Customer Reviews

W3 Women in Deep Time

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This book is a collection of three previously released novellas by Greg Bear. The common thread of these stories is that they are told in the feminine voice. It is an excellent place to start if you are new to Bear or want to try his shorter writings. There isn't a miss of the three presented here. The only reason that I did not give this book 5 stars is that there are only three stories and it does not contain more. Of the three stories:

Hardfought is his Nebula award winning story of the engineering of human life to make a better soldier. The story bounces back and forth between the present of the story and its past until the reader understands the true situation.

Scattershot is about a space ship consisting of many pieces from different universes and the constant changing the ship is undergoing with the various crews trying to cope.

Sisters is my personal favorite of the three stories. It is about the unforseen consequences of human genetic engineering for trying to bring out the "best" traits. This story should be read by everybody that felt ugly in junior high school. Sometimes getting the best traits is not always a deal.

This book is nice read and should not be missed.

The common thread in the 3 included stories is that Greg Bear wrote them (from 1979-89), and the lead in each story is a women.

My favorite and most timely is "Sisters" about genetic engineering, about beauty, and uniqueness. Perhaps many who don't quite fit in high school will identify with Letitia, and I'm sure know student would like to hear "Your simply the only one who can play the old - the older - woman".

Hardfought, never really hit home for me; the different dialects included in the story got in my way on a smooth flow. Still the story line and conclusion are interesting.

Scattershot, was a fun story, or time jumping and with a remarkable opening line "The teddy bear spoke excellent mandarin".

Not to be missed after the final story is Greg Bears address to the Science Fiction Convention of 2001; great remarks about meeting the fathers of science fiction as a youth, and some personal remarks about Poul Anderson (his father in law). Its a nice celebration of the fun of science fiction!