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This book must absolutely be commended for its inventiveness, while staying within the limits of the scientifically plausible. Overall a very enjoyable hard scifi read, but if I had to critique some things, it would be: 1) the aliens are slightly annoyingly too human-like (would have appreciated an attempt at something more perplexing / foreign), 2) some parts of the book drag on for a very long time without being interesting (e.g. the various escapades of the cheela that take up a large portion of the book), 3) the cheela civilization is not imagined in a satisfying detail, and 4) the ending is a little too abrupt and naive for my tastes. A little bit like Sagan's Contact, where I would prefer a bit more of the more likely Lem's Master's Voice. overall a recommended read for anyone who loves hard scifi! Just feel free to skim some of the boring parts until you get to the last ~20% of the book, and prepare to have your intelligence insulted just a little bit when it comes to antrophology instead of the physics. 4/5
— Andrej Karpathy
2018-04-29 on goodreads.com
Highly inventive and fascinating alien contact. A little too long.
— Andrej Karpathy