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Comment by JackFr | Hacker News Reader

Great hard SF novel about creatures living on the surface of a neutron star: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg

Author was a physicist, engineer and gravity expert.

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I just recently read this and enjoyed it. One criticism is that although the physics is "hard" (i.e., relatively accurate), the sociology and psychology of the creatures is silly. Despite dramatically different biology, the creatures act extremely similar to humans with only a few bizarre tweaks (e.g., widespread polyamory and orgies, which play essentially zero role in plot development).

Yes, Forward does not have characters, in terms of agents with motivations and opinions. They are engineering constraints.

If you can treat these books as something like Socratic dialogue, or Medieval theatre, then you can get a feel for Forward's facility with gravitational dynamics. Quadrupole radiation. Relativistic mechanics.

This is a different criticism than the one I was making, although it's also basically valid.

Name a book where the sociology and psychology of alien creatures is not silly and similar to that of humans. Seriously, please do, because I'll read it :)

I agree this is a perennial problem. I think at least there are books where the aliens basically cannot be interpreted.

I loved the descriptions on how the move about the world and how they think about it, with "hard directions" and such. It's been a while since I've read it, but really enjoyed it.

this is one of my favorites, absolutely captivating

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