Eric Lawton reviewed Incandescence by Greg Egan
Two very alien species and an intro to general relativity
4 stars
One species lives on the interior of a rock in a perilous orbit around a neutron star, and teaches itself general relativity (GR) from scratch from measurements inside the rock. If you pay close attention to their discoveries and calculations, you will get a good foundation for GR and differential geometry, without needing to know any more maths than basic arithmetic. As they gain understanding, they realize their situation, and that it is unstable, so they take action to escape danger. As they do that, we learn how society can be organized in a different, cooperative manner.
The other species is looking for them, having been tipped off by a third species, for reasons that we are left to puzzle over. Their technology is vastly advanced from our own.
One star off because it is fairly hard work to follow the physics, even though I know more GR than is …
One species lives on the interior of a rock in a perilous orbit around a neutron star, and teaches itself general relativity (GR) from scratch from measurements inside the rock. If you pay close attention to their discoveries and calculations, you will get a good foundation for GR and differential geometry, without needing to know any more maths than basic arithmetic. As they gain understanding, they realize their situation, and that it is unstable, so they take action to escape danger. As they do that, we learn how society can be organized in a different, cooperative manner.
The other species is looking for them, having been tipped off by a third species, for reasons that we are left to puzzle over. Their technology is vastly advanced from our own.
One star off because it is fairly hard work to follow the physics, even though I know more GR than is in the book. If you don't know GR and are inspired to learn more, I do recommend Egan's recommendation for a more advanced text: Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation".