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Star Dragon
Star Dragon
The SS Cygni probe sent back hours of video, captured by the Biolathe AI, but only a few minutes mattered--the four minutes that showed a creature made of fire, living, moving, dancing in the plasma fire of the double star's accretion disk. A dragon made of star stuff, so alien that only a human expedition to observe and perhaps capture it, could truly understand it.
Book Excerpt
waiian Islands, nor the least crowded, but she liked its soft white sands just fine, and the ocean waves granted all beaches timelessness, which was what she truly craved. Time moved more slowly on Hawaii's Big Island than many places elsewhere on this old, overly civilized world. Pushing light speed the way she did, time moved more slowly for her, too. She sometimes felt like an island in a sea of time.
Hapuna Beach was a good place, and she always visited it when on Earth.
She slipped her flip-flops off when she hit the foamy waterline. She bent slowly to pick them up, stretching the backs of her calves and thighs, then turned right to walk north along the beach. Although she now wore a swimsuit as her uniform, she didn't care to swim. She hadn't for a long time.
Fang altered her leisurely pace to dodge jet-black children who flexed their bodies flat and surfed the low waves onto shore. One girl had large, saucer-shaped feet and wriggled her hips as she danced in, giggling; her hair stu
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3.5
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An enjoyable story.
Good plot with interesting characters that don't always do what might be expected.
Good plot with interesting characters that don't always do what might be expected.
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It was an okay read but it seemed the author could not make up his mind what he wanted the story to be.
It was choppy at points and towards the end, it seemed like the author ran out of steam and just abruptly ended the story.
It was choppy at points and towards the end, it seemed like the author ran out of steam and just abruptly ended the story.
04/11/2010
Long journey with trophy hunt in an interesting SF setting, posing as hard SF. To develop a plot, the author had to sacrifice the crew's professionalism in order to get some dramaturgy. At the end, he tries to force the novel into a contact story, failing. Worth a read.
07/18/2007
Slow start, but overall a worthy read
Star Dragon tells the tale of a mission to discover an extraordinary life form, caught momentarily on film. The idea of a colossal "Star Dragon" has the crew seeking to discover more about an improbable creature in an inhospitable environment. And that part of the story is done rather well.
What is done less well is the futuristic vision of a world where genetic engineering is done as routinely as having your haircut, and where even basic furnishings are genetically modified creatures allowing personalised environment. It added an unnecessarily grotesqueness that detracted from the rest of the story. One could suspend disbelief in the case of the existence of Star Dragons, but I couldn't stretch it to near instantaneous genetic modification and sympathetic sofas.
It took me a while to get into this book. I think the whole "genetic modification at will for fashionable purposes" had something to do with it. But I'm glad I persevered.
Star Dragon tells the tale of a mission to discover an extraordinary life form, caught momentarily on film. The idea of a colossal "Star Dragon" has the crew seeking to discover more about an improbable creature in an inhospitable environment. And that part of the story is done rather well.
What is done less well is the futuristic vision of a world where genetic engineering is done as routinely as having your haircut, and where even basic furnishings are genetically modified creatures allowing personalised environment. It added an unnecessarily grotesqueness that detracted from the rest of the story. One could suspend disbelief in the case of the existence of Star Dragons, but I couldn't stretch it to near instantaneous genetic modification and sympathetic sofas.
It took me a while to get into this book. I think the whole "genetic modification at will for fashionable purposes" had something to do with it. But I'm glad I persevered.
03/20/2007
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