Teaser

Ten stories from one of the greats of modern science fiction. Ranging from biology experiments gone awry to a trip to Hell itself, these stories showcase Bear’s range as an author . . .

Review

A slightly curious fact about my relationship with Greg Bear’s work is that, though I have already read four of his novels, I consider this my first real exposure to the man’s writing. Why? Because the other four were set in other people’s universes, three for Halo and one for Foundation. This is not to say they are inferior, but simply to note that hands other than Bear’s went into their creation. Tangents is my first original Greg Bear book. It’s a one man show. And while I enjoyed his tie-in novels, if his short stories are anything to go by, I’ve been missing out by not looking into his original fiction earlier.

Blood Music is perhaps Bear’s most famous novel, but this collection contains the short story that started it all. ‘Blood Music’ is a truly phenomenal piece of body horror wrapped in science fiction, and worth the price of admission alone. Other than alien species, biology is often overlooked by science fiction. There’s plenty of physics and engineering, and quite a bit of chemistry too. But biology? Not so much. Even with such a small sample size, however, ‘Blood Music’ looms over the competition. It’s a story that feels a lot older than it is, with an almost 1940s account of a crazed scientist with an uncontrollable experiment. The ending is just about perfect too, with Bear pulling no punches. I can’t honestly imagine how this could be expanded into a novel, but I’m interested to find out.

Unstable science projects come back with a vengeance in ‘Schrodinger’s Plague.’ This one makes good use of the epistolary format over a relatively short span of time (both internally and narratively). It too has a slight horror vibe going on, exaggerated by the found-footage nature of the storytelling, and again has some chilling final questions for the reader. For full-blown horror, we have ‘Dead Run’ which follows the employee in charge of taking damned souls to Hell, which leaves us asking what could possibly be worse than Hell itself? The horror is balanced out by later story ‘Tangents,’ which is a surprisingly gentle exploration of experimental physics that proves Bear’s standing as a top-notch writer of hard SF.

As with any collection, there are a few misses alongside the hits. ‘Sleepside Story’ does absolutely nothing for me, and ‘Sisters’ balances a brilliant concept with a narrative that leans to heavily on teenage drama. Nevertheless, Tangents is a great collection of short fiction, and one I’d recommend to just about anyone interested in serious science fiction. It’s got variety in both tone and content, but the one constant is the care Greg Bear takes with exploring an idea. I haven’t been this enthralled by a single-author collection since the heyday of Isaac Asimov.

I know for a fact that I’ll be reading more Greg Bear in the future, and I’d encourage you all to do the same as well.

Book Stats

• Contains 10 stories
• Published by Gollancz in 1989
• Predominantly Hard SF
• 290 pages