# Dragon's Egg

![Book cover of Dragon's Egg](/books/covers/dragons_egg.jpg)

by [Robert L. Forward](/books/authors/robert_l_forward/)
Book 1 of [Cheela](/books/series/cheela/)
Awards: [Locus](/books/by-award/#locus-award), [2024 Favorites](/blog/favorite-books-of-2024/)
★★★★☆

## Review

_Dragon's Egg_ is a hard sci-fi novel by Robert L. Forward. It is the story of first
contact between humans and the Cheela: beings who live on a neutron star.

_Dragon's Egg_ is told through a series of vignettes, each one capturing a
pivotal moment in the Cheela's civilization: the invention of farming and
religion, their migration to the southern hemisphere, their first observation
of the human orbiter, their detection of the scanning laser and their first
contact with the humans, and so on. Rather than following a single overarching
narrative, the book chronicles the gradual progression of the Cheela's
society, which is a compelling enough premise in itself.

_Dragon's Egg_ was partially inspired by [Hal Clement](/books/authors/hal_clement/)'s [_Mission of Gravity_](/books/mission_of_gravity/), but it
also reminded me of [_Flatland_](/books/flatland_a_romance_of_many_dimensions/). Like the shapes in that book, the Cheela
are nearly two-dimensional due to the extreme gravitational gradient on their
neutron star. Similar to [_Flatland_](/books/flatland_a_romance_of_many_dimensions/), much of the book explores the
civilization the Cheela have built. The Cheela are also reminiscent of the
beings briefly mentioned as living on a high-gravity world in [Arthur C. Clarke](/books/authors/arthur_c_clarke/)'s [_Childhood's End_](/books/childhoods_end/). However, what _Dragon's Egg_ most reminds me of is _A Deepness in the Sky_. Both novels feature humans orbiting an alien world, with aliens
vastly different from humans but narrated in an anthropomorphized manner, and
with the aliens' technology eventually advancing enough to establish contact
with the humans.

While I typically don't enjoy books that rely almost entirely on
world-building, like [_House of Suns_](/books/house_of_suns/) or [_The Quantum Thief_](/books/the_quantum_thief/), the Cheela characters in
each vignette possess enough personality and "humanity" to keep me invested. I
found Pink-Eye, the Cheela equivalent of Jesus, to be both humorous and
somewhat tragic. I cheered for Swift-Killer, the astronomer-soldier who first
conquered the East Pole, and felt a sense of schadenfreude when Soother's
Machiavellian empire collapsed.

A fun addition to the hard science-fiction genre,[^text_book] I look forward
to reading the sequel, [_Starquake_](/books/starquake/), next.

[^text_book]:
    Robert L. Forward describes _Dragon's Egg_ as: "a textbook on neutron star
    physics disguised as a novel."

## Reviews that mention _Dragon's Egg_
- [_A Fire Upon The Deep_](/books/a_fire_upon_the_deep/)
- [_Mission of Gravity_](/books/mission_of_gravity/)
- [_Network Effect_](/books/network_effect/)
- [_Star Light_](/books/star_light/)†
- [_Starquake_](/books/starquake/)
- [_Surface Detail_](/books/surface_detail/)

† _Mentioned via a link to the series._

## Related Books
- [_Starquake_](/books/starquake/) by [Robert L. Forward](/books/authors/robert_l_forward/) --- ★★★☆☆: Starquake is the second book in the Cheela series by Robert L. Forward. It follows the Cheela as they rescue the humans and rebuild after a devastating starquake.
- [_Field of Dishonor_](/books/field_of_dishonor/) by [David Weber](/books/authors/david_weber/) --- ★★★☆☆: Field of Dishonor, by David Weber, is the fourth book in the Honor Harrington series. It reduces the scale of the narrative, trading fleet battles for political maneuvering and personal grudges.
- [_The Short Victorious War_](/books/the_short_victorious_war/) by [David Weber](/books/authors/david_weber/) --- ★★★★☆: The Short Victorious War, by David Weber, is the third book in the Honor Harrington series. Harrington takes command of the battlecruiser Nike as the People’s Republic of Haven makes its move and a revolution brews in Nouveau Paris.