Customer Reviews

City at the End of Time

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I very much wanted to like this book. It's not easy to summon up a believable city one hundred trillion years from now. Greg Bear's multiverse is collapsing into terminal degeneracy as the Chaos intrudes upon the last city - the Kalpa - on a twisted surreal earth.

In present-day Seattle, characters Jack, Ginny and Daniel possess "sum runners", mysterious Feynmanesque stones which will eventually be found to code the innermost ordering principles of reality. But our heroes have lost all memory of their origins, and spend their lives flitting between alternative realities of the multiverse, in endless flight from ill-defined threats.

Ten to the fourteen years out, the male warrior Jebrassy and female explorer Tiadba are groomed to leave the Kalpa for a one-way journey through the Chaos to the mythical city of Nataraja - somehow this is the Kalpa's last and best hope. Jebrassy and Jack, and Tiadba and Ginny, are psychologically linked through the Terayears and will physically meet at the novel's climax, when the universe may, or may not, be cyclically renewed.

Bear has ransacked Greek, Hindu and Buddhist mythologies for this story, along with a light dusting of quantum mechanics. Typhon, the personification of Chaos, is the Greek Satan-like figure; Nataraja is the dancing posture of the Hindu God Shiva, lord of destruction/transformation; in Buddhism, a great kalpa is 1.28 trillion years long.

OK, so does it all work? I personally found it hard work. The book is dense with repetitious description of chaotic landscapes, which sap the reader's patience. For much of the time the main characters are engaging in relatively mundane activities or trying to get from one place to another in situations devoid of much tension.

All this could be forgiven - there are plenty of hard-to-read books out there - if there was some subtle and profound point Bear was trying to communicate. I really struggle though. At the end, when identities are resolved and the threads of events have been drawn together, what have we learned that is deeper then simply another drawn-out fantasy-SF-action thriller? I fear the answer is nothing.

In some ways, this book harks back to some works like Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, dealing as it does with an incredibly vast sweep of time and across the bounds of the entire cosmos (and beyond). At the same time, embedded within it are some of the latest thoughts and theories about just what makes universe be what it is, from quantum entanglement, the many universes concept, to observer based determination of what the world is and will be.

It starts in the incredibly far future, and the described situation at this starting point is intriguing as we see what's left of humanity (or human-like beings) confined to a small area and fighting a losing battle with Chaos. This early section may be the best part of this book, as everything is weird and new, and hints at the history and genesis of the current situation are dropped into the descriptions of this very odd environ, making for an absorbing interaction between reader and words.

Interspersed with this far-future world is the second major thread of this novel, as we return to the world of today and follow three very unique individuals as they try to figure out just where they fit in the world, why they are being hunted (and by what), what they can do with their special abilities, and just what the connection is between these people and those of the far future.

Up to this point, all very good. But as we proceed deeper into this work, problems appear. First is the language used to describe the Chaos. In the hands of someone like Delany or Zelazny, this could have been a treat, but Bear's descriptions have two deadly faults: a lack of definition, a haziness, no scintillating concrete images that you can wrap your mind around; and constant use of the same words and language to describe this non-image - everything is dry, cracked, melted, crushed, twisted, crazed, dim, and dark. As this type of material occupies a large portion of the second half of the novel, it becomes a definite slog to continue reading these same non-descriptions of hazy somethings again and again.

The problem of lack of definition also applies to the major characters, as I found little to make these people stand out as living, breathing things, or why I should care about their ultimate fate. Part of this due to the fact that all of them are manipulated by various `higher powers' to fix the paths and decisions they will make, and the basic motivations of these higher powers are themselves not well delineated till very near the end of the book.

Then there is the final resolution of the two major threads of this work. I found it to be totally predictable both in terms of the decisions of the major characters and the ultimate conclusion of the entire story arc, not good for a work whose major premise deals with choice, unpredictability, and the infinite possibilities of all possible universe world-lines.

This work needed some severe pruning of most of the descriptive sections, and deeper, more fleshed out looks at the internals of its characters. As it is, I found it hard to finish this work, and was left with quite a feeling of disappointment.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Greg Bear's "City at the End of Time" is an interesting book (perhaps "weird" (in a good way) might be a better word). The way Bear writes in this novel and his cosmological (almost theistic) theme reminds me somewhat of Roger Zelazny's old work. The only quibble I have with the book is that there's a bit too much "slogging through the wilderness" type of activity in it. Of course, Bear needs that slogging time to finish up the linkage between his two groups of people in the present and the future. Overall, I rate this book at a Very Good four stars out of five.

I think this may be the first of Bear's novels that I've read, but I've already added a few more to my To Read pile. This is a hugely ambitious book, and one that plugs into many of my personal obsessions. The first moment that one of the characters started talking about the "fictional encyclopedia" commissioned in the 1920s by an Argentinian named Borges, I knew that this was a story for me. (Though, interestingly, the story seems to take place in an alternate history in which Borges never wrote fiction.) The mentions later on about the "Last Redoubt" only sealed the deal.

The action in City at the End of Time alternates between modern day Seattle and the Kalpa, the titular city at the end of time. In Seattle we follow a teenage runaway and a busker, both of whom visit the end of time in their dreams, and both of whom are able to affect causality in the near term, and a vagrant who is possessed by a consciousness capable of shifting from one parallel worldline to another. In the Kalpa, we follow two young "ancient breeds" (genetically engineered humanoids who are approximations for what primordial humanity--i.e. us--might have been like), who play host to the two dreamers in modern day Seattle, and a "Keeper" involved in a last-ditch effort to stem the time of unreal Chaos that threatens to engulf the last remnants of the universe.

The far future sections of the novel are really far future, and it's here that the novel really starts to sing. The following are two paragraphs from just one of the many potted histories that are threaded through the book, hinting at the vast gulfs of time connecting now to then.

"As for the late Trillennium, in the shadow of the Chaos: broad legends describe the age of the Mass Wars. Bosonic Ashurs had returned from their mastery of the dark light-years, seeking ascendance over all... and were subdued by the mesonic Kanjurs, who in turn were defeated by the Devas--patterned from integral quarks. Devas were then forces to give way to the nootics. Nootic mater was hardly matter at all--more like a binding compact between space, fate, and two out of seven aspects of time.

The nootics--calling themselves Eidolons--gathered survivors from the last artificial galaxies and forced nearly all to convert. The last remnants of old matter were preserved and transported to a number of reliquaries with the longest continuous histories--including Earth."

This is a terrifically smart book, but in many places a very funny one as well. While not overlong, it is considerable dense in places, and having finished the book I tend to think that the journey might have been more enjoyable than the destination. But it's a wide-ranging, mind-expanding trip of a book, and something that science fiction needs more of. Recommended.

After finishing the best novel I've read in a long time, I came to Amazon to pull a link to pass on to friends - and was shocked to see a set of bad reviews.

City at the End of Time is vividly atmospheric, demanding and rewarding, eerie, beautiful, haunting and bold in scope. Far too few SF writers dare to evoke a sense of wonder anymore; Bear dreams big.

No, he doesn't spoon-feed explanations and answers. Much remains shrouded, known to the protagonists but not disclosed to other characters or the audience. It's not a textbook and it's not pulp; the work requires some attention and sophistication.

It's been a long time since I read anything that required me to stretch my imagination, rather than just consume the work of someone else's. I like it, and I want more.

Best novel of 2008.

Let me begin this by saying that this is *not* the typical hard sci-fi novel that Greg Bear is known for. So, if you are specifically looking for that, Bear has a whole host of other superb titles for you to choose from. (I suspect that most of the negative reviews resulted from that expectation.)

That being said, "City at the End of Time" is still an amazing and intricate work in its own right, and one I would certainly recommend to any fan of Neil Gaiman or H. P. Lovecraft. It is a novel that defies typical genre expectations, because it weaves together far-flung science fiction with a dream-like fantasy-scape and elements of near-supernatural horror and mythology. Also the novel is, to a degree, a homage to William Hope Hodgson's novel "The Night Land"(1912), and, like Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", the noble cat plays an important role in the tale -- two things to note that I think some of the other reviewers either completely missed or failed to appreciate.

Personally I thought the book was engaging and a excellent read -- I finished it over the course of two nights. I would certainly recommend that you give it a read and form your own opinion, but if you are a fan of any of the other authors I mentioned above you will probably enjoy the book as much as I did.

Greg Bear remains a unique talent in his ability to write excellent works outside of what is perhaps considered 'typical' for him (hard sci-fi) and "City at the End of Time" is no exception. (For those who are interested, Bear also wrote the extraordinary fantasy novel "Songs of Earth and Power", which is one of the best pieces of fantasy literature I have ever encountered.)

I just finished reading Greg Bear's "City At The End Of Time." It was a real page turner for me. I can understand why others would see him dipping into fantasy and all these things, but I just don't agree. Since no one really knows what happened BEFORE the universe came into being, any interpretation is as good as any other.

This book is for people who love sci-fi, and like it stuffed full of theoretical physics. I didn't read a single thing which would fall outside of the realm of the theoretical possible (though extreme.)

Carries the concept of observer based reality to its extreme (or observer dependent realty.) I personally believe this to be a dead end in theoretical nuclear and astrophysics, because the conclusions it forces us to draw are so absurd and do not mesh with the intuitive. However it is fascinating to read a book written with this type of physics at its very core.

Thought experiments (the very creation of observer based physics), are a great tool for trying to understand astrophysics, but they are simple one of many tools. Just like mathematics is not a true representation of the world in reality, so too are thought experiments not a true representation of reality. They are merely echoes of the real, sometimes leading to new truths, sometimes misleading to absurd paths, like the many worlds theory, where every persons decision spins off a new universe ad infinitum. Sorry, just don't buy it.

That is a basic premise of the book, one of temporal entropy. As you get deeper into the book, as time in the book moves forward so too the disentropic effects of time. Causality rum amok. That is where it becomes fantasy-like, but never leaves the grounds of todays current thinking about the far future and the heat death of the universe, when matter itself ceases to exist. It is of course a sci-fi writers wild extrapolation and interpretation of what that world might be like.

Some further thoughts:

Entangled matter, presumably once separated by vast distances now collapsed and as entanglement brought them together, they dance as if an aurora borealis in groups.

Chaography - A newly minted word, which seems to mean different things to different people judging my google results seems to mean something totally different here. Chaos theory seems to be a purely baryonic playground, therefore one must presume that its a concatenation of chaos (not chaos theory), and topography, in other words, as time winds down and decays, as the end state of a cold universe approaches, Chaography, as Greg uses it in his book, I THINK means a general description of the chaotic state and effects of a dead, or near dead, universe. But thats speculation - others may have their own opinions.

I personally believe (yes its a belief), that at some point during the end times decay, before, near, or at the point of absolute heat death, we will hit a 'phase transition', which will drop our entire universe into a lower energy density state, thereby creating another violent big bang whereever that phase transition is first realized.

His descriptions of a null-entropic landscape are fascinating to say the least. Kafkaesque in prime radiance :)

Greg borrows key words from Sanskrit, like the sleeping Brahma, Kalpa, and several others. I suppose it makes sense as the Indians have had the longest sense of 'time' as any other culture. Oh lots of Greek in there too, like Astyanax, Eidolon, Typhon,

Sections of the book jump back and forth between chapters titled 10 zeroes, and 14 zeroes. Isn't that a fascinating comparison? That today our universe is of an age of 10 zeroes. But that beyond the heat death and presumably the end of the universe is just 14 zeroes. I really liked that perspective.

In short, I think this is Greg Bear's best work. I hope others find it as unique and interesting as I have.

F. Segler

It took me a bit to warm up to this novel, as it does with any that switch point of view characters often. Also, similar to Jay Lake's "Trial of Flowers" I had a tough time trusting the author enough to become involved with the many unsympathetic characters. And yet, like the Jay Lake work, I was fascinated by them. Predatory, sometimes weak, they nonetheless all developed a (sometimes macabre) charm that made me care about what they would do next, and those characters surprised me at times. The descriptions were hazy, but I filled them in from my own imagination, sometimes based on my reading in physics. I was always delighted when something familiar, either in physics theory or from myth, presented itself. And therein lies the beauty of this work. I guess I've grown tired of having everything spelled out for me. I liked moving in realms that left enough to my imagination that I could be an active reader.

It did have some repetitive elements that detracted from the overall experience, but looking at it from a structural standpoint I'm not sure that the repetition was avoidable. I would have liked to have seen more variety nonetheless. I think, like the characters, at some points Mr. Bear grew fatigued with the immensity of the universe and the contortions he put it through. Also, much as I like some of the heroes in this work, the importance placed on these elements/sets of things seemed a little too transparently aimed at me as a marketing tool rather than making actual sense. But I was willing to buy into it so that I could discover the true nature of the Chaos, Typhon, etc. or at least get enough hints to develop my own satisfying ideas about those things.

Some of the grotesques and the dire nature of the approaching end of the universe made me wonder if there would be enough payoff to make it all worthwhile. For the first portion of the book I couldn't imagine a positive outcome that would also be satisfying. It turned out to be a strange end, quiet and almost as sparsely defined as much of the rest of the book, but it gave me huge freedom as far as my own imagination making a beast from the bones. Despite the fact that he didn't pull any of the typical and predictable tear-jerker tropes that make for emotional endings, I ended up on the edge of tears for reasons I don't want to state because they might be considered spoilers. But those reasons made the book for me.

A simple idea developed into a challenging read. Definitely not for everyone, but absolutely the book for me.

I finished reading this book all the way through within a few days. I admit that I will need to read it again to grasp more of the story; It can befuddle. But somehow I am not left wanting. After so many years reading sci-fi novels, it's refreshing to come across a book with a more unusual track.

Sometimes a little hard to follow the plot, but some excellent writing. Well worth reading if you enjoy fantasy and science fiction