Published by Baen, 1990,
paperback, $5.99 ISBN 0-671-69869-9
470 pages

Maybe the heat affects our reading patterns, but throughout the long, hot summer of 1999 it has been a dry spell since I dove into a novel that captured my attention into the wee hours of the morning. Rocheworld certainly ensnared me in excess.

According to the blurb, author Robert L. Forward first released this tale of scientific exploration in a 60,000 word serial for Analog SciFi magazine in 1982, followed by a 100,000 word, hardback novel called Flight of the Dragonfly in 1984, and 110,000 word paperback of the same name in 1985. The current 1990 paperback, titled Rocheworld, consists of 155,000 words. As the cover breathlessly proclaims: "At last, the complete story!"

Rocheworld has nothing to do with insects and everything to do with the calculations of a French mathematician, named Roche, concerning co-rotating, egg-shaped planets.

The crew of the spaceship Prometheus is sent to explore the worlds surrounding Bernards Star. Only the setting is Earth circa 2025 and the laser powered "light sails" push a spacecraft at only 20% of the speed of light. Forget hyperspace, and warp speed, the trip takes 40 years. It's a one way mission with no hope of return.

The cover touts Forward, a physicist, as a "hard" sci-fi writer who uses extrapolation of existing technologies instead of the "soft" super technologies of space opera. Now, that combination of physicist and reality, could spell a long, drawn out, and boring read. But after three publishings, and no doubt editing along the way, Rocheworld turns out to be a good page turner. All you have to do is buy into two less than "hard" technologies.

The crew of 12, briefly -- if clumsily -- introduced at the beginning, takes the wonder drug "No-Die," which reduces aging and mental capacity. The crew travel 40 years, but age only 10. Although you'd think it would mean putting then in a near coma, quite the opposite occurs -- they act like 5 year olds on a candy high. Go figure.

The second technology is "Jeeves," the Artificial intelligence that runs the ship on autopilot, accomplished by the "Christmas Bush" robot. Jeeves and the bush can do it all -- feed people, fix the ship, clean up spills, perform CPR and virtually all simultaneously. And you thought the Jetsons had an efficient maid.

Buy into both of these, and you're in for a wild ride. Too often, novels abound with laser fire and megabombs. Rocheworld abounds with the human commitment to explore, to enquire, and to learn. Forward takes us on a marvelous journey to the planets and Bernards Star, offering us a glimpse of the triumphs and tragedies that mimic our own first efforts to get to the moon in the 1960s.