I once read a story about a journey into a black hole. The ship was tiny, less than an inch long, and the pilot was a scaled down robot/androd who was a mental clone of a human pilot in an orbiting station. As the pea-sized ship approached the event horizon, the pilot’s consciousness was reverse-replicated back to the human... or something like that.
Unfortunately I don’t remember all the details and I don’t remember the title and author but I do remember that in that one short story there was a complete layman’s guide to understanding black holes, event horizons and time dilation as the black hole was approached. It was an excellent job.
I don’t think it was Robert Forward because it was written in the last 5-10 years, but it could have been written by him, I’m sure.
Forward’s Saturn Rukh was interesting in its assessments of the feasibility of going to Saturn to test helium 3 collection.
The crew goes to Saturn and discovers an intelligent but primitive life form in the clouds which kills the economic viability. From a pure economic standpoint it was viable but the legal fights of stealing atmosphere from an intelligent species would drive the costs out of reach.
The use of nanofiber carbon tethers figured prominently in the book as a means of climbing in and out of the gravity well was interesting.
Forward co founded tethers unlimited which exists as a company today with increasing use in space and on earth.