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Robert L. Forward - "Dragon's Egg"
Posted by Michael Sympson on 29/9/2001, 2:57:29
Science fiction is not my regular diet - but I like it. It is imaginative literature by its very definition. However I soon found out that most of this stuff uses to suffer from poor writing, and if it is not, it is either poor in imagination or short of science. I don't mean this to belittle anything. Good writers in SF are as exceptional as good writers in every other field. The latter have only a better lobby. Still the fact remains, that many icons in science fiction have a reputation for all the wrong reasons, if it is the quality of writing that matters.
Take C. Arthur Clarke for example. Like most of his reader I like the wry humor of his stories - I remember a story located on Mars, Science fiction's favorite place since Kepler's (the astronomer's) novel from the 1640s. A thief was trying to burglarize the museum for indigenous artifacts and caught red-handed. Since the budget can't afford the human and financial resources, guess where the thief is serving his time? As security guard in the museum. During the 50s Clarke's stories would convey sheer magic. In "Childhood's End," "The Sands of Mars," "The City and the Stars," "The other Side of the Sky," "Deep Range."
However, there is little to redeem Clarke the writer: wooden dialogues, protagonists with less
character than the Jacks and Queens in a pack of cards, a style that reads like a parody on
British Movies from the 1940s. It mixes well with a hearty appreciation of the cliche ("why is it that all doctors are atheists.") And when the 50s came to an end, Clarke had lost his touch. "2001, A Space Odyssey," is even more boring than Kubrick's film. So in more than one sense Clarke represents the majority of lesser writers in SF.
They share his shortcomings as a writer, but barely match his imagination, and often go with much less of science. Or they have a profound education in sciences and undeniable talent, but still lack in the character department. Baxter's "Titan" is a well composed, well researched, and ambitiously written novel, but it should have ended before the last chapter. The pains of the marooned team on Titan ooze a heart-breaking authenticity. The characters don't. Besides it is difficult to write a novel about the technology of, say, the year 2,200 AD. which won't be already antiquated in five years from now.
But what, if a writer is actually aware of his own shortcomings, like Robert Forward? Well one way to circumvent the difficulties is to structure the narrative in little news reels, discontinuous scenes and log entries, interspersed with articles from a fictional encyclopedia. (Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Series" are another example.) The inventor of this method is Jorge Luis Borges. But he is in a different league altogether, and proof that SF is not a license for poor writing. So Mr. Forward as a writer had to make due with whatever gifts the good Lord has endowed him, in order to convey a truly stunning piece of imagination. It is hard to fancy Aliens more alien than Mr. Forward's Cheela.
To begin with: these creatures live on the surface of a neutron-star. One should think the steep
gravity and hostile chemistry should exclude any possibility of sentient life. But this is just a bias of us carbon-based life forms in the sheltered comfort of our pretty blue planet. Forward develops a coherent biochemical hypothesis. The physics are interesting too: Neutron stars are the next best thing to black holes. Their gravity curves space-time to such degree that time on the surface compresses a normal human lifetime to barely 45 minutes. This is a real compression of time, not a shortened life span like the difference between bacteria and human. It is a variant to Einstein's twin-paradox.
So a Cheela in his environment can do in 45 minutes for what a human may spend 80 years.
Imagine what this means if such civilization on an asynchronous time line establishes communication with our's - or vice versa. The physics are impeccable, but the Cheela's social life is as ridiculous as the Indians' in James Fenimore Cooper. And we all remember Mark Twain's scathing ridicule of Cooper-Indians, don't we? And not unlike Cooper's "Deer Slayer," the story trudges along at a painfully slow pace and lacks all of C. Arthur Clarke's undeniable sense of comedy. A missed opportunity. Two races of sentient beings so extremely different should open up to all sorts of comic relief.
(Which reminds me: a Swedish author published in the sixties a novel about time travelling aliens who foraged human history for their space travelling freak-show in the higher dimensions. It was absolutely hilarious, a forerunner of "The Hitchhiker's Guide" - but I lost the book long ago and forgot title and author. If this rings a bell with anyone, please drop me an email at michaelsympson@prodigy.com.) If physics don't interest you, you are not in for a treat. For the hard core SF-buff it is a meal. If only the writer would have been able to live up to the story's promise.
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