''Dragon's Egg'' is a 1980

hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...

novel by American writer

Robert L. Forward Robert Lull Forward (August 15, 1932 – September 21, 2002) was an American physicist and science fiction writer. His literary work was noted for its scientific credibility and use of ideas developed from his career as an aerospace engineer. He ...

. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. w ...

with a

surface gravity The surface gravity, ''g'', of an astronomical object is the gravitational acceleration experienced at its surface at the equator, including the effects of rotation. The surface gravity may be thought of as the acceleration due to gravity experien ...

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...

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, 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. As is typical of the

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

, ''Dragon's Egg'' attempts to communicate unfamiliar ideas and imaginative scenes while giving adequate attention to the known scientific principles involved.

Plot summary

The neutron star

Half a million years ago and 50

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

from Earth, a star in the constellation

Draco Draco is the Latin word for serpent or dragon. Draco or Drako may also refer to: People * Draco (lawgiver) (from Greek: Δράκων; 7th century BC), the first lawgiver of ancient Athens, Greece, from whom the term ''draconian'' is derived * ...

turns supernova, and the star's remnant becomes a

. The radiation from the explosion causes

mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral repl ...

s in many Earth organisms, including a group of

hominina Australopithecina or Hominina is a subtribe in the tribe Hominini. The members of the subtribe are generally ''Australopithecus'' (cladistically including the genera ''Homo'', ''Paranthropus'', and ''Kenyanthropus''), and it typically includes ...

that become the ancestors of ''

Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

''. The star's short-lived plasma jets are lop-sided because of anomalies in its magnetic field, and set it on a course passing within 250

astronomical unit The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and approximately equal to or 8.3 light-minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits ...

s of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. In 2020 AD, human astronomers detect the neutron star, call it "Dragon's Egg", and in 2050 they send an expedition to explore it. The star contains about half of a solar mass of matter, compressed into a

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid fo ...

of about , making its

times that of Earth. Its outer crust, compressed to about 7,000 kg per

cubic centimeter A cubic centimetre (or cubic centimeter in US English) (SI unit symbol: cm3; non-SI abbreviations: cc and ccm) is a commonly used unit of volume that corresponds to the volume of a cube that measures 1 cm × 1 cm × 1 cm. One cub ...

, is mainly iron nuclei with a high concentration of

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...

s, overlaid with about of

white dwarf star A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes f ...

material. The atmosphere, mostly iron vapor, is about thick. The star shrinks slightly as it cools, causes the crust to crack and produce mountains high. Large

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

es, formed by liquid material oozing from deep cracks, can be many centimeters high and hundred meters in diameter, and will eventually collapse, causing starquakes. Forward: Dragon's Egg (technical), pp. 287-289 Around 3000 BC Dragon's Egg cools enough to allow a stable equivalent of " chemistry", in which "

compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...

s" are constructed of nuclei bound by the

strong force The strong interaction or strong force is a fundamental interaction that confines quarks into proton, neutron, and other hadron particles. The strong interaction also binds neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei, where it is called the ...

, rather than of Earth's

atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...

s bound by the

electromagnetic force In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions o ...

. As the star's chemical processes are about one million times faster than Earth's, self-replicating "molecules" appear shortly and

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...

begins on the star. As the star continues to cool, more complex life evolves, until plant-like organisms appear around 1000 BC. One lineage of these later became the first "animals", the earliest of these stealing seedpods from

sessile Sessility, or sessile, may refer to: * Sessility (motility), organisms which are not able to move about * Sessility (botany), flowers or leaves that grow directly from the stem or peduncle of a plant * Sessility (medicine), tumors and polyps that ...

organisms and some later lineages becoming

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s. Forward: Cheela physiology, pp. 292-296 The adults of the star's most intelligent species, called cheela (no flexion for gender or number), have about the same mass as an adult human. However, the extreme gravity of Dragon's Egg compresses the cheela to the volume of a sesame seed, but with a flattened shape about high and about in diameter. Their eyes are wide. Such minute eyes can see clearly only in

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...

and, in good light, the longest

wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, t ...

s of the

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

band.

Growth of civilization

In 2032, a cheela develops the race's first weapon and tactics while overcoming a dangerous predator. In November 2049 a human expedition to Dragon's Egg starts building orbital facilities. The rest of the story, including almost the whole history of cheela civilization, spans from 22 May 2050 to 21 June 2050. By humans' standards, a "day" on Dragon's Egg is about 0.2 seconds, and a typical cheela's lifetime is about 40 minutes. Forward: Cheela time scales, pp. 298-299 One clan organizes the first cheela agriculture, which brings predictable food supply but provokes grumbling about the repetitive work. Shortly after, a volcano emerges in the area, and the clan invents the first

sledge A sled, skid, sledge, or sleigh is a land vehicle that slides across a surface, usually of ice or snow. It is built with either a smooth underside or a separate body supported by two or more smooth, relatively narrow, longitudinal runners s ...

to carry food from more distant sources. However, within a few generations the volcano pollutes the soil. One clan leads its population on a long, arduous journey to new territory that is fertile and uninhabited. Although one genius invents mathematics to calculate and measure the band's food supply, the situation is desperate and the clan's survival depends on the self-sacrifice of the oldest members. Over the course of generations, the cheela come to worship the humans' spacecraft as a god, and their records of its satellites' movements cause them to develop writing. Several generations later, the cheela build an arena to accommodate thousands of worshippers. The humans notice this novel and very regular feature, conclude that intelligent beings inhabit the star, and use a laser to send simple messages. Cheela astronomers gradually realize that these are diagrams of the spaceships, its satellites and its crew – impossibly spindly creatures, who communicate with frustrating slowness, and are apparently almost 10% as long as the cheela's great arena. A cheela engineer proposes to send messages to the humans. As her attempts to transmit from the civilization's territory are ineffective, she travels to a mountain range to transmit directly under the spacecraft – conquering the fear of heights that is instinctive for flattened creatures living in 67 billion '' g''. The humans recognize her message and realize that the cheela live a million times faster than humans. Since real-time conversations are impossible, the humans send sections of the expedition's library. After reading an astronomy article, a cheela realizes that the supernova half a million human years ago created both their races. Many cheela generations later, but only a few hours for humans, cheelas develop gravity manipulation. A few generations later, a cheela spacecraft visits the human one. Although they still need extreme gravity fields to survive, the cheela can now control them precisely enough for both races to see each other face-to-face in safety. The cheela have decided that transferring their technologies, now far advanced of humans', would stunt humanity's development. However the cheela leave clues in several challenging locations, before going their separate ways.

Plot introduction

In ''Dragon's Egg'', Forward describes the history and development of a life form (the ''Cheela'') that evolves on the surface of a

(a highly dense collapsed star, about 20 km in diameter). This is the "dragon's egg" of the title, so named because from Earth it is observed to be near the tail of the constellation

("the dragon"). The Cheela develop sentience and intelligence, despite their relative small size (an individual Cheela has approximately the volume of a

sesame seed Sesame ( or ; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a flowering plant in the genus '' Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cu ...

, but the mass of a human) and an intense gravity field that restricts their movement in the third dimension. Much of the book concerns the biologic and social development of the Cheela; a subplot is the arrival of a human vessel nearby the neutron star, and the eventual contact that is made between the humans and the Cheela. A major problem in this contact is that the Cheela live a million times more quickly than humans do; a Cheela year goes by in about 30 human seconds. The humans arrive when the Cheela are a savage, backward species, fighting rival clans in a subsistence-level society. Within a few human days, the equivalent of a few thousand Cheela years, the Cheela surpass the humans in technology, and the humans are affectionately called "the Slow Ones". Forward wrote a

sequel A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...

to ''Dragon's Egg'', called '' Starquake'', which deals with the consequences of the Cheela developing space travel, and of a seismic disturbance that kills most of the Cheela on the surface of the neutron star.

Development history

Writer

described being inspired by astronomer

Frank Drake Frank Donald Drake (May 28, 1930 – September 2, 2022) was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist. He began his career as a radio astronomer, studying the planets of the Solar System and later pulsars. Drake expanded his interests ...

's suggestion in 1973 that intelligent life could inhabit neutron stars. Physical models in 1973 implied that Drake's creatures would be microscopic. By the time Forward was outlining the book, newer models indicated that the cheela would be about the size of sesame seeds. Later Forward found an earlier letter in which he discussed the idea of high-gravity life in the

with science fiction novelist

Hal Clement Harry Clement Stubbs (May 30, 1922 – October 29, 2003), better known by the pen name Hal Clement, was an American science fiction writer and a leader of the hard science fiction subgenre. He also painted astronomically oriented artworks under ...

. Forward was the scientist and

Larry Niven Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are '' Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, '' The Mote in God's E ...

the author in a tutorial on science fiction writing, and later that evening Forward and Niven agreed to collaborate on a novel on aliens on a neutron star. However, Niven soon found himself too busy with ''

Lucifer's Hammer ''Lucifer's Hammer'' is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. Two issues of a planned si ...

'', on which he was already co-writing with

Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s ...

. Forward wrote the first draft himself, but several publishers suggested the story should be rewritten by Niven or Pournelle – who were still busy. Finally editor

Lester del Rey Lester del Rey (June 2, 1915 – May 10, 1993) was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and scienc ...

provided comments that guided Forward through two rewrites, and del Rey then bought the novel. Forward described the work as "a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel".

Publication history

In English: In other languages:

Literary significance and reception

Quotes from the cover pages: *"This is one for the real science-fiction fan. John Campbell would have loved it." – Frank Herbert *"A gripping and logical account of the evolution of intelligence in an alien race." –

Charles Sheffield Charles Sheffield (25 June 1935 – 2 November 2002), an English-born mathematician, physicist and science-fiction writer, served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society. ...

*"Bob Forward writes in the tradition of

's '' Mission of Gravity'' and carries it a giant step (how else?) forward." – Isaac Asimov *"''Dragon's Egg'' is superb. I couldn't have written it; it required too much ''real'' physics." –

Science fiction critic John Clute wrote that the novel "generates a sense of wonder that is positively joyous", saying it was "a romance of science". Chris Aylott described it as "a minor classic of science fiction – one that shows off both the best and worst elements of hard SF. ... the ideas definitely come first." He found the writing of the human cast dull, but appreciated Forward's ability to share his fascination with the cheela and to create communications between races that lived at vastly different speeds.

Greg Costikyan Greg Costikyan (born July 22, 1959, in New York City), sometimes known under the pseudonym "Designer X", is an American game designer and science fiction writer. Costikyan's career spans nearly all extant genres of gaming, including: hex-based wa ...

reviewed ''Dragon's Egg'' in '' Ares Magazine'' #8 and commented that "''Dragon's Egg'' is interesting because it is the epitome of what "hard" science fiction is all about – extrapolation of the most interesting facets of scientific knowledge and speculation." Lambourne, Shallis, and Shortland consider that the research and detailed construction of the scenario make ''Dragon's Egg'' an excellent example of hard science fiction. Scientist

Seth Shostak Seth Shostak (born July 20, 1943) is an American astronomer and author, and is currently the senior astronomer for the SETI Institute. Shostak hosts SETI's weekly radio show/podcast ''Big Picture Science'', has played himself numerous times in TV ...

described the book's science as "fanciful but impossible to dismiss". John Pierce also regarded ''Dragon's Egg'' as

at its best, while Forward's later novel ''Martian Rainbow'' (1991) was the genre at its worst. Both novels have cardboard human characters, but this does not matter in ''Dragon's Egg'', where the focus is on the deeper personalities of the cheela characters. The novel even makes readers care about the fate of an unsympathetic cheela ruler, whose

rejuvenation Rejuvenation is a medical discipline focused on the practical reversal of the aging process. Rejuvenation is distinct from life extension. Life extension strategies often study the causes of aging and try to oppose those causes in order to slow ...

treatment fails catastrophically. Pierce wrote that the best works of this genre create a literary experience, but one of an unusual kind. Instead of offering a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

for a reality the reader already recognizes, they create new realities in which the reader is caught up. Robert Lambourne regards Forward, especially in ''Dragon's Egg'', as the successor of

, whose '' Mission of Gravity'' exemplifies the most strongly science-based science fiction. In Lambourne's opinion hard science fiction authors like Clement, Forward and their successors have been relatively few but have strongly influenced both the genre's evolution and the public's perception of the genre.

Awards and nominations

''Dragon's Egg'' won the 1981

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...

for First Novel and placed 14th in Locus' SF Novel category.

Sequel

In 1985, Forward published '' Starquake'', a sequel to ''Dragon's Egg''. Lambourne, Shallis and Shortland consider ''Starquake''s scientific background as rigorous as ''Dragon's Egg''s. In this novel, a starquake disrupts cheela civilization, while humans aboard the

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle or machine designed to fly in outer space. A type of artificial satellite, spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, p ...

''Dragon Slayer'' deal with their own problems.

References

Bibliography

{{Locus Award Best First Novel American science fiction novels 1980 American novels Fiction set around neutron stars Fictional astronomical objects Fiction set in 2032 Fiction set in 2050 Novels set in the future Hard science fiction Del Rey books Novels by Robert L. Forward Debut science fiction novels 1980 science fiction novels Speculative evolution 1980 debut novels Novels about extraterrestrial life