{"id":204,"date":"2010-05-22T18:27:04","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T23:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elegans.uky.edu\/blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2010-05-22T18:27:04","modified_gmt":"2010-05-22T23:27:04","slug":"book-review-flight-of-the-dragonfly-rocheworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Flight of the Dragonfly (Rocheworld)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flight of the Dragonfly (Rocheworld) by Robert L. Forward (1984).  A hard sf book about a one way expedition to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barnard%27s_Star\">Barnard&#8217;s Star<\/a>, the second closest star system to Earth.  A team of sixteen travels to the star by way of a light sail pushed by a terawatt laser originating from Mercury.  The trip takes forty years and the crew&#8217;s aging is retarded during the journey by a drug.  Even with the drug, the trip is one way.  One of the planets around Barnard&#8217;s Star is a Roche world&#8211;a pair of co-rotating planets close enough to share atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>The crew arrives at Barnard&#8217;s Star and first explores the moons of the largest planet, a large gas giant.  This is just a teaser, as most of the book describes the exploration of the Roche world.  Intelligent aliens are found, and they are friendly and quite alien in form.<\/p>\n<p>The book is a bit of a mismash, and it seems too short for all the elements crammed in.  First, it&#8217;s a hard sf description of the engineering of a light sail trip to a nearby star.  Second, it&#8217;s a hard sf look at the exploration and potential discoveries in the Barnard&#8217;s Star system, including the bizarre and wonderful Roche double planet with it&#8217;s unique physics and geography.  The first two elements here feel rushed.<\/p>\n<p>The most jarring part of the book is the set up in the beginning.  The description of how the crew is chosen for a lifelong expedition, and why people would choose to go isn&#8217;t realistic.  The crew choice seems unbelievably cavalier and the decisions of the crew aren&#8217;t really part of the book, just papered over with &#8216;adventure, wheee!&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the book is an great tale of first contact and the dangerous adventure of exploring a new planet.  This is the heart of the book and is well-told.  This isn&#8217;t the best written book, but it has so many unique elements that it succeeds as great hard sf.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"pics\/Forward_Flight_of_the_Draginfly.png\" alt=\"Word cloud for Flight of the Dragonfly\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flight of the Dragonfly (Rocheworld) by Robert L. Forward (1984). A hard sf book about a one way expedition to Barnard&#8217;s Star, the second closest star system to Earth. A team of sixteen travels to the star by way of a light sail pushed by a terawatt laser originating from Mercury. The trip takes forty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimlund.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}