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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews Continued.........
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BOOK REVIEW: Review of Dragon's Egg and its sequel Starquake by Robert Forward
by Mark
Sit down faithful reader...a thoroughly positive review. As you may know by now, I enjoy science fiction that has a lot of science in it. Not that it has to have equations or be difficult to understand, but that it should be faithful to current science or extrapolate from current science. Robert Forward is a very well known physicist who was a principle scientist at a national lab. Now wrapped in the priestly robes of science fiction writer, he has taken his knowledge of planetary science and physics and married them into Dragon's Egg and its sequel Starquake. As you will see the scenario is pure fiction, with no precedence and almost no liklihood of occuring. However, this has not stopped Forward from requiring his characters from acting with a set universe of physical laws consistent with what is known today.
The story Dragon's Egg revolves around the discovery on earth of a celestial body drifting into the solar system. It is discovered that the "thing" is actually a neutron star and it is wandering on its way through the galaxy after being kicked out of its previous location relative to other stars following its nova. A nice thing is that this is a story of exploration not disaster; there is never a suggestion that this wandering cinder is going to hit or hurt earth. The earthlings launch a manned probe to gather information. What is not known to the humans is that there be life on this neutron star! What kind of life? Well it doesn't look human, but Forward's idea seems plausible given the gravitational and thermal extremities the environment provides. Furthermore the time frame for the life on this neutron star (dubbed Dragon's Egg) is much faster than human reference so life evolves at unprecendented rates to our experience. The story reflects the view of circumstances from. life on the neutron star (how they interpret the newly orbiting spaceship, and also from the human side (how the humans discover the improbable existance of life on a neutron star) and lastly how the two learn to communicate.
Starquake is a sequel to Dragon's Egg. It follows the continuing story of life on Dragon's Egg. The dramatic device in this novel is the effects of a seismic event on the neutron star's inhabitants. To be dramatic the event must be major and catastrophic. The humans observing the events try to help the survivors of the calamity, but the differences in time frame and the inability of humans to actually interact materially with the surface requires highly ingenious solutions.
This sort of story is really Forward's strength. Another novel by Forward, Saturn Ruik involves the possible life forms that might exist in Saturn's atmosphere and the eventual interaction with human kind. Saturn Ruik is highly readable, but not the caliber of Dragon's Egg. Another novel by Forward such as Timemaster (about the paradoxes of time travel) is so bad that I could not recommend it even to an avid reader.
Forward to Star Trek Voyager:
In a new development on the Dragon's Egg story, it may be possible for Star Trek Voyager fans to sample a Robert Forward story without actually having to read. The new episode "Blink of an Eye" (shown the week of 1/16/00) has many similarities to the novel Dragon's Egg. The Voyager episode has the intrepid (often insipid) crew and their ship get caught in the orbit of strange planet . Like Dragon's Egg there is life on the planet surface with time frames greatly sped up, and the surface life is religously affected by the appearance of the new star ( the Voyager spaceship in reality) in the sky. The Voyager crew watches the surface life evolve under its very fast time frame and there are various typical dramatic devices to insert a sense of urgency to the Voyager/surface life relationship.
I'm no big fan of Voyager, but this was one of Voyager's better episodes. If new ideas are hard to come by, than the intentional or coincidental use of literature fiction may be the best way to raise their dramatic standards.
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MOVIE BASED ON BOOK REVIEW: Neuromancer by William Gibson and The Matrix by the Wachowski Bros.
by Mark
Do you like to start a meal with dessert? Watch The Matrix before you read Neuromancer. The Matrix is one of the best science fiction movies ever made. I have watched Matrix five times now and I am hard pressed to find any weaknesses. Special effects are superb, acting is great, characters (even the villians) are engaging and likable, and the story, while fantasy, is thought provoking and is at least partially scientifically plausible. I'm not kidding myself, most of my dear readers have seen this movie, but I am grateful for the chance to rant on how good this movie is.
If you haven't seen The Matrix, let me set the scene. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves): mild mannered, introverted, computer programmer by day, computer hacker by night. Anderson is approached through his computer to come to a punk rock bar and there he meets a character Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss). She is the person who approached him through the computer and tells him she can show him what he is looking for in his hacking activities. Like Alice through the looking glass, Thomas Anderson becomes his hacker persona (named Neo) in reality and his Thomas Anderson identity is left behind as an unreal fiction.
Have the computers taken over and masked their dominance and expoitation of humankind by pulling a "matrix" over our eyes in which we seem to live normal lives that we see day in-day out? Can computers develop an intelligence, and develop goals so out of concert with human goals that we fight a war and take part in our own destruction? As a scientist I am all too aware of the abilities of science and the rapid pace of innovation. I personally believe that such a scenario is not impossible. However, an alternative future could have human evolution outpacing the abilities of machines by the artistic manipulation of the genetic code. If everyone has an IQ of 300 do we just become more adept at killing one another? Would we have a renaissance leading to the elimination of human suffering and continued subjugation of the machines?
I can also inform my dear readers who may not know, that two sequels to The Matrix are planned, and that the main characters have been contracted to reprise their roles. There is also talk of a prequel to the Matrix story which is a great idea, but what is not a great idea is the use of anime' Japanese animation for the purpose.
Neuromancer was written in 1984 by William Gibson. The jacket of the book proclaims that Neromancer is the novel that launched "Cyberpunk". The book jacket is loaded with lauditory comments, and it was a Nebula and Hugo award winner. Far be it from me to say a negative thing in the face of that. In fact you can clearly see where the Wachowski brothers who wrote and directed The Matrix were strongly influenced by Neuromancer and other works of Gibson.
Neuromancer is the story of a wasted computer hacker named Case who is plucked by a mysterious group of people to perform a job. One of the characters is Molly who is described with many similar characteristics to the character Trinity in The Matrix (also some differences). Case is asked to perform certain shady functions within the computer environment called coincidentally "the matrix". Some of the characters Case encounters are from "Zion" which is coincidentally an important location in the movie The Matrix. Within the book you are introduced to a self aware artificial intelligence that is looking to increase its abilities and influence. The movie The Matrix is not a plagarism of Neuromancer and Gibson, but there is clearly the footprints of Gibson across the Wachowski brothers' landscape.
For individuals actually planning to read Neuromancer let me at least warn you that this book is very difficult to read and often it's impossible to tell what is going on. Electrifying scenes and imagry will be followed by stretches of bewildering and impenetrable stuff. Here is an example:
"The walls here were raw steel, striped with rough brown ribbons of epoxy where some kind of covering had been ripped away. She'd hidden from a work crew, crouching, the fletcher cradled in her hands, her suit steel gray, while the two slender Africans and their balloon-tired workcart passed. The men had shaven heads and wore orange overalls. One was singing softly to himself in a language Case had never heard, the tones and melody alien and haunting"
Say what? All this description has nothing to do with anything that follows in the story so you are left by this passage and innumerable others asking yourself "what did that have to do with anything? Am I missing something?"
Don't let me stop you, pick it up and try to read it. If you finish you will not feel cheated, but you may walk away wondering what you didn't get.
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