Customer Reviews

Eon

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Besides being a very entertaining and somewhat epic near-future space adventure, Greg Bear's novel "Eon", having been published in 1985, will likely be very interesting to anyone old enough to have experienced and appreciated the last years of the Cold War in the 1980s.

It was somewhat serendipitous that I came to read "Eon". I found myself away from home with no reading plans. I visited a comic book store that had some used books for sale. This book "Eon" appeared to be the best of the available sci-fi and the price was only [amount]. I am now very pleased that I happened up on this bargain.

In "Eon", after some interesting fireworks just outside our solar system, an asteroid with some very strange characteristics mysteriously settles into a neat orbit around the Earth and its moon. The surface of the asteroid indicates intelligent activity in its past and investigators find some very interesting things inside. Because I greatly enjoyed Greg Bear's slow revelation of it in the story, I will say no more about the contents of the asteroid.

I enjoyed the technical descriptions of interesting space (and other) technology in this novel, and I found the strong and romantic personalities of the several main characters refreshing. However, the characteristic of this novel that I found most interesting and thought-provoking was the tension in the story that was brought about by the Cold War context.

In 1985, when this novel was written, I was 20 years old - old enough to have experienced the Cold War and participated in "the mindset" associated with it. Reading "Eon" was quite a flashback experience for me. It was fascinating to me to realize how much my mindset has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Even writing those names here evokes strong memories and strange emotions.

Reading the novel now, nearly 20 years later, I think I realize much of what the author was trying to convey. The context difference offered by science fiction stories often helps authors to make something seem obvious that would not seem obvious in the normal real context. I think the author was trying to indicate to Cold War participants of the time how difficult it is for individuals and collectives to correctly prioritize ideas and activities with regard to their self-interest. In other words, compare the priorities of the participants of the Cold War with that of human survival. I don't know that I would have fully realized those things had I read the book when it was first published.

Reading "Eon" was, for the reasons stated above, a very interesting experience for me. If you are old enough to have experienced even a portion of the Cold War, reading "Eon" will likely be an interesting experience for you, too.

This extraordinary well-written book is probably one of the best in its genre. Here, the author Greg Bear, describes absolute impossible situations and possibilities in a such a detailed and convincing way that even a skeptic would believe it. Science-fiction books are often too imaginative to an extent that they border to total fiasco. However, this book succeeds in containing both imagination and fantasy without loosing its credibility. In fact, as you read, you will not question the secrets nor the tecniques being exposed to you. And this in a fully normal world, like the one you and I live in right now. The story may seem tame - a steroid is beeing discovered and later examined by a selected group of scientists and technicians. While exploring the "Potato", as they refer to it, the group slowly finds evidence that witness of an earlier population. And the mysteriouses keep growing. Who were they? Where are they now? Do we live in somebodys elses future and is our destiny already predestined? This book awakes your curiosity and will not leave you satisfied until you have read it all. And even after the book is finished, you will still be left with the erge to know more. Only one little detail makes this fabolous book annoying - you will have to read it over and over again to fully understand all the technical details described in it. Time-consuming, but definitely worth it!

"Eon" may pose more of a challenge when it comes to selecting a rating than any other book I've ever read, since it consists of one half of a solid, well-written SF epic, and one half of a piece of incoherent junk. The story starts out like this: a gigantic asteroid arrives from outside the solar system and moves into an orbit around earth. The United States sends teams of scientists to explore it, and they soon find that the asteroid was a gigantic spaceship of sorts that appears to have come from our own future. Investigations into a library found on board soon reveal that the world is moving towards a massive nuclear showdown. This is the good portion of the book. It is written with intelligence, clarity, and an almost nostalgia-inducing dose of Cold War paranoia. The cast of characters is what most people have come to expect from hard science fiction: not extremely deep or dynamic, but believable nonetheless.

However, it all breaks down about halfway through the book. The story makes a wide turn involving alien invasion, parallel universes, alternate geometries, and some other stuff. The problem, simply put, is that this part of the book is too confusing. The explanations are cryptic and difficult to follow, and keeping track of all the new concepts that get introduced becomes quite a chore. Also, the characterizations collapse during the second half of the book. All of the major characters seem too ready to forget and ignore their previous lives and to accept all of the weird stuff that happens to them. One might, of course, make the argument that some enigmatic writing is acceptable and that "Eon" is a novel one that requires multiple readings, somewhat like William Gibson's "Neuromancer". The problem is that Bear doesn't have the literary style to pull such a stunt off, and I really have no desire to pour through this book time after time trying to fit the puzzle together. While I have great respect for some of Bear's other works, this one could have used some more planning and rewriting.

Friends and colleagues had hyped this book for years, so I finally bought it and slogged through its 500+ pages.

The book suffers from a common failing of "hard" science fiction: a lack of humanity. Bear does try by providing a three dimensional heroine, but focus on her is constantly lost in anachronistic machinations of Cold War politics and nearly unintelligible Thistledown politics.

Also: Thistledown is never fully explained and never fully presented to us as an understandable place where humans or their descendents live; characters like the Jarts seem thrown in only to goose the plot; the explanation of time and universe travel was inadequate (how can a divining rod be the mechanism for finding Patricia's proper space and time?); and the romantic scenes, although appreciated by my prurient and adolescent mind, seem to be tacked on as an afterthought and unrealistic insofar as who chases whom.

Something inbetween perhaps. The ideas in Eon earn 9/10, however Bear's writing style gets a 4. For starters, he describes the different locations in overtechnical geometric language. Sentences like "Patricia stood parallel to the vortex so that she formed a toroid at 90 degrees to its summit" tells the average reader nothing. I made this sentence up but its not an overexageration. The book is full of these sort of descriptions. Great for a hard geometry test, terrible for anything but. In my opinion Larry Niven's geometric descriptions in Ringworld are about as far as a writer should go. Its a shame because if Bear had used simpler language I probably would have been amazed by the pictures my imagination formed. I think Bear's characterisation is ok. I disagree with other reviews in that I didn't find his characters akin to carboard. Neither does the book fall apart at the half way mark. The story develops nicely. The problem is that Bear spends too much time describing some things and not enough entertaining. I am not asking for a shorter book or for his characters to do a tap dance. I was simply hoping that Bear's characters would play more of a key role in the events that shape the 2nd half of the book rather than just being the unwitting cause of what unfolds. If you think about it, only Patricia actually does anyhing, and only right at the end. More involvement, less babble is required. It could have been a 5 star earner. This is the first book I have read by Bear and it is worth reading. I will check out Blood Music as I have heard its pretty good.

Greatest sci-fi epic ever. Not! Complexity and emotion in the characters. Not! Well-written. Not! Sorry, but after slaving through this 150,000 word tome, I felt cheated. I could have had a V-8 :) The characters are shallow, wooden stick figures. Bear spends a lot of time creating a family for Patricia, then drops it like a, well, potato :) He didn't have the imagination to bring them back in at the end like any good author would have, and have events lead to psychological self-discoveries. You can get that much in a TV movie of the week! The sole positive is his apparent superficial study of relativity theory and topology, and his plot device of the Stone itself. But even that seems to degenerate from almost pseudo science to pure magic and fantasy muck by the "geometrically increasing" end. And he did what? Wrote a sequel? Yiyiyi!

An 300 km long and 100km wide object is entering the solar System. The Stone, a gigantic spaceship. Patricia Vasquez, a brilliant mathematician, is called to explore its 7 huge chambers: cities, forests, lakes and rivers. But no occupants exist on The Stone. In one of the libraries a horrifying fact is revealed: the Earth will enter nuclear war. A book published ahead of the time explains all the details. Was the Stone coming from future? Patricia's job is to explain what's with the 7th chamber. It has no end. It extends beyond the psychical dimensions of The Stone. And where have the people, apparently human, that once lived in The Stone, gone?

The biggest mystery in the book surrounds the 7th chamber. It is found to be the entry of The Way, singularity that extends further into the time. In the second half of the book the plot examine the possibilities of traveling between many parallel universes and the reader gets a chance to meet the originals, Earth citizens from alternative future, who had moved forward along The Way big to a overbuilt futuristic city and who had formed a very controlled society. The story also depicts Cold War chess atmosphere where The Stone is invaded by the Russians. To the storyline the effect of Russians is disconnectness rather than suspense. The book contains lot of mathematics, alternate geometries, n-spaces, distorted spacial coordinates which will please the hard SF readers. Some readers may consider this technical overkill. The sequels are Eternity (1988) and Legacy (1995).

Two (2) stars. The beginning is well done. The novel starts out with attempts at character development and exploration of The Stone. The reader wants to know more about the secret libraries and their content. The kidnapping of the lead character, Patricia, by the "originals", yanks the plot completely elsewhere. The Patricia's role in the story diminishes to shreds when the kidnapper, Olmy, virtual reality character, steps in place. This switch disrupts the balance too much and reader has difficulties to attach any of the other walk-on characters and city politics. The parallel universes aspect of Patricia finding another Earth is more like a weed than elementary part of the story. In the end many of the scattered points wear out the reader. Eon is like brilliant, high tech engine which bit by bit disassembles into pieces. Tiring read.

This book should have been called "Opus" and not Eon. It is the greatest piece of fiction that I have read, and I read about 60 books a year.

It has all of the elements that could be hoped for in a Novel. Plot, suspense until the last page, complex characters in a complex universe.

In terms of speculative fiction, it has it all: hard science, incredible imagination, alternative history, ponderings about our future evolution, and more. Read it.

Eon is a book ahead of it's time. Bear painted a picture of mankind becoming dependent on computers and implants, personal data pillars in dwellings, libraries without books, massive use of holography (WAAAAAAAAAAYYY before the holodeck) and other things that our modern life reflects as an almost certainty for our future. Bear shows a future technology that I would love to experience. I know that some of the "history" is dated, but you might look at it from the point of view of the story as one possible time line, not necessarily our own.

It is also interesting to ponder just how marvelously the humans on the Thistledown adapt and thrive in their confined space, and create a world of peace, beauty and eventually god-like technology through hard work and ingenuity.

I didn't care for all the political ideas presented in the book, but I guess that Bear was trying to bring some balance to the story.

Overall, I would highly reccommend this story to sci-fi fans. Others, read it at your discretion, but keep an open mind and try to imagine the scope of the genius of the best two characters in the story...Thistledown and The Way.

Greg Bear's Eon is set in the twenty-first century. There, an asteroid named the Stone is found in space. The asteroid is quickly seized, and becomes top secret. This is because it seems to be from the future. The Stone is the cause of several complex conflicts that result. The first conflict is over access to the Stone, in which there are cities and libraries with records on the future. This results in a war between the Russians and the Americans. According to the libraries aboard the Stone, this war will be the deadliest war ever, leaving less than a third of the Earth's population alive.

Before the war, the main character, Patricia, was sent aboard the Stone as a researcher. During the war, Russians invade the Stone. At the same time, she discovers a singularity, a place that can transport one to other universes, through space and time. As it is, this singularity is connected to a dimensional structure called the Way. While investigating the singularity, Patricia is found by the Stone's original inhabitants, Stoners, and is forced down the singularity. After diplomatic situations are resolved on the Stone, several leaders agree to search for Patricia, and they go down the singularity.

Through the singularity is the future of the universe. The Stoners have taken Patricia there in order to copy her soul. Patricia's soul is required if the Stoners are to revive a person capable of opening a singularity that is connected directly to the Way. The Stoners need to do this to accelerate their main city, Axis City, to light speed along the Way in order to close all singularities along the Way. The Stoners need to do this to save their race from destruction by another race that can travel along the Way.

Here, a second conflict develops. There are in fact two ways to close the singularities. The first, involving accelerating Axis City to light speed, will create a shockwave through space and time and fuse all the singularities shut. The second involves destroying a portion of the Stone to cauterize the Way shut. However, this conflict is resolved because the shockwave, traveling through space and time, hits before it is created, thus, there is no conflict.

Overall, I would give Greg Bear's Eon a three out of five. This is because it raises some interesting questions and poses an outsider's view of the world. Eon asks questions about sacrifice. By accelerating Axis City, the Stoners would send the city into another dimension where all the laws of matter and energy would not affect things normally. This is a question to the people. The other question is a morale question. Copying Patricia's soul would cause Patricia to lose her individuality. This was important to Patricia, but there was more at stake. Finally, the outsider's view of the world is rather revealing. It shows that the world is truly ready for a war with all the atomic weapons, and that the smallest spark could ignite it.

However, Greg Bear's Eon was written extremely wordily. The beginning was riveting, however in the middle, there was too much description. Nothing happened during most of the book. There was a good start, a bad middle, and a good end. However, it was that middle that ruined the book. Because of that middle, Eon took an eon to read.