FORWARD, Robert L(ull)

(1932-)

   US physicist and writer, senior scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories and one of the most devoted HARD-SF authors of the 1980s. He began publishing sf with "The Singing Diamond" in Omni (1979), and made a very considerable impact with his first novel, DRAGON'S EGG (1980), which, along with its sequel Starquake! (1985), is set in a most intriguing venue - a NEUTRON STAR whose surface GRAVITY is 67,000,000,000 gees - andconcentrates on the immensely enjoyable ALIEN cheela who inhabit this venue, living and evolving at an enormous rate (a generation passes in 37 minutes). The human scientists who visit the cheela of Dragon's Egg inadvertently civilize them over a 24-hour period. In the sequel the cheela, now evolved far beyond their glacial human teachers, very quickly explore the entire Galaxy, though the catastrophe of the title soon complicates the plot, leading to further rapid-fire EVOLUTION, invention and mind-play.RLF's second successful novel, The Flight of the Dragonfly (1982-3 ASF as "Rocheworld"; exp 1984; exp 1985; orig full versionrestored, vt Rocheworld 1990), posited a second world of almost equal fascination. On the eponymous dumb-bell-shaped double-planet is placed an alien race whose individuals are characterized more strongly than are the humans involved in an exploratory mission there. (Despite the striking resemblance in storylines and the titles, this novel is unrelated to the earlier series.) Once again the self-confident articulacy of RLF's scientific mind dominates proceedings, and the novel concludes (as did his first) with a symposium which analyses the ideas underlying the book. However, the unfortunate corollary to this style of novel-writing is that,when no scientific conceit governs the structure of the tale, character and plot can prove, as in RLF's case, a poor substitute. Martian Rainbow (1991), which has no such central world-building conceit to govern it,consequently fails to convince in its simplistic rendering of a Russian-US conflict on Mars, or in the cardboard triumphalism of its human cast. More than almost any other hard-sf writer, RLF dazzles within his bailiwick and embarrasses outside it.

   JC

   Other works: Timemaster (1992), a LIBERTARIAN tale.Nonfiction: Future Magic (1988); Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics (1988) with Joel Davis.

   See also: ASTRONOMY; PLANETARY ROMANCE; SCIENTISTS; STARS.