Egg is a stand-out book.The ideas expressed in it were fresh, original and presented in a dynamic and interesting way.

Starquake doesn't *quite* live up to the original.By the point where Starquake starts, a lot of the initial sense of wonder has faded to familiarity and the slack needs to be taken up with characterization which, let us being honest, was not Forward's strong suite.

Be that as it may, the story is engaging and I'm glad that we got to spend some more time with the Cheela who are, in my opinion, perhaps the most interesting race of aliens in all of the annals of science fiction.

Highly original hard science fiction and a gripping story as well
How long does it take for a civilization to rise from one of hunter-gatherers to interstellar spaceflight? Or to fall back again to primitive, subsistence levels? Years? Decades? Centuries? Millennia?

For the cheela, just a few hours.

The cheela are among the most intriguing aliens ever to appear in science fiction and are both at the same time quite alien and also quite familiar. They don't live on any terrestrial world like Earth, Mars, or even the Moon. They inhabit the surface of a rapidly rotating neutron star 20 kilometers in diameter, one dubbed Dragon's Egg, visited by humanity in the year 2050.

Dragon's Egg is unimaginably harsh by human standards; a crushing surface gravity equivalent to 67 billion Earth gravities, an 8200 K surface temperature, a massive magnetic field, and a rotation rate of about 5 times a second.

Though the typical cheela weighs as much as a human, they are little larger than a sesame seed. Instead of being comprised of what the cheela called "expanded matter," they are instead made up of nucleonic matter. The nuclei in the cheela body have lost their electron clouds, crushed by the high gravity and intense magnetic fields into a tiny and super dense form (one that will collapse at a touch anything made of normal matter). In physical appearance they are glowing, white hot vaguely slug-like organisms, with a slug-like tread used for locomotion and seeing through a ring of twelve stalked eyes all around their periphery and able to manipulate items through a series of limbs.

The cheela though are stranger yet. Not only does the neutron star move fast, the cheela live and die very fast, by human standards at least. One day on Egg (what the cheela call their world) is equivalent to 0.2 human seconds; the cheela live their lives a million times faster than humans do. A cheela year only lasts 29 human seconds. A cheela generation is 15 minutes apart, and a cheela lives on average about 45 minutes, an entire life of growing up, going to school, mating, having a career, and retiring. One hundred cheela generations will have come and gone in the span of a single human day.

_Starquake_ is the sequel to the brilliant earlier novel by Robert L. Forward, _Dragon's Egg_. Owing to the nature of time in the book, it is really more a continuation of the first book, not a sequel, as only minutes I believe separate the events from the end of the first book from the opening events in the second. The cheela, having advanced from basically what we might call something akin to Neolithic times to a civilization that has mastered the use of artificial black holes in the space of about a human day or so (these events were covered in the first novel), have long since surpassed humanity's technical achievements. The astronauts who visited Egg were about to leave for home but a disaster occurs, one that is averted only by what are to human standards very quick action on the part of the cheela. Grateful for the assistance, the humans pledge that they will aid the cheela any way they can. The cheela, while quite polite, decline, wondering how they could ever provide any additional help to them; they wish their human friends a safe trip home.

As one might guess from the title, a massive starquake occurs, killing nearly every cheela and destroying their civilization. Can humanity help? How will the few brave cheela that survive the catastrophe rebuild their world?

Owing to the time perception differences, by necessity most of the book is told from the point of view of the cheela, as many interesting cheela live epic lives trying to save themselves, their friends, their world, to remake their civilization in the span of mere minutes and hours for their human friends. I think the book was a bit slow at first, as the author spent a good deal of time explaining how cheela spacecraft, space elevators, and launcher facilities might work, something hard to manage as it is in our world but to me inconceivably difficult in a world where a vessel needs to achieve a significant fraction of the speed of light in order to reach escape velocity and make it into space. A bit technical at times, once the starquake occurs the book becomes quite gripping, a wonderful story of heroes, villains, and great personal sacrifice.

Definitely one of the most original science fiction sagas out there and well worth reading.

Among the best hard SF books ever written
The key attractions of this story and its sequel "Starquake" are:

1) Life based on neutronic interactions vs electronic/chemical interactions
2) Communication between two races, one which is 1 million times faster than the other.
3) "Monopole-pumped black hole dust" used in Cheela anti-gravity machines
4) Life on a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 BILLION times earth gravity, and a surface temperature of 8200 K.
5) Faster-than-light technology / time-travel technology, described almost believably
6) Cheela waiting, bored, while their ship accelerates to half the speed of light, over 1 kilometer of acceleration, in order to reach escape velocity from their home. 50% light-speed, over 1 km??
7) Rise and fall and rise of Cheela empires, with several very interesting characters
8) A very plausible description of how humans may nullify the tidal forces near neutron stars, and go into close orbit.

Good, but not as good as number one
I get the idea that Dr. Forward just wanted to write a sequel. This book's premise is interesting - the cheela, due to their sped-up lifetime, have only one day (human time) for their earthling friends to figure out how to save them. I didn't like the characters as much and the story didn't hold my interest as much as the first book, but I still recommend it to fans of "Dragon's Egg" and those who love really scientific sci-fi. ... Read more

Product Description
When humankind discovers intelligent life in the Oort Cloud, the first humans to venture beyond the planetary system make contact with an incredibly strange race and their mysterious world. Reprint. NYT. AB. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Highly Imaginative Journey
The story is very imaginative in its setting ( the Oort Cloud beyond the expanse of our solar system ).Although the content is almost entirely a description of an alien civilization, it is still quite absorbing.I have read a lot of science fiction, and this is definitely something different.Also, this used book arrived in good condition from the seller.

Have some science textbooks nearby to help you
My science knowledge is limited, and yet I'm usually able to read and enjoy a lot of the genre. I hit a wall here, for sure. This book is all about science, with just a smattering of fiction if you look real hard. The foundation of this story is science, and without any clue to the many discussions that take place, I felt like I was definitely on the outside looking in through frosted glass. I was prepared for some technical information, having read (and greatly enjoyed) Dragon's Egg. But the strengths of that book are absent here. I'm not sure who the intended audience was for this, except to say it was not me. I felt like I must have read it by mistake when it was over.

Another favorite
RLF is another one of my favorite authors...

Too bad he died...

If you like hard science fiction - you will like this book.

MJL

Would have been better off as a short essay
This is basically hundreds of pages of text, masquerading as a story. What he
really wants to do here is tell everyone about this cool idea he had about
what aliens might be like if they lived near Pluto...and if they were insects.

90% of the book then explains how all this works followed up with a really implausible stretch ending which feels like just an excuse to explain one
of Teller's worst ideas.

If I was smart, I would have stopped reading this book after 50 pages.

Interesting
A truly interesting concept and story arc; some people have criticized it for the fact that there's so little plot, but as an anthropologist I found the cultural study to be quite cool.On the down side, the characters *are* rather two dimensional, as others have noted, and in fact the appendices to the book give the whole plot twist away. I didn't look at them until after I had finished the book, but even so, I kind of had an idea where it was going.

But I still liked Merlene. ... Read more

Product Description
In the near future five intrepid men and women have been paid a billion dollars each to risk the first voyage into the upper atmosphere of Saturn. The goal: to convert atmospheric chemicals into fuel to power interplanetary spaceships.

But no one anticipates a crash landing on one of the enormous flying creatures known as rukhs that live in Saturn's atmosphere.
Amazon.com Review
Five carefully selected people, each with the chance to earn $1 billion. The catch? They have to descend into Saturn's upper atmosphere and establish a factory that will produce meta, the fuel that powers interplanetary flight. With only enough meta to get them to Saturn, failure will cost them their lives. And all too soon the crew becomes marooned on the back of what they dub a Rukh, a 4-kilometer-long creature that swims in Saturn's upper atmosphere and has two brains, male and female. This engaging book by physicist Robert L. Forward evokes the sense of wonder of old-time science fiction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Another good read.
RLF is another one of my favorite authors...

Too bad he died...

If you like hard science fiction - you will like this book.

MJL

entertaining "hard science" fiction
Robert Forward is a scientist who writes fiction.He thinks and describes in terms of science problems and then writes a fictional story around it.The story is of the first manned expedition to Saturn. The science behind the mission is well substantiated and interesting, (but most likely only to geeks like myself.)In Forward's world, Saturn is inhabited with creatures that "swim" in it's dense atmosphere.We are introduced to the intelligent, apex predator life forms that have an interesting first contact with the humans.The characters are interesting, but the writing is a little Tom Clancy-ish.Characters have fairly basic personalties and their interactions are a little stale.

The yarn is a good one and the predicament, of possibly being stranded is very interesting.

Old-Fashioned SF
Spoilers!!

This is typical Forward: wooden characters whose interactions with each other are totally unbelievable, endless detail of beautiful, real near-future science, silly excuse-for-a-plot, and gorgeous, staggering vistas of real otherworlds and their realistic, amazingly creative inhabitants.The ruus, huge gasbags flying in the atmosphere of Saturn, are far more interesting than the humans who contact them, but Forward always does this.The scenes are giant, brilliantly colored, animated Chesley Bonestell movies: the ruus diving to hunt; the humans "climbing down Saturn's Rings" with the aid of the (real) Hoytether, a kind of super rope which Forward marketed; the funeral of an aged rukh whose flockmates sing as she falls endlessly to the lethal gas layers below; the final battle with an alien monster myth-made-real.If you value character and plot, take your business elswhere.For science and the sheer pleasure of the view, read this!

Another good book by Forward
Can life exist in a gas giant's atmosphere? Intelligent life is
a hard thing to find anywhere in the universe and this book gives us a whale of a story about a sea so far away. A mission of modern science has been to find other intelligent life and communicate with it. Very few unique kinds of intelligent life have been invented by hard science fiction writers. Robert Forward is one of the best at it.

Don't Read This Book. . .
. . .for depth of character development!Like many of Forward's novels, there is a definite weakness in that department.HOWEVER, if you like "hard" science fiction -- sci fi which grasps the best that current scientific understanding has to offer, you will thoroughly enjoy this engaging book.

Forward writes of a mission to Saturn's atmosphere in order to build a fuel factory from the (almost) limitless supply of helium contained there.In the process, the crew discovers life -- life supremely suited to its environment.

4.5 for the science, 3 for the plot, 1.5 for the shallow characters.Overall, a 3 -- and a good read. ... Read more

Product Description
An intergalactic adventure applies all the theories of modern technology, including antigravity machines, space warps, black holes, time machines, and reactionless drives, and considers their impact on the universe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The implausable made comprehensible
Sorry, I love big words.The fiction was not impressive, but the science is.Dr Forward is one of the big guns theoretical physics and it shows.He explores the ways impossible science-fiction concepts like antigravity, time travel, or faster-than-light travel might be done (if the gray areas of physics have the right answers), and sometimes ways it could be done (with a lot of engineerng).

Works in the Classroom
This is an excellent book for the introduction of physics concepts.By blending science fiction and science fact Dr. Forward puts concepts commonly misundersttod into the grasp of the laity.I have found this book very useful in my Physics courses.My students tend to enjoy it as well.Dr. Forward draws on his background at JPL to give sound techincal explanations and his ability as a science fiction writer to give the concepts life.

WARNING!If you are looking for a piece of fluffy fantasy fiction this is not the book for you.

There are greener pastures, so skip this one
I bought this, partially because some of the reviews I saw compared it to similar books by Charles Sheffield, a master at writing stories coupledwith science fact essays.This is a hard act to follow, but Forward hasbeen writing for long enough that I was at least hoping forentertainment.

After reading this, I regretfully conclude that this isnot a book I would buy, and I wish that I had returned it after readingit.

I found every fiction story was contrived, and not intriguing enoughto hold my interest.This was regrettable, as Forward clearly sees somequite amazing possibilities in the high power densities antimatter brings,and the impact of easy travel within the solar system.I did not, however,come away from the stories with a sense of wonder, or a sense that I had"seen the future."

Even were this entirely a science fact book,I would have misgivings.Forward seems quite intent on pointing out thenumber of patents he holds.At several occasions, I felt the book wasmoving from entertainment or education vehicle into self promotion.I amnot above that myself, but I find it entertains poorly.

Forward clearlyunderstands the material, and explains it well, but the level he chose topitch it at was not satisfying to me.I felt that he was using a bit toomuch fancy footwork, and a bit too little solid explanation.SeeSheffield's "Dancing with Myself" for a collection of essays withsimilar focus, but with more meat on the scientific bones.

In essense, awell thought out book, but one that does not deliver on the implicitpromise of such a powerful and wide reaching set of technologies.

Technically acurate and ingenious ideas for science fiction
As a particle physicist I learned much from this book.When Forward discusses situations about which I know some details he almost always has it right, so I trust him when he discusses situations about which I knowlittle. The short stories that follow the technical chapters are ingenious,although they do not all relate well to the preceding technical chapter. Iwould like to have had more discussion about the relative probabilities ofthe various scientific theories yielding useful technology.

very good discussion of exotic propulsion etc.
i bought the book purely for its scientific content and have not read the short stories. but the information concerning exotic forms of propulsion and loopholes in modern day physics is very good. another good book relating to this is the starflight handbook by eugene f. mallove & gregory l. matloff. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Don't buy this book unless you are a collector.
The book was not written to the author's satisfaction due
to time contraints.He was later able to write the "expanded"
version titled "Rocheworld", which you should buy if you
just want to read the novel. If you want to have the
original for your collection, buy this one also.

Contact to alian lifeform on far-away double planet
An exeptional well researched and written book.
A probe from earth discovers life on a distant double planet.
No further information is transmitted from the probe.
A research team is scrambled from earth. The team knows it will never return back.
The book describes very poetic their journey and the difficulties encountered by the engineering team on earth to keep this spaceship operating.
When the spaceship arrives, they unexpectedly encounter an intelligent lifeform.
The aliens are a friendly species mostly occupied by mathematic problems.
Though very interested in their new visitors.
Everything doesn't go as planned - but then again - they seldom do.
Although this seems detailed - but the good stuff has been left out.
No violence - but a very beutifull and rich detailed story.
Figures to explain the technical stuff is included and of excellent nature.
I read it first time in german. I think it is originally french.
Karsten Jeppesen
... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Robert L(ull) Forward, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1688 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
Powered by a revolutionary, laser-driven stardrive, the first interstellar spaceship would reach the double planet that circled Barnard's Star in a mere 20 years. Some of the world's finest scientists were aboard the ship--prepared for adventure, danger and the thrill of scientific discovery. Reissue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Good hard scifi book
I've never read much science fiction in my day, much less books with more hard scifi than fantasy elements, but Forward does a really good job of keeping the novice scifi reader hooked in the book, even when describing the gravitational pulls of binary planets or Newtonian law and how it affects the propulsion of a ship powered bya lightsail. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to get into the more factual section of scifi and away from the fantasy worlds of Star Wars and Stargate.

Accurate science, TERRIBLE writing
This book has SPACE MARINES, capital, used non-ironically. That tells you how seriously this book should be taken right off the bat. The first main character we meet, General Virginia Jones, is not only a SPACE MARINE but the VERY BEST LIGHTSAIL INTERCEPTOR PILOT in the SOLAR SYSTEM. Described as such not by another character, but by the *narrator*. These aren't characters, they're caricatures! In fact that's too generous; the characters' only distinguishing features are their names and occupations; they have no real unique character features, not even stereotypical ones. They're just *insert name and occupation*. It only gets more ridiculous. Drone satellites and probes carried aboard the Prometheus for some reason can speak and have personality, generally ridiculous cartoon character personalities. For example, the seismic probes SLAM and SMASH get dialogue that seems torn straight from Scrappy-doo (paraphrasing, "Where is it? Let me at it! I wanna SMASH it!").

The politics are also laughable. It's fairly understandable that he would assume the continued existence of the Soviet Union, but it was just bad luck it was published just before its fall. But the 'Greater United States?' NASA renamed to GNASA (*Greater* National Aeronautics and Space Administration)? This is all pure cheese.

Of course this is one of the scientists who pioneered the concept of lightsails, so the physics of his space travel is absolutely right on. Unfortunately the same can't be said of his grasp of biology/medicine, or as mentioned above, AI. So that the crew can make the 40-year journey to Rocheworld without being elderly at the end, they are given a drug called, get this, 'No-Die'. Yes, 'No-Die.' The drug slows the aging process by three-quarters, but for some never-explained reason reduces intelligence by the same amount. But the kicker is, this drug had *never before been tested* with a large group over anything like the time frame of the journey. The US government actually spends hundreds of billions of dollars constructing an interstellar spaceship and gives its crew a drug which might reduce them to permanent imbecility, for all they know.

There really is a worthwhile story to be told here, but Forward is not the author to tell it. The science is spot-on, the description of the Barnard's Star system is fascinating, and his aliens are genuinely original and interesting. Unfortunately I can only recommend this to the most hardcore fans of hard sci-fi, who would be willing to overlook its considerable flaws as fiction in favor of the accurate and truly fascinating space flight.

I like it.
RLF is another one of my favorite authors...

Too bad he died...

If you like hard science fiction - you will like this book.

MJL

An ok attempt had hard SF (minor spoilers)
The author was clearly someone who loved science. However, in his attempt to describe the science in way too much detail, he forgot things such as logic. There are too many plot holes in both science and characters' actions that just shouldn't have been made. Just one, mid-level, example is sending all your pilots down on a single expedition. There are others, such as his lack of understanding of Hodgkins and its cures (I was diagnosed with it while he was writing the novel, I know his stats are off). Then there's a big one that I won't mention because it's key to the story.

What saves the book is the combination of two things. First, his love of science is very clear and enjoyable, and he only mildly overdoes is -- not to Melville standards. Second, while his humans often relate in very stereotypical manners, his aliens are fairly interesting.

It's a nice, average, hard science-fiction read.

I generally love Robert L. Forward's work but...
I am sad to say that this was pretty bad.I couldn't finish it because the characters were so overblown and poorly written.

This was one of his first books and while I HIGHLY recommend virtually everything else he's written, this one was a failure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Too Bad
Too bad I can't review this book, since Amazon sent it to who-knows-where in Ohio and I never got it.Ohio... Arizona...I see the similarity.

Characterization somewhat better than the first book
Since Hal Clement's Mission of GravityMission of Gravity. hard science fiction dealing with the weird xenobiology of aliens
has been hard to find. The author Robert Forward is good on Einsteinian level physics and gravity, but hasn't been too good on human interaction in previous sci fi. This book seems an improvement there. His space ships and air plane designs seem like something that would get you killed?
The ideas of dna and carbon based life being somewhat alike on other planets
that have developed in parallel is kind of hard to take.
Jelly fish that are intelligent is a real stretch.
But you have to give him credit for effort when other writers just
fail in anything scientific.

A vehicle for scientific speculation. Fascinating!
This is the second title (out of five) in the Rocheworld Saga. The humans sent to Barnard's system discovered intelligent (in the most stringent sense of the word) life on Rocheworld, a weird double planet subject to complex dynamics and tidal forces. These aliens -the flouwen- are aquatic amoeba-like creatures living in the oceans of Eau, one of the lobes of the double planet. The flouwen are centuries ahead of us in Mathematics, but have no technology.

In this book, the flouwen are explored more in depth. We learn about their physiology and social structure. Using human technology, the flouwen get into space for the first time, and help the humans in their exploration of Roche, the second lobe of Rocheworld. Then, two longly-separated evolutionary branches meet again...

As with many other Forward's books, neither plot nor characterization are the strongest points in this novel. However,Forward manages once again to put together so much thought-provoking scientific speculation that makes you forget any other deficiencies.

Having read "Rocheworld" (aka "The Flight of the Dragonfly") before starting this novel is obviously recommended, but I guess one could even get into the story without it. ... Read more

Product Description
Randy Hunter, a billionaire industrialist, communicates with aliens, develops an interstellar flight, explores other worlds, and becomes immortal in a world where human dreams come true. By the author of Dragon's Egg. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Forward's worst
I like most of Forward's books.To this day, I'll often bring Dragon's Egg and Roche World down from the shelves to give them another glance or two.

Sadly, this is the least of his work.The protagonist is a shallow bit of more-than-obvious wish fulfillment.This is a character that starts off by saying that his goal is to become the wealthiest person in the universe and to live forever.Mind you, this is a person who already starts out as a billionaire, so we're not exactly talking about some sort of Heinleinian competent man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps.This is a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth who's only ambition is to replace it with a platinum one.

This is compounded by the fact that the central plot device that drives him towards his mastery of space and time (seriously, these descriptions of him are actual chapter headings!) is the accidental discovery of an alien life form that excretes matter with negative mass.

The book is best when Forward takes time to consider the implications of negative mass, although I'm hesitant to call it hard science-fiction given that Forward is basically postulating a blatant violation of known physics and then methodically working his way through what such a violation would imply.It's a clever sort of logical game, but it veers away from his normal standard of sticking with known and reasonably extrapolations of physics and taking them to their logical conclusions.

Along the way, we get swipes at all sorts of things that we can infer that Forward hates, including and especially (remarkably enough) animal rights activism.His antagonists are nothing than a bunch of bleating straw men whose only function is to be repeatedly knocked down by the neigh god-like hero of the story.

The overall effect is a story that seems petty, self-indulgent with a weak-as-water plot.

As I said, Forward has written some remarkable stories, but this is not one of them.Every author has a worst book and this one is it.

awful 2 and re-reviewed to a 2 star
The "hero" of the book acts and sounds like a 10 year old brat. The author might have a PhD in Physics but couldn't seem to come up with something that was readable. 58 pages and "that's all folks".

July 17 2010 - I was desperate for something th read and had forgotten I'd read part before so I read this all the way through. Some interesting ideas - but still only 2 stars.

Rip Roaring adventure in a time paradox
So here we have domesticated Aliens made of exotic negative matter
being the basis of interstellar travel. Throw in information transfer from the future and a really bad guy and you have adventure through space and time. This book is better than a lot of Forward's work as he
doesn't try to tie up all the scientific ends in an Einsteinian way. It is more like a Campbell romp or an Heinlein adventure story.
I enjoyed it and couldn't put it down which I can't say about the last Forward book I read.

Send This Book Back In Time!
Billed as the "definitive" book on time travel, Timemaster disappoints on so many levels it's pointless to list them. The most obvious criticism: How could a mind that understands the workings of physics miss the workings of culture and society? Clearly, Mr. Forward harkens from the "Greatest Generation" whose heroes were John Wayne, Errol Flynn and other, now mostly forgotten, larger-than-life examples of manhood in, say, the nineteen fifties. Did he not realize that people would move on and change in almost every way by 2036 - 2050?
This book feels like it was written by Ayn Rand! The slagging of animal rights activists and the worship of wealth and over-consumption completely ruined what was left of the plot for me. Normally, I don't drag my personal beliefs into a book...but this was simply way too much. I think this book was written by Forward in 1952 and sent, ahem, forward, to 1992 just to upset the more progressive SF readers! :-)

One of Robert Forward's Best. . .
This reviewer has noted time and time again, that Dr. Forward's novels excel in "hard science" but not so much in depth of character or development of plot.In "Timemaster" we still have the outstanding science -- with enough of an improvement in character and plot to satisfy most Sci-Fi fans.

When dealing with his "neg matter" plants -- and the opportunities such creatures would provide for relatively intstaneous space and time travel, Forward continues to fill his books with life forms radically different from anything we have (or can really imagine) on Earth -- and make them believable.

This one is a good read.I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fun hardboiled detective
The Owl isn't superhuman, but he's not exactly human either.He's basically batman, but replace the gadgets and cape with profanity and pistols.And that's okay; this is a fantastic, absorbing read.Highly recommended to genre fans, but probably not to ornithologists.

not to be confused with...
"The Owl" is a fine book, if you're a mystery/thriller lover.
For SF lovers, note that Robert D. Forward is not the same as Robert L. Forward, the science fiction writer.

The Owl
I'm a voracious reader of mysteries and thrillers and this is absolutely one of my top five favorite books.The authors' use of descriptive language is amazing.He makes you feel the streets as you follow The Owl through the action.This book is truly a page turner because the action just pops out of nowhere. If you like Andrew Vachss you'll love this book!

Fast-paced, an excellent read for any fans of the genre.
This is one of my favorite books of all time.I find the character compelling.The action, while not always believable (suspension of disbelief is big here) is non-stop.The intensity level of the Owl never decreases.I would highly recommend this book to any fans of Robert B. Parker, Andrew Vachss, Denis LeHane.I also find it a shame that I've never been able to find any other books along these lines from the author. ... Read more

Product Description
Only the cheela can survive on Dragon's Egg, a neutron star with surface gravity sixty-seven billion times that of earth's--but when a monstrous starquake strikes, human astronauts must abandon them or die saving the cheela from extinction. Reissue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Used book in excellent condition
The seller described the book perfectly as to its condition. I was very happy to find this out of print title being one of my favorite reads.

One of the best in the 'Hard Sci-Fi' arena
This is 'the' book that hooked me on 'hard Sci-Fi'.It is way out there but it is also very plausible.The story grabs you and pulls you in..you live it as the main characters.. not knowing what is going on.. and youdiscover, with them, great things.The aliens are us!

Top Of The Line Science Fiction
This is the very best in Scifi that I have read. I have loaned it out tonumerous people who felt the same way and one friend wouldn't let go so Iam searching for another copy now! It has twists and turns that leave youbreathless and the characters are extremely well developed. Read this!

One of the best science fiction books I have ever read
Dragon's Egg, I feel, is a better book thn Starquake, but they are both excellent stories. The narrative device used, especially in Dragon's Egg, adds interest as it leaves the reader to make a very important discovery about the Cheela. In addition, Dragon's Egg gives historians something to chew on as it is not only based on hard science but also historical theory as well. Would such a different society pass through the same developmental stages as human society?Dragons Egg is one of my four all-time favourite books; I re-read it (again) to celebrate World Book Day and it is still an excellent read. There are not many books that can stand re-reading and still maintain the reader's interest. Ideal for people who think they don't like "hard" science fiction.

excellent hard-science novels
If you're not excited by feeling your mind being stretched by science that is right at the very edge of theoretical physics, then you may be someone who thinks this book is "boring".If you aren't filled with wonder as an entire utterly alien civilization is presented to you, then you might not like this book.

But if you're enraptured by a plausible alien civilization that uses almost future-magic technology which is nevertheless comprehensible (especially if you're an avid reader of physics journals or popularizations), then this book will be one of your favorites.

Negatives: Bob Forward is at his best when writing about the science; he is weakest when writing dialog.For the alien dialog, this isn't really a problem, but sometimes the way his human characters phrase their sentences will make one wince.I found this fairly easy to overlook, but others may not. ... Read more