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Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
May. 28th, 2023 03:59 pmNot bingo, I just had a lot of thoughts!
On some level, (speculative) fiction works on a literary version of the anthropic principle. No matter how strange the events are, they have to be comprehensible to human readers, and if there are human characters in the book, to them too. Otherwise, no story. When I was reading "A Desolation Called Peace," this occurred to me, and I speculated then that "A type of creature who lived on timescales that were orders of magnitude greater or lesser than ours is never going to be able to carry on a conversation with us." Meanwhile, in Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace has this initial fear upon making first contact. Later, he concludes that characters from different species point out that they're both affected by gravity, and they need to be able to think, run, and find food/avoid predators/throw objects at a comparable speed.
Well, in "Dragon's Egg," the fundamental premise is "what if aliens really did have experience life a million times faster than humans, and we made first contact anyway." Which is so creative and original that I was very impressed, and now I wonder why more stories haven't tried this!
Forward was, IRL, a neutron star researcher, so yeah, he absolutely did do the research on this one. The book was written in 1980 and the "human" part of the plot begins in the "distant future" of 2020, so it's amusing to see what he got right and wrong--in this future, the Cold War quietly fizzled out and space exploration became a lesser priority, but it's now a peaceful collaboration between the USSR/US/Europe. Thrifty academics still have to plot graphs themselves even though the computer could do it for them, because computers will charge you for each computation and that comes out of your advisor's budget. And when the neutron star makes its closest approach to the solar system, its gravity will slightly perturb the outer planets, "especially Pluto." Too soon! :P
Because of the huge timescale, the alien "cheela" civilization discover agriculture, mathematics, religion, empire, and warfare in about a human month, so we obviously aren't going to follow any individual characters over that entire timespan. Instead we get short snippets of cheela discoveries at different stages of their evolution. One of the cheela discovers the idea of "bijection" without having names for numbers beyond three, and uses this to challenge her clan leader for dominance because she realizes their food scarcity. I suspect "One Two Three...Infinity" may have been an influence here.
There are some passages that are cute in that they successfully get across how inhuman the cheela are, while still making sense without a background in neutron star physics. Like, this passage of cheela sex is weirdly adorable?
I did think the "female grad student has her findings get famous under her male advisor's name" and "female cheela military officer and namesake of an important encampment is dimly remembered as maybe some male generations after her time" were less one-note and more "it do be like that sometimes," though. Also, while the cheela are sexually dimorphic, their social structures are different from humans; hatchlings are raised in a collective "egg pen" by the Old Ones who are no longer engaged in combat, and in almost every situation wouldn't know who their birth parents were. Neat worldbuilding.
On some level, (speculative) fiction works on a literary version of the anthropic principle. No matter how strange the events are, they have to be comprehensible to human readers, and if there are human characters in the book, to them too. Otherwise, no story. When I was reading "A Desolation Called Peace," this occurred to me, and I speculated then that "A type of creature who lived on timescales that were orders of magnitude greater or lesser than ours is never going to be able to carry on a conversation with us." Meanwhile, in Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace has this initial fear upon making first contact. Later, he concludes that characters from different species point out that they're both affected by gravity, and they need to be able to think, run, and find food/avoid predators/throw objects at a comparable speed.
Well, in "Dragon's Egg," the fundamental premise is "what if aliens really did have experience life a million times faster than humans, and we made first contact anyway." Which is so creative and original that I was very impressed, and now I wonder why more stories haven't tried this!
Forward was, IRL, a neutron star researcher, so yeah, he absolutely did do the research on this one. The book was written in 1980 and the "human" part of the plot begins in the "distant future" of 2020, so it's amusing to see what he got right and wrong--in this future, the Cold War quietly fizzled out and space exploration became a lesser priority, but it's now a peaceful collaboration between the USSR/US/Europe. Thrifty academics still have to plot graphs themselves even though the computer could do it for them, because computers will charge you for each computation and that comes out of your advisor's budget. And when the neutron star makes its closest approach to the solar system, its gravity will slightly perturb the outer planets, "especially Pluto." Too soon! :P
Because of the huge timescale, the alien "cheela" civilization discover agriculture, mathematics, religion, empire, and warfare in about a human month, so we obviously aren't going to follow any individual characters over that entire timespan. Instead we get short snippets of cheela discoveries at different stages of their evolution. One of the cheela discovers the idea of "bijection" without having names for numbers beyond three, and uses this to challenge her clan leader for dominance because she realizes their food scarcity. I suspect "One Two Three...Infinity" may have been an influence here.
There are some passages that are cute in that they successfully get across how inhuman the cheela are, while still making sense without a background in neutron star physics. Like, this passage of cheela sex is weirdly adorable?
They took turns kneading on each other's topsides with their treads, concentrating on their favorite spots. Then with their eye-stubs firmly entwined to pull their very edges together, their mutual vibrations raised in pitch with an electronic tingle adding a overtone of spice to the massage. Finally, in a multiple spasm of their bodies, a dozen tiny perimeter orifices just under North-Wind's eye-stubs opened--to emit a small portion of his inner juices into the waiting folds around Swift-Killer's eye-stubs.
D'aww. Unfortunately, there is some weird 80s sexism in both the human and cheela depictions; the human women are totally beautiful and effeminate while also being science geniuses, and "warriors out on patrol like to pair off for 'recreation' during off hours" gets repeated ad nauseum for the cheela. Similarly, the "religious experience" triggered by scanner light waves from the human spacecraft is compared to orgasm. Are there no other pleasurable experiences to talk about, really?I did think the "female grad student has her findings get famous under her male advisor's name" and "female cheela military officer and namesake of an important encampment is dimly remembered as maybe some male generations after her time" were less one-note and more "it do be like that sometimes," though. Also, while the cheela are sexually dimorphic, their social structures are different from humans; hatchlings are raised in a collective "egg pen" by the Old Ones who are no longer engaged in combat, and in almost every situation wouldn't know who their birth parents were. Neat worldbuilding.
There's an in-universe "appendix" with some of the scientific data gleaned from the trek; one of the scientists is a descendant of Frank Drake, and the "main" human character, Pierre Niven, writes a book about his experiences that becomes "the only book to win the Nobel, Pulitzer, Hugo, Nebula, and Moebius prizes in the same year." *Obama giving Obama a medal meme*
But ultimately, the fact that the humans are able to beam down their encyclopedias of knowledge to the cheela, and the next day receive a transmission about the cheela's new discoveries on FTL travel, is an incredibly cool if poignant premise. "These fifteen-minute lifetime friendships are hard on the emotions," Drake points out, but science this imaginative can make up for the inherent characterization limitations on the cheela's part.
