This is the first published collection of short stories by one of the foremost voices in science fiction today. This significant volume contains many characters and situations that later evolved into their own novels. "Mandala" features technologically perfect cities that eject their sinful human occupants, a premise that can be found at the root of Bear's later novel, Strength of Stones. In "Hardfought", Bear brilliantly handles the classic science fiction dilemma of human communication with aliens. Other stories include "The Wind From a BurningWoman" in which a woman holds the world hostage by controlling a giant asteroid; "Scattershot", in which the inhabitants of many universes meet in an undefined limbo space; and "Petra", a story of a world where chaos rules, stone moves and the mind controls reality. Hailed by readers and critics alike, The Venging has been described as "an excellent collection" and its author praised as "one of the freshest writers to break into the science fiction field in many a year".
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Editorial Reviews
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"Greg Bear's first short story collection confirms him as one of the field's distinctive new voices...he has a real flair for new ideas, and he knows how to write convincingly about real people in strange situations...sooner, rather than later, Bear is li
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
awesome collection of short stories from Bear,
By M-I-K-E 2theD "2theD" (The Big Mango, Thailand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Venging (Paperback)
Wind from a Burning Woman: This story is sort of a prelude to Eon, perhaps set many years before the opening of The Way. The to-be hollowed out asteroid (Psyche) is in orbit around the moon waiting to have seven chambers created within by nuclear devices. While in orbit, a Geshel extremist makes her way to Psyche and threatens to ram it into earth unless her conditions are met. (33 pages)
A lot of terminology from Eon is used in this sort of prelude, including the Hexamon, Geshel, Naderites and Beckmann drives. Political bureaucracy is still alive and kicking this far into the future and is a theme presented in this short story. Can the Hexamon lose face and admit to a crime to save Pschye and planet earth? -------------------------------- White Horse Child: A boy meets two old storytellers who tell him strange tales. This concerns his parents, who are familiar with the doings of the couple and set out to condone the two to protect their son from their mind tricks. (23 pages) This is a strange tale in itself, with a number of odd stories involving animals and morals. However logic weary it may be to read, it's still an entertaining read. -------------------------------- Petra: Statues have come to life in a post-apocalyptic cathedral. The stone beings, flesh beings and flesh/stone beings are separated in different vertical strata within the cathedral. The story follows a gargoyle type child through the cathedral in search of the Stone Christ and self-fulfilling a prophecy. (20 pages) This is an odd idea to wrap one's head around - it's impossible to nail down a time and place for the story setting. Why are all the statues alive and why is everyone held in the church? These questions are left unanswered as we follow the difficulties of a half-flesh & half-stone gargoyle child. -------------------------------- Scattershot: A spacefarer, Geneva, is "disrupted" by aliens and becomes part of a hodgepodge of aliens and alien craft, which have previously been disrupted by another alien species (the Aighors). With her fellow disrupted teddy bear sidekick Sonok, they try to find others on the ship that may know how to go back home to earth. (36 pages) A lot of ideas are thrown together in this short story. It is like a stack of ideas on Greg Bear's desk fell into this story. This doesn't make the story bad, just random. The ending is as random as some of the aliens are, too. I appreciate the strong female lead character, too. -------------------------------- Mandala: An outcast villager, Jeshua, seeks solace and surgery at an ancient, myth-ridden walking city left from an earlier, more tech-savvy generation. The planet where the story takes place was colonized with giant walking cities inhabited by people of various religions. They wanted habitats with pure individuals. When the cities saw that people's thoughts were tainted by ill will, the cities cast them out tens of generations ago. (30 pages) This is an easy to follow story with an interesting history. One man becoming ostracized for a birth defeat, one man seeking justice and one man's adventure into the pit of the walking city of Mandala. Thoughts linger into the simple 30 pages of story, such as "Why was he selected to enter?" and "Will he return to his village?" Pretty gripping story. -------------------------------- Hardfought: A story about warfare in space with a very different alien species, the Senexi. Using rapidly maturing children as "Hawks" or attackers, the children are bred from superior genes from previous generations of Hawks. Prufax is the another strong female main character attempting to find the understanding in warring with an alien species they know so little about. Aryz is the alien character, which we can view the story at with a skewed angle. (75 pages) -------------------------------- By far, this is an epic short story. Many fantastic ideas are brought about here and applied in numerous inventive ways. The Senexi are a mind-bending, fantastically novel species with a completely different evolution, culture, sense configuration, hierarchy, technology and mindset. This is all considered and explored though the pages of Hardfought. -------------------------------- The Venging: Disjohn Fairchild has made an alien species, the Aighors (same species as the Disrupting aliens in Scattershot) very angry. He is tainting their religion with the science of black holes, which leaves the sick and dying of the Aighors unable to use the black hole for funeral purposes. Kamon, an Aighor, takes a personal vendetta against this blasphemy and chases Fairchild's ship to an area rich with black holes. This story uses much terminology and physics about black holes. (32 pages) Yes, this is the hardest, shortest hard sci-fi, which I've found. The descriptions set up about the scenarios of chasing starships, black hole physics, and alien customs are phenomenally well done. The story is engrossing from page 1 to page 30. Short, but terribly sweet and perfect. -------------------------------- Perihesperon: A space cruiser is hit by a meteor and is disabled with one passenger aboard (Karen), who had no idea what had happened. Another character, Alista, found his way onto the ship soon after the disaster and comforts the girl though the inevitable destruction of the craft. (14 pages) Here is another very short but moving piece of work. This is probably one of the most sentimental pieces of sci-fi I've read, by Bear and by others. This story has a small tie-in with a character from The Venging, as the preface tells you.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Aussie Reader,
This review is from: Venging (Kindle Edition)
Pretty rough stuff - couldn't get into it at all.
Definitely nowhere near Greg Bear's usual gripping standard. Very disappointing.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
almost Bearable,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Venging (Kindle Edition)
Greg Bear is one of the most interesting fiction and scifi writer of the decade. This collection, however, is rough. Many of the stories are predictable and feel like test pilots for a better book. I read about half the collection and put it aside for Grimm's fairy tales.
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