Flux (original 1993; edition 1995)

Virtual colonists create micro-humans to live in a neutron star - and leave them to survive on their own, eventually, out of necessity.

The Xeelee conflict and communication re-establishment changes things.

http://freesf.strandedinoz.com/wordpress/2012/03/flux-stephen-baxter/ ( )

A science fiction novel about humans -- or rather, micron-scale beings patterned closely after humans -- living in the mantle of a neutron star. As an imaginative thought experiment, it's kind of a clever idea, as it explores the question of whether life could exist in such an environment, how it might work, and what things would look like if you could enter this kind of weird-physics realm with the right senses to perceive it. Unfortunately, clever or not, it's really not enough to carry a 400 page novel all by itself, and there's just not a whole lot else here. The characters are pretty thin, as is the plot (even if it does widen its scope significantly at the end), and in true hard SF tradition the writing style is at least 85% exposition. I will say that I found it more readable than some other stuff at the extreme end of the hard SF spectrum, where characterization is often not so much thin as painfully bad. Still, it ended up being a bit of a slog for me, and I can't help thinking that it would have worked considerably better as a short story. ( )

Kinda my dream book; strange universe, crazy science, epic scope, even a BDO element in the third act. The problems lie mostly in the weak characters, most of whom I couldn't stand, and the minutiae often feels like padding, but the sci-fi aspect is wonderful. It's very much like the first book, Raft, only bigger and better. ( )

ZB13

What would life be like that lived on a neutron star? How would life have got there in the first place? How on earth could humans live there? How do you have sex when you live in a frictionless superfluid? What sports would you play in such an environment? What would happen when civilisation that built all of this collapsed?
A great example of a simple thought experiment taken to an extreme conclusion. Oh and there's a plot and character development and links into a larger storyline and everything!
Knowledge of advanced quantum physics a bonus when reading this book, either that or a permanent line to wikipedia for those of us who don't know what an electron gas is ( )