Eon by Greg Bear
Title: Eon
Author: Greg Bear
Publisher: Tor Books
503 pages.
A former sci-fi novel that's now become an alternate-history tale, Eon kicks ass.
It starts on Earth in the year 2000 (note: this book was written in 1985) when an asteroid suddenly appears in orbit around the Earth. This mysterious appearance doesn't go unnoticed or unstudied, and it's eventually determined that the asteroid's been hollowed out into 7 massive cylindrical chambers, which were inhabited several hundred years ago by humans.
However, there's something odd about the seventh chamber. More on that later.
Anyway, in the first six chambers, astronauts sent up by the United States and the Soviet Union (yes, in 2000--like I said, it qualifies as alternate-history these days) find all kinds of freaky shit. Each chamber is 30km long and 50km in diameter and are linked end-to-end, and the whole asteroid is spun just so to provide Earthlike gravity along the inner wall of each cylinder. Since the thing is so enormous, there are whole cities, farms, and forests inside the asteroid.
The cities are where the truly interesting things start to happen. The human explorers decide to set up stations in the asteroid and import scientists to study the rock. At this point, the plot gives way to a second story, which involves a man named Olmy, which is basically all that is comprehensible about it. The rest of the book vacillates between Olmy and the explorers.
Really, the lynchpin of the whole book is Patricia Luisa Vasquez, a Californian physicist with some truly strange ideas. As she travels up to the rock and investigations continue, she finds out the ultra-classified secret of the asteroid: it's from the future. And everyone's hoping it's not from their future because if it is, that means Earth is going boom in just a few weeks.
Whoops. However, in my head, that's fucking nothing compared to the other secret, this one involving the seventh chamber.
It's made more or less the same as the other six, with one exception: it doesn't have a cap at the "north" end. It just keeps going. And going. And going. It's basically an artificial universe generated by the greatest Engineer of all time, Konrad Korzenowski, who was (or will be? Hmm) a student of...you guessed it. Patricia Luisa Vasquez.
Apparently in future history, Earth goes boom, human society re-establishes itself based on principles developed in the aftermath of the war, and becomes super-scientific. So they decide to leave Earth and develop an asteroid, which they name "Thistledown," and live there in the cities they've built. They're so technologically advanced most of them don't really bother with bodies, and if they do, they treat it like an art form. And of course, Korzenowski builds a sixth chamber chock full of mysterious machinery and co-opts the seventh chamber to build his own private universe. Once it all works, he tells everyone and they all migrate into the seventh chamber. Because of the sheer relativistic weirdness involved in constructing your own universe, a singularity (referred to as the "flaw") runs down the middle, which they use for transportation and to hold their main beacon of civilization, named the Axis City. This consists of several huge geometrical forms strung on the flaw like beads on a necklace, in which everyone lives, several million miles into the seventh chamber.
Of course, the story gets much, much deeper. Due to the nature of this universe (dubbed "the Way" by its inhabitants), it's possible to open gates to other planets and universes, so Axis City serves as the nexus of thousands of worlds and species as well, and governs commerce between all those. And its government is called the "Hexamon Nexus," or "the Hexamon" or "the Nexus" for short.
Okay. Now that the backstory's done...we move on to the plot.
Jesus Christ, fuck it. I don't give a shit about the plot. It can go piss in a nun's mouth for all I shit on it. Moving on.
Scale: You're shitting me, right? A time-traveling asteroid containing an artificial universe that serves as the nexus of commerce between millions of alternate universes? 5.
Audacity: Again with the shitting. 5.
Engagement: Aha! Here we come to the crotch of the matter. There's a lot of talk about math, gravitational physics, and the Way, but for someone like me, it's incredibly boner-inducing. For an average person, though? The slow set-up and admittedly unimpressive climax (although the Russian invasion of Thistledown was hugely creative) might turn some people off. Call it an even 3.
Characterization: I scoff and thumb my balls at characterization in this book. The characters aren't that sympathetic--it's a mass of obsessed intellectuals living in the middle of the most incredible accomplishment of the human race, watching Earth poof. The point of this book isn't character development--it's about the human species and the amazing ideas it can dream up. Give it a 3.
Sexiness: Yeah, there's sex. Suli Ram Kikura (a sort of Hexamon lawyer) is cute, Patricia Luisa Vasquez, though spooky, is a horny slut, and Judith Hoffman is a sexily powerful lady. Then there's just the sheer grandeur of concept expressed in this book. 5, damn your eyes.
Average: 4.2. Fuck numbers, if you're hardcore like me, read it. If you're not, your eyes will eventually be plucked out and used to grow a creature with really good eyesight that'll kill you just by looking at you with your own eyes.
Or something.
Author: Greg Bear
Publisher: Tor Books
503 pages.
A former sci-fi novel that's now become an alternate-history tale, Eon kicks ass.
It starts on Earth in the year 2000 (note: this book was written in 1985) when an asteroid suddenly appears in orbit around the Earth. This mysterious appearance doesn't go unnoticed or unstudied, and it's eventually determined that the asteroid's been hollowed out into 7 massive cylindrical chambers, which were inhabited several hundred years ago by humans.
However, there's something odd about the seventh chamber. More on that later.
Anyway, in the first six chambers, astronauts sent up by the United States and the Soviet Union (yes, in 2000--like I said, it qualifies as alternate-history these days) find all kinds of freaky shit. Each chamber is 30km long and 50km in diameter and are linked end-to-end, and the whole asteroid is spun just so to provide Earthlike gravity along the inner wall of each cylinder. Since the thing is so enormous, there are whole cities, farms, and forests inside the asteroid.
The cities are where the truly interesting things start to happen. The human explorers decide to set up stations in the asteroid and import scientists to study the rock. At this point, the plot gives way to a second story, which involves a man named Olmy, which is basically all that is comprehensible about it. The rest of the book vacillates between Olmy and the explorers.
Really, the lynchpin of the whole book is Patricia Luisa Vasquez, a Californian physicist with some truly strange ideas. As she travels up to the rock and investigations continue, she finds out the ultra-classified secret of the asteroid: it's from the future. And everyone's hoping it's not from their future because if it is, that means Earth is going boom in just a few weeks.
Whoops. However, in my head, that's fucking nothing compared to the other secret, this one involving the seventh chamber.
It's made more or less the same as the other six, with one exception: it doesn't have a cap at the "north" end. It just keeps going. And going. And going. It's basically an artificial universe generated by the greatest Engineer of all time, Konrad Korzenowski, who was (or will be? Hmm) a student of...you guessed it. Patricia Luisa Vasquez.
Apparently in future history, Earth goes boom, human society re-establishes itself based on principles developed in the aftermath of the war, and becomes super-scientific. So they decide to leave Earth and develop an asteroid, which they name "Thistledown," and live there in the cities they've built. They're so technologically advanced most of them don't really bother with bodies, and if they do, they treat it like an art form. And of course, Korzenowski builds a sixth chamber chock full of mysterious machinery and co-opts the seventh chamber to build his own private universe. Once it all works, he tells everyone and they all migrate into the seventh chamber. Because of the sheer relativistic weirdness involved in constructing your own universe, a singularity (referred to as the "flaw") runs down the middle, which they use for transportation and to hold their main beacon of civilization, named the Axis City. This consists of several huge geometrical forms strung on the flaw like beads on a necklace, in which everyone lives, several million miles into the seventh chamber.
Of course, the story gets much, much deeper. Due to the nature of this universe (dubbed "the Way" by its inhabitants), it's possible to open gates to other planets and universes, so Axis City serves as the nexus of thousands of worlds and species as well, and governs commerce between all those. And its government is called the "Hexamon Nexus," or "the Hexamon" or "the Nexus" for short.
Okay. Now that the backstory's done...we move on to the plot.
Jesus Christ, fuck it. I don't give a shit about the plot. It can go piss in a nun's mouth for all I shit on it. Moving on.
Scale: You're shitting me, right? A time-traveling asteroid containing an artificial universe that serves as the nexus of commerce between millions of alternate universes? 5.
Audacity: Again with the shitting. 5.
Engagement: Aha! Here we come to the crotch of the matter. There's a lot of talk about math, gravitational physics, and the Way, but for someone like me, it's incredibly boner-inducing. For an average person, though? The slow set-up and admittedly unimpressive climax (although the Russian invasion of Thistledown was hugely creative) might turn some people off. Call it an even 3.
Characterization: I scoff and thumb my balls at characterization in this book. The characters aren't that sympathetic--it's a mass of obsessed intellectuals living in the middle of the most incredible accomplishment of the human race, watching Earth poof. The point of this book isn't character development--it's about the human species and the amazing ideas it can dream up. Give it a 3.
Sexiness: Yeah, there's sex. Suli Ram Kikura (a sort of Hexamon lawyer) is cute, Patricia Luisa Vasquez, though spooky, is a horny slut, and Judith Hoffman is a sexily powerful lady. Then there's just the sheer grandeur of concept expressed in this book. 5, damn your eyes.
Average: 4.2. Fuck numbers, if you're hardcore like me, read it. If you're not, your eyes will eventually be plucked out and used to grow a creature with really good eyesight that'll kill you just by looking at you with your own eyes.
Or something.
Labels: alternate history, epic, science fiction
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