Teaser

An asteroid has arrived in Earth’s orbit, riddled with signs of an ancient civilisation. Exploring this mystery will take years. Conquering it could spell the end of humanity . . .

Review

Arguably, the best place to start reading a classic author is with their most famous work. After all, these books must be getting attention for a reason, right? I’ve already read bits of Greg bear’s work in the form of his Foundation prequel Foundation’s and Chaos, and his HALO: Forerunner trilogy. Throw in the short story collection Tangents, and I was practically salivating over the idea of more Greg Bear. Looking at his most famous works left me with a choice between Eon and Blood Music. I found a copy of Eon first, so that is what I’ve read first.

On a conceptual level, this is exactly what I expected from a Greg Bear novel. It’s hard SF with a time-old question at its core. What would happen if a massive alien object arrived in our solar system? In this case, the object in question is an asteroid that shows signs of prior habitation. The twist being that those inhabitants were humans from another version of Earth, and the asteroid holds clues to our own future.

On that note, we have to consider the timeline. Eon was first published in 1985 (and I am very surprised it was not nominated for a Hugo the following year. Not because it’s particularly strong, but because it feels like the books that were nominated at the same time. But I digress). Set in 2004, Eon imagines a Cold War that never ended, leading to such fantastically impossible events as the nuclear annihilation of Kiev. Yes, this is unfortunately a book that reads less wondrously in the current global climate than it would have only a few years ago. On the one hand, it’s interesting to see how cyclical some elements of human history are. On the other hand, Eon makes for some very bleak reading. I understand there is a prequel that established a proper alternative timeline, but even without that, the setting makes perfect sense.

This is one of Bear’s earlier novels, so it’s unsurprisingly not as refined as his later works. The characters are largely two dimensional, and the relations feel forced, particularly when it comes to romance. Eon also suffers from an affliction common to the hard SF genre. The central idea is very interesting, but there’s not enough of a story tacked on around it. Much of it reads like a Cold War thriller that could have existed without the science fictional elements. This is not necessarily a bad storyline, but it’s not what I was reading the book for.

All of these factors add up to a book that’s at the weaker end of Bear’s spectrum, but there’s still a lot to enjoy here. If you’re a fan of Hard SF, then Bear is definitely an author you should look into. The historical context for the novel also adds an extra layer of interest. Personally, however, I’ll be keeping an eye out for Blood Music, in the hopes that it proves to be a stronger book.

Book Stats

• The Way #1
• Originally Published 1985
• 504 Pages