Poul Anderson (1926-2001), ”Tau Zero”, 1970 was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Carl Sagan (1934-1996), “Contact: A Novel”, 1985 also was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Here I present: Robert Forward, “Dragon’s Egg”, 1980.
The book consists seven (7) chapters and a technical appendix. The first chapter is a prologue. The table of contents is shown BELOW.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
- Prologue.
- Pulsar.
- Volcano.
- God.
- Trek.
- Contact.
- Interaction.
- Technical Appendix.
The first sentence of each chapter is shown BELOW.
Chapter #1. Time 500,000 BC. Buu lay in his leafy arbor nest and looked up at the stars in the dark sky.
Chapter #2. Time_Thursday 23 April 2020. Jacqueline Carnot strode over to a long table in the data processing lab in the CCCP-NASA-ESA Deep Space Research Center at CalTech.
Chapter #3. Broken-Petal flowed his elongated body down through the ragged rows of petal plants, anxiously feeling swelling of the ripening pods on the underside of each plant with his tendrils.
Chapter #4. Time_22:12:30 GMT, Tuesday 14 June 2050. God came to the “cheela” slowly: for many, many, many generations, the “cheela” had no God.
Chapter #5. TIME: 07:54:43 GMT, Monday 20 June 2050. Commander Swift-Killer fixed her attention out toward the horizon.
Chapter #6. TIME: 07:58:24.2 GMT, Monday 20 June 2050. The wide angle X-ray/ultraviolet scanner on Dragon Slayer detected a moderately strong pulsed emission in the east pole mountains.
Chapter #7. TIME: 08:42:05 GMT, Monday 20 June 2050. Swift-Killer moved slowly through the compound of the Inner Eye Institute in Bright’s Heaven.
BOOK LAST SENTENCE. Goodbye, Pierre said as the screen blanked: he turned to Amalita, I’ll put away the “HoloMem” crystal, and you start checking out the acceleration tanks, he said, “It’s time to go home!”
Here I presented: Robert Forward (1932-2002), “Dragons Egg”, 1980.
SUMMARY.
Dragon’s Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by “cheela”, intelligent creatures the size of a sesame seed who live, think and develop a million times faster than humans.
Most of the novel, is from May to June 2050, chronicles the “cheela”civilization beginning with its discovery of agriculture to advanced technology and its first face-to-face contact with humans, who are observing the hyper-rapid evolution of the “cheela” civilization from orbit around Dragon’s Egg.
