Marooned on Eden
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Robert L. Forward |
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| Cover artist | David Mattingly |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Rocheworld series |
| Published | 1993 (Baen Books) |
| Preceded by | Ocean Under the Ice |
| Followed by | Rescued from Paradise |
Marooned on Eden (1993), is a science fiction novel by Robert L. Forward, collaborating with his wife, Martha Dodson Forward.
It is part of the Rocheworld series, about an expedition to explore planets found in orbit around Barnard's Star. It was written before Ocean Under the Ice, but is after it in the continuity. This is the fourth book in the continuity. It is written from the perspective of crewmember Reiki LeRoux and revolves around the crew struggling to survive on the habitable moon Zuni after a crash landing maroons them there. The crew nevertheless do their best to continue the mission without technology, learning to communicate with the moon's inhabitants and eventually building a home and raising families. It is the only book in the series written from a first person perspective.
The initial crew of the Barnard's Star Expedition consisted of twenty people when it left the solar system in 2026. One of the crew, Dr. William Wang, during the long process of curing the rest of the crew from an infectious type of cancer, died from the same cancer while en route to Barnard. Although the crew spent forty calendar years traveling from the solar system to Barnard's Star, their aging rate during the long journey was slowed by a factor of four by the use of the drug No-Die. As a result, upon the arrival at Barnard in 2066, the effective biological age of the crew had only increased ten years over their age at the start of the mission. The crew spent the next two years decelerating to a halt in the Barnard planetary system, then three years surveying the entire system from space, exploring the two lobes of the double-planet Rocheworld, and exploring the surface of the Gargantuan moon Zulu, before moving on to the surface exploration of Zuni. The ages for the humans are given in terms of their effective biological age at the time of their crash landing on Zuni, now known as Eden, in 2073.
Commander of the Barnard's Star Expedition.
The 'Jolly Green Giants', as named by the humans, are large, intelligent, tree-like creatures. They use some tools, such as knives, and move very slowly as compared to the humans.
The 'Jollies' use six hydraulically operated roots to move, walking by holding the front middle and left and right rear roots on the ground and moving the other three roots forward. They then hold those to the ground and move the front middle and left and right rear roots forward, then repeating the process. They are said to look slightly like palm trees by George, when a picture is sent to him aboard the Prometheus.
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Wikipedia