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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 23, 2008 8:34:39 GMT -4
The in-joke is about Dragon's Egg and sequelae by Dr. Robert Forward (he of Forward Mass Detector fame). It involves little critters called cheela that live on a neutron star and run on nuclear, not chemical, biological processes. The upshot is that the cheela live and evolve much, much quicker than we do, growing from ignorant primitives to deep-space-faring creatures far in advance of humans, all during the brief visit of an Earth spacecraft.
Forward doesn't have a brilliant writing style, but the story is entertaining. I have the sequels, Starquake and... something else, but the first book is the longest and best by far.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 23, 2008 11:50:56 GMT -4
The Cheela eventually build their own starships, with artificial singularities carried onboard to prevent them from flying apart. They send a scout ship out to have a look at the humans who have observed them for all of their recorded history (a matter of days to humans). The poor Cheela in the scout ship has to sit in one place for what seems like days to him just to give the human a glimpse of a few seconds out the window.
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Post by Ginnie on Oct 23, 2008 18:40:26 GMT -4
The Cheela eventually build their own starships, with artificial singularities carried onboard to prevent them from flying apart. They send a scout ship out to have a look at the humans who have observed them for all of their recorded history (a matter of days to humans). The poor Cheela in the scout ship has to sit in one place for what seems like days to him just to give the human a glimpse of a few seconds out the window. You must have read every SF book ever written, Jason.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 23, 2008 20:41:16 GMT -4
Not even close, but the ones I do read I usually remember.
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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 27, 2008 9:49:31 GMT -4
The humans feel the gravitational pull of the tiny spacecraft, which they see briefly as a red dot. The Cheela cures one of the spacewomen of precursory breast cancer she doesn't even know she has (he can see in the X-ray waveband) with a zap from an X-ray laser. Unfortunately, he then crashes into the Earth ship's windows, leaving a tiny pit in the glass.
My favourite bit is where the Cheela sign off for good, just mentioning in passing that they have travelled to the solar system in the previous couple of hours, found a few small black holes in the sun and removed them for us.
Then the blockbuster that they have sent us the secret to faster-than-light travel, but that the key to the message is on a small moon in the Epsilon Eridani system.
I think Forward does a good job of making the Cheela believable and sympathetic characters The bizarre thing for me is that I don't care nearly so much for Pierre and his human crew.
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Post by Count Zero on Oct 27, 2008 12:20:53 GMT -4
I think Forward does a good job of making the Cheela believable and sympathetic characters The bizarre thing for me is that I don't care nearly so much for Pierre and his human crew.
That's consistent throughout all of Forward's novels. The writing for the human characters is (imo) lousy - they read like bad Russian novels. His aliens, on the other hand are wonderfully written. Each is unique and lively - and often hilarious.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Oct 27, 2008 13:14:21 GMT -4
Like much of Sci-Fi, Forward was primarily interested in the setting and situation, so the characterization of his human characters suffers.
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Post by dragonblaster on Oct 27, 2008 16:59:12 GMT -4
My favourite appropriate expression is "My, you're certainly taking no liberties with the original Latin!"
I don't think it's a case of over-investment in the Cheela. The human dialogue is stilted and clumsy, and littered with exposition. It's just not well written.
It's not a question of having only so much imagination and using it all up on one aspect of the story.
I write fantasy novels, and I certainly couldn't afford to skimp on the "secular" characters the way Forward short-changes his hominids.
But the long good bits with the Cheela saved it for me. I just tended to skim through the human parts except when they were interacting with the neutronic beings.
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Post by Count Zero on Oct 27, 2008 20:43:06 GMT -4
But the long good bits with the Cheela saved it for me. I just tended to skim through the human parts except when they were interacting with the neutronic beings.
Ditto.
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