Dragon Egg is a difficult 1980 science fiction novel by Robert L. Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity of 67 billion times that of Earth, and is inhabited by cheela, the intelligent creature the size of a living sesame seed, thinking and growing a million times faster than humans. Most novels, from May to June 2050, tell the story of the cheela civilization beginning with the invention of agriculture for advanced technology and the first face-to-face contact with humans, observing the rapid evolution of cheela civilization from orbit around the Dragon Egg.
This novel is considered a landmark in hard science fiction. As is typical of the genre, Dragon's Egg tries to communicate foreign ideas and imaginative scenes while giving sufficient attention to the known scientific principles involved.
Video Dragon's Egg
Ringkasan plot
Bintang neutron
Half a million years ago and 50 light years from Earth, the star in the constellation Draco turned the supernova, and the rest of the star became a neutron star. Radiation from the explosion causes mutations in many Earth organisms, including a group of hominina that became the ancestors of Homo sapiens. The short-lived starter plasma jet has a large side due to anomalies in its magnetic field, and puts it on a path that passes in 250 solar astronomical units. By 2020, human astronomers detect neutron stars, calling them "Dragon Eggs", and by 2050 they send expeditions to explore them.
The star contains about half of the sun's matter, compressed to a diameter of about 20 kilometers (12 miles), making its surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth. Its outer skin, which is compressed to about 7,000 kg per cubic centimeter, is primarily an iron core with a high neutron concentration, coated with about 1 millimeter (0.039 inches) of white dwarf star material. Atmosphere, mostly steam iron, about 5 cm (2.0 inches) thick. The star shrinks slightly as it cools, causing cracking crust and producing mounts as high as 5 to 100 millimeters (0.20 to 3.94 inches). Large volcanos, formed by a liquid material coming out of deep cracks, can have many centimeters high and hundreds of meters in diameter, and will eventually collapse, causing the starfish.
Around 3000Ã,Â, BC Dragon's Egg cools enough to allow stable equality of "chemistry", in which "compounds" are built from nuclei bound by strong forces, not Earth atoms bound by electromagnetic forces. Because the chemical process of the star is about a million times faster than the self-replicating "molecule", the Earth appears immediately and life begins on that star. As the star continues to cool, more complex life evolves, until plant-like organisms appear around 1000 BC. This lineage then becomes the first "animal", the earliest of the grains that steal from the sessile organism and some of the bloodlines then become predators.
Adults of the most intelligent species of stars, called cheela (no flexibility for sex or numbers), have the same mass as adult humans. However, the extreme gravity of Dragon's Egg suppresses cheela into the volume of sesame seeds, but with a flat shape of about 0.5 millimeters (0.020 inches) high and about 5 millimeters (0.20 inches) in diameter. Their eyes are 0.1 millimeters (0.0039 inches) wide. Such small eyes can see clearly only in the ultraviolet and, in good light, the longest wavelength of the X-ray band.
Growth of civilization
In 2032, cheela develops the first weapons and racial tactics while tackling dangerous predators. In November 2049, human expeditions to Dragon's Egg began to build orbital facilities. The rest of the story, including most of the history of the cheela civilization, starts from May 22, 2050 to June 21, 2050. Based on human standards, the "day" in Dragon's Egg is about 0.2 seconds, and typical cheela lifespan is about 40 minutes.
One clan set up the first cheela farm, which carries a predictable but provoking provoking supply of grumbling about repetitive work. Shortly after, a volcano appeared in the area, and the clan created the first sledge to bring food from further sources. However, in several generations the volcano littered the ground. One clan leads its population on a long and difficult journey to a new, fertile, uninhabited region. Although a genius created mathematics to calculate and measure the food supply of the band, his situation of despair and the survival of the clan depended on the self-sacrifice of the eldest members.
For generations, cheela came to worship human spacecraft as a god, and their record of satellite movements caused them to develop writing. A few generations later, cheela built an arena to accommodate thousands of worshipers. Humans look at this novel and feature very regularly, concluding that intelligent creatures inhabit stars, and use lasers to send simple messages. Cheela astronomers slowly realize that this is a diagram of the spacecraft, the satellite and its crew - a very skinny creature, who communicates with frustrating frustrations, and it seems almost 10% during the big arena of cheela. A cheela engineer proposes to send a message to humans. Because his effort to transmit from civilizational zones was ineffective, he traveled to the mountains to send directly under the spacecraft - conquering the instinctive fear of heights to a flat creature living on 67 billion gallons. Humans recognize the message and realize that cheela lives a million times faster than humans.
Since real time conversations are not possible, humans send part of the expedition library. After reading the astronomical article, a cheela noticed that the half million supernovae of humans last year created their two races. Many cheela generations later, but only a few hours for humans, cheelas developed gravity manipulation. A few generations later, the cheela spacecraft visited humans. Though they still need extreme gravity fields to survive, cheela can now control them just right for both races to safely face each other against each other. Cheela has decided that transferring their technology, which is now much more advanced than humans, will inhibit human growth. However cheela left the clues in some challenging locations, before parting.
Maps Dragon's Egg
Introduction to plot
In Dragon's Egg , Forward describes the history and development of life forms ( Cheela ) that evolved on the surface of neutron stars (very dense stars, about 20 km diameter). This is the "dragon egg" of the title, so named because of Earth observed to be near the tail of the Draco star ("dragon"). The Cheela develops feelings and intelligence, albeit relatively small in size (Cheela individuals have around the volume of sesame seeds, but human masses) and intense gravitational fields that limit their movement in the third dimension. Much of this book deals with the biological and social developments of Cheela; The subplot is the arrival of a human ship near a neutron star, and the last contact made between a human and a Cheela. The main problem in this contact is that Cheela lives a million times faster than humans; Cheela year lasts about 30 seconds man.
Man arrives when Cheela is a savage and underdeveloped species, against rival clans in a subsistence-level society. In the human few days, equivalent to several thousand Cheela years, Cheela surpasses humans in technology, and humans are lovingly called "The Slow Ones".
Go forward to write the sequel to Dragon's Egg , called Starquake , which deals with the consequences of the burgeoning Cheela space travel, and seismic disruptions that kill most Cheela on the surface of neutron stars.
Development history
Author Robert L. Forward describes being inspired by the suggestion of astronomer Frank Drake in 1973 that intelligent life can inhabit the neutron star. The physical model in 1973 implies that Drake beings will be microscopic. By the time Forward is putting together books, new models show that cheela will be the size of a sesame seed. Then Maju finds a previous letter in which he discusses the idea of ​​a high-gravity life in the Sun with Hal Clement's science fiction novel.
Advanced is a scientist and writer Larry Niven in a tutorial on science fiction writing, and later that night, Forward and Niven agreed to collaborate in a novel about aliens on neutron stars. However, Niven soon found himself too preoccupied with Lucifer Hammer , where he had written with Jerry Pournelle. Go ahead to write his own first draft, but some publishers suggest the story should be rewritten by Niven or Pournelle - who are still busy. Finally editor Lester del Rey gave a guiding commentary forward through two rewrites, and del Rey then bought the novel. Continue to describe the work as a "neutron star physics textbook disguised as a novel".
Publishing history
In English:
In other languages:
Meaning and acceptance of Literature
The science fiction critic John Clute wrote that the novel "produces a positive, positive curiosity", says it is "the romance of science". Chris Aylott described it as "a small classic science fiction - one that showcases the best and worst elements of SF hard...... sure ideas come first." He found boring human writings, but appreciated Forward's ability to share his appeal with cheela and to create racing communication that lived at a very different pace.
Lambourne, Shallis, and Shortland assume that the detailed research and construction of the scenario makes Dragon's Egg an excellent example of hard science fiction. Scientist Seth Shostak described the science of the book as "fantasy but impossible to ignore".
John Pierce also considers Dragon's Egg the best hard science fiction, while Martian Rainbow's (Martian Rainbow's) future novel (1991) is the worst genre. Both novels have a cardboard human character, but this does not matter at Dragon's Egg , where the focus is on the deeper personality of the cheela character. This novel even makes the reader care about the fate of the cheating ruler who is not sympathetic, whose treatment of rejuvenation failed inadvertently. Pierce writes that the best work of this genre creates a literary experience, but one of an unusual type. Instead of offering a metaphor for the reality already recognized by the reader, they create a new reality in which the reader is caught.
Robert Lambourne considers Forward, especially in Dragon's Egg, as the successor of Hal Clement, whose Mission of Gravity provides the science's most powerful science-based example of science fiction. In Lambourne's opinion, hard fiction writers like Clement, Forward, and their successors are relatively few but greatly affect both the genre evolution and the public perception of the genre.
The novel's premise is then explored in the 2000 episode of Star Trek: Voyager Blink of an Eye and the final episode of season 2017 "Mad Idolatry" from The Orville, with some changes to the story (eg , fast living organisms have been transformed into humanoid species).
Awards and nominations
Dragon Egg won the 1981 Locus Award for the First Novel and was ranked 14th in the Novel Locus' SF category.
Sequel
In 1985, Forward published Starquake, a sequel to Dragon's Egg. Lambourne, Shallis and Shortland consider Starquake's scientific background as meticulous as Dragon's Egg '. In this novel, starfish disrupt cheela civilization, while humans on the spacecraft Dragon Slayer deal with their own problems.
References
Bibliography
Teruskan, R.L. (1980). "Lampiran Teknis". Telur Naga . New York: Buku Ballantine. pp. 286-308. ISBN 0-345-28349-X. Â
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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