Saturn Rukh is a hard science fiction

Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...

 novel written by the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 Robert L. Forward. It was first published in hardcover

Hardcover

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...

 in March 1997 (and later in paperback in 1998) by Tor Books

Tor Books

Tor Books is one of two imprints of Tom Doherty Associates LLC, based in New York City. It is noted for its science fiction and fantasy titles. Tom Doherty Associates also publishes mainstream fiction, mystery, and occasional military history titles under its Forge imprint. The company was founded...

. Saturn Rukh is themed around human contact with alien organisms on the gaseous planet Saturn

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

. The novel is a speculation of the nature of intelligent life in a non-Terran

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 ecosystem, in this case the atmosphere of a gas giant

Gas giant

A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. There are four gas giants in the Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune...

 planet.

Synopsis

In an unspecified time in the future, a multi-national consortium sends a team of six astronauts (each with the chance of earning a billion dollars if they complete their mission properly) to Saturn to establish a factory that mines helium for the production of precious "meta" (stabilized metastable helium), a powerful rocket fuel, in the planet's upper atmosphere. With only enough "meta" fuel to get them to Saturn, failure will cost them their lives. And all too soon the crew of astronauts crash-lands on a surface, which is actually the back of an enormous alien life-form they dub the Rukh, a 4-kilometer-long, bizarre sting-ray-shaped creature that "swims" through Saturn's gaseous upper atmosphere and has two brains, both male and female. When part of their apparatus is swallowed by one of these giant birdlike beings, the crew needs to find a way to communicate and to be able to cooperate with the Rukhs so that they may survive.

External links

• Sample pages of the novel