Slant [Library Binding]

Greg Bear (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

In the sixth decade of the 21st century, the world has been transformed.  Nanotechnology has been perfected, giving humans the ability to change their environment and themselves on the cellular level.  And the study of the mind has brought about a revolution in both human psychotherapy and artificial intelligence.

It’s a sane and perfect world.  Almost.

A man called Jack Giffey is planning to break into the Omphalos, the most secure building in all of separatist Green Idaho.  Rumor says that the Omphalos houses the not-quite-dead, the very wealthy deceased who are still alive, their brains connected directly into Thinkers, Artificial Intelligences that provide a virtual reality. Data is the great treasure of the new millenium, and Giffey plans to tap into the Omphalos datastream, to steal the knowledge gathered by the inhabitants of the Omphalos.
In the offices of Mind Design, Inc., the most advanced Artificial Intelligence in the world has had a unique experience.  She has received a request for contact from a new AI, one she does not know and did not help to design.  Jill has never met a stranger of her own kind before; is it an alien Thinker, or the offspring of some vast conspiracy?

Slant is set in Bear’s Queen of Angels universe, and is one of the great SF novels of the 1990s.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the sequel to Greg Bear's popular Queen of Angels, and, like most of this award-winning author's works, it's a stunner. Bear is right at home with the computer and nano technologies that underlie his near-future society. With most of the world's ills having been cured by nanotech, humanity is free to turn its explorations inward, to the mind. Advanced therapies have all but eliminated emotional imbalance, and things have never been better. But when public defender Mary Cho begins investigating a double-murder, she uncovers the truth: all of the high tech is failing, and things will never be worse. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

YA?In the sixth decade of 21st-century America, violence has been eradicated and advanced therapies have relieved the suffering of the emotionally unstable. It is almost a sane and perfect world. But when Public Defender Mary Choy is called in to investigate the grizzly death of two prostitutes who were illegally transforming themselves with nano-technology (plastic surgery of the future), and an epidemic of "fallbacks" and suicides occurs as people who had gone through therapy revert to their previous states, Bear begins a complex tale that offers a vision of a society in which "dataflow" rules. The entertainment business, particularly pornography, has gone virtual, militia sympathizers and neo-Luddites are isolated in the separatist republic of Green Idaho, and the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, Jill, is hacked by an unknown AI that is perhaps the creation of a vast conspiracy. Weaving in multiple plots, this sequel to Queen of Angels (Warner, 1994) adeptly shows the potential effects of new technology on our imagined future. Young adults will enjoy both the practical and philosophical underpinnings of this intriguing world in which bathroom fixtures diagnose illnesses, virtual film stars of the past are guests at 21st-century galas, and happiness and even the stability of society depends on nano-monitors imbedded in the soul.?Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Library Binding
• Publisher: Bt Bound (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0613175158
• ISBN-13: 978-0613175159
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,663,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books, spanning thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy, including Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, City at the End of Time, and Hull Zero Three. His books have won numerous international prizes, have been translated into more than twenty-two languages, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Over the last twenty-eight years, he has also served as a consultant for NASA, the U.S. Army, the State Department, the International Food Protection Association, and Homeland Security on matters ranging from privatizing space to food safety, the frontiers of microbiology and genetics, and biological security.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TURNS DYSTOPIA ON ITS HEAD, April 12, 2003

By 

Worldreels (MANKATO, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Slant (Mass Market Paperback)

Greg Bear outdid himself with this one. He turned what appeared to be headed for another dystopia on its head and managed to salvage a rather happy ending. His creative ingenuity salvaged the so-so plot-his content definitely outshone the package. The comparison of the human brain to colonies of bacteria was stunning-how the mind operates by using molecular language. His story shows how the shape of society may rely on its language, e.g., being "happy" or being "rich" can become a kind of drug and staying so can stifle initiative.

Bear's levels of conflict rise as high into the sky as his Omphalos, a utopian temple turned sour. His character Schnee has combined the neural nets of bees, wasps, ants and bacteria laden loam to create an ultimate biological computer capable of spreading prions of infectious RNA material throughout the globe-an ultimate biological weapon. Her tourette like virus, while forcing victims to utter obscenities also makes their brains work faster. Schnee sought revenge on and recognition from her old boss Nathan who had discounted her ideas. AI Jill, a conventional computer, finds herself in a death struggle with AI Roddy, a biological computer. Every character he uses either has an opponent or is engaged in a fierce struggle for their own identity.

We've heard of the quantum computer, the molecular computer, the DNA computer but who has even thought of a bacterial computer? And no writer gives a better model of how data flow can create designs to makes nanotechnology work. Bear seems to rip a crack in the biosphere-noosphere and peer into the future. Futuristic ideas abound-his speaker Torino explains how the earth has become a gigantic single cell. And as man creates self aware AI computers man's own personality is subject to fragmentation. All in all, enough new ideas to make Bear a trailblazer for future writers.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A complicated book that makes heavy demands on the reader, June 10, 2001

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slant (Mass Market Paperback)

I agree completely with those critics who have written of the difficulty of getting involved with this book. Greg Bear is obviously not afraid to make substantial demands on his readers, but rightfully so, in my opinion. The first six chapters (72 pages) introduce a large number of seemingly unrelated characters--the course of the novel will see them interact eventually, but that does not happen for quite some time, and the reader is left wondering where the book is going. That the story takes completely unexpected paths repeatedly was one of its delights for me--I can honestly say that it was totally unpredictable and convincing nonetheless. Further demands on the reader are made with the use of future vocabulary--Bear condescends to no one with lengthy explanations of the terms the characters use, preferring to let us figure them out in context as best we can. This quality and complexity of writing, along with Bear's deeply grim vision of the future, reminded me of John Brunner's novel Stand on Zanzibar. Slant is an exploration of a world driven by the twin forces of nanotechnology and mental therapy, and Bear seems uncannily precognisant of the issues that are likely to arise. Thus sex, Hollywood, the military, politics, religion and personal freedom are all involved in one of the most sophisticated and well-thought out plots I've read in years. Quotes from a future book, Alive Contains a Lie (reminiscent of Brunner's The Hipcrime Vocab) allow Bear to get a bit preachy at times, moralizing as events allow: "Conservative elitists rule much of modern religion, making it a branch of the Entertainment State. So sayeth the evangelistic moneychanger in the dataflow temple: Money can buy peace and salvation! Good works count for nothing against an ever-growing pile of status. Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades...It is about money and the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy." To be fair, liberals come in for an equally harsh treatment--in fact, Bear's depressingly disturbing future vision is clearly a result of the clash of values between conservatism and liberalism and the failure of a humanistic approach to life. If you are unafraid to engage the world of ideas and willing to pay the cost, Slant is a marvelous book, and I highly recommend it. (Although Slant is technically a sequel to Queen of Angels, one need not have read the previous book to understand Slant, although there are a few references to prior events, and certain characters return.) If, instead, you prefer light entertainment, go rent a video of Men in Black.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The future is here and it is dense, April 9, 2006

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slant (Mass Market Paperback)

This apparently is a sequel to his previous novel Queen of Angels, which I read so long ago that I don't remember any specifics of the plot other than the bare basics, which didn't help me at all when reading this novel. However, it doesn't really matter because while I think they share the same future and some of the characters, everything else is different and I imagine both works can easily stand alone. In this particular book, Bear postulates a world where most problems have been solved and people have turned to improving their minds, undergoing therapy to smooth over all disorders and so on, making society a not too unpleasant place to live. Of course, there's a problem or we wouldn't have much of a story. Bear doesn't take the easy way out, kicking off the first part of the story by introducing a number of characters who don't have any connection other than the fact that we know their plots are all going to intersect somehow, or else they wouldn't be in the same book. But by doing so he gives us a crosssection of this future society, from the rich people railing against what they see as a regression, to the people working in the entertainment industry (where people immerse themselves more and more), to the police keeping it together, to the therapists who have to ensure we all don't go crazy. And little by little, he starts to show things falling apart at the seams, as each character gets a tiny piece of the puzzle and are drawn together, as we finally see the extent of the plan and what some people will do to make society more in their own image. For me the book works better in the beginning, when we're exploring the society and all the little quirks of it. Yes, it's not as dense as Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar but not much is, and Bear sprinkles enough quotes and excerpts in between chapters that we can get a good feel for things without being overwhelmed. As the various plots start to come together and the mysteries stand revealed, the characterization starts to take a backseat to rapidly cutting back and forth between what's going on and people reacting to what's going on and thus things paradoxically start to lose a little bit of steam. The steps to reach the climax seem to take quite a while to get there for no good reason and part of me just wanted him to get on with it and have bodies start dropping. Plus, after starting out with a whole slew of characters, toward the end we're only focusing on a few and the rest are just bystanders, which was a little disapointing. But the pace moves swiftly enough and Bear deserves a lot of credit for writing a novel where everything isn't spelled out for us and for showing a future that is better in some ways but still not perfect. There's always room for improvement. But it feels like SF with some thought actually put into the science while managing to tell an entertaining story without having the book sit there and lecture us about stuff that we may or may not care about all that much. In these days where everyone with a doctorate is writing some kind of novel, people who can still pull off the storytelling aspect of it are still impressive.