book from 80's or early 90's

[Honitonman]

Hi there

I would really like to find the name of a book and author that I enjoyed reading in the 80's or early nineties.

As I remember it the storyline goes something like this:-

It is present day, a comet (or asteroid) is passing earth.
The comet is detected by radar on earth and appears to be lifeless
However there is a very basic lifeform on the planet (remembered as worm like)
Whose lifecycle is very fast and whose intelligence very rapidly evolves
I think the lifecycle is accelerated by the radar pulses to the extent that their intelligence evloves at a tremendous rate and surpasses that of humans within the space of 24 hours or so

Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks

 

[Metryq]

Radar pulses? This sounds like the same sort of "science" that blames the non-ionizing "radiation" (there's that panic button word) from cell phones for brain tumors.

 

[J-Sun]

Well, your description doesn't entirely sound like it but Robert L. Forward wrote Dragon's Egg in 1980 (sequeled in 1985's Starquake) and it involves a neutron star passing near the solar system (which is reasonably assumed to be lifeless), on which tiny bug-like (yet extremely variable) aliens live and who naturally evolve extremely quickly and, indeed, go from very primitive to superhuman in the span of human observation and interaction with them.

But it's not a comet and they aren't so much worms (but I guess could be seen that way) and they aren't accelerated by radar, so I don't know if that's what you had in mind or not.

 

[Honitonman]

That's it!! "Dragons Egg" and the name of the sequel too
Re the description, it was 20-30 years ago, but I did enjoy reading it.
Thanks very much.

 

[J-Sun]

Glad that was the right one! You're very welcome.