# Help me remember this sci fi novel **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 9, 2012, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959 "2012-08-09T14:39:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/1 "2012-08-09T14:39:26Z")
Ok, my turn. I have vague memories of this great sci-fi novel I enjoyed in my younger days. It was based around life on a white star. On one side was this alien species that lived its day on the white star, and on the other side were humans, perhaps? Life on the white star was subject to a sort of time dilation, so every hour the humans talked to the creatures it was a year of their lives (or something akin to that). Eventually they made robots or other artificial creatures to talk to the humans so they wouldn’t have to sacrifice a year just for a conversation. I don’t remember much else except I remember at the end of the book the author had pages and pages of mathematical proofs to show that life on a white dwarf star was at least conceivable. I just remember the central plot. Any help? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/2 "2012-08-09T14:41:00Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Ok, my turn. > > I have vague memories of this great sci-fi novel I enjoyed in my younger days. It was based around life on a white star. On one side was this alien species that lived its day on the white star, and on the other side were humans, perhaps? Life on the white star was subject to a sort of time dilation, so every hour the humans talked to the creatures it was a year of their lives (or something akin to that). Eventually they made robots or other artificial creatures to talk to the humans so they wouldn’t have to sacrifice a year just for a conversation. > > I don’t remember much else except I remember at the end of the book the author had pages and pages of mathematical proofs to show that life on a white dwarf star was at least conceivable. I just remember the central plot. > > Any help? Sounds a lot like “Dragon’s Egg” by Robert Forward ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/3 "2012-08-09T14:42:55Z")
[del]Holy shit that was really goddamn fast.[/del] What took you so long? 😃 Reading it on Wiki, it certainly sounds right. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/4 "2012-08-09T14:47:42Z")
It certainly sounds like Robert Forward’s _Dragon’s Egg_ to me. The humans didn’t live ON the white dwarf, because they’d have been crushed by the gravity. Even to apoproach required a special craft. The white dwarf-dwellers had a different time scale, because nucloear reactions are faster than chemical reactions. Forward wrote a sequel, _Starquake_, but I didn’t think it was as good. This was his first novel. I heard about it at a convention when Frederick Pohl, the GoH, mentioned it in his talk and recommended it. He’d been one of the reviewers. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/5 "2012-08-09T14:49:05Z")
That’s the book. I really enjoyed it, so thanks. I put it on my Kindle list for next month. I am amazed. It took Andy about 1.5 minutes to solve that one. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/6 "2012-08-09T15:37:45Z")
Ask a hard one next time. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/7 "2012-08-09T23:22:33Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > [del]Holy shit that was really goddamn fast.[/del] What took you so long? 😃 Reading it on Wiki, it certainly sounds right. Glad to help. This was a pretty easy well - a well-known novel that you remembered fairly unique details about. There are probably dozens of people on the SDMB who could have answered within moments of seeing your post - I was just lucky enough to see it first. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/8 "2012-08-10T01:00:56Z")
[Nitpick](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg): It was a neutron star, not a white dwarf. > [@](#): > > In the story, Dragon’s Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures that have the volume of sesame seeds and live a million times faster than humans. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/9 "2012-08-10T03:28:30Z")
It also may have inspired one of the few pretty good _Star Trek: Voyager_ episodes: [Blink of an Eye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)) ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/10 "2012-08-10T09:03:18Z")
Forward also wrote a few other books, which you might enjoy. Even though **CalMeacham** doesn’t think that _Starquake_ was as good, I still found it quite readable. Forward wrote \*Rocheworld, \*which had intelligent life living on a double planet that was so close that the planets shared a sea, and _Camelot 3K_, which had aliens that were intelligent in their own right, but also had a shared mind, and they didn’t die of old age. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2012, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-remember-this-sci-fi-novel/630959/11 "2012-08-12T04:15:56Z")
It also sounds suspiciously like Iain Banks’ _The Algebraist_, which makes me wonder if Banks poached bits of his book from Forward.