Blood Music

Rating:
Summary: Genetic thriller apocalypse odyssey
Review: Beware, there are some things in this review to spoil some surprises if you haven't read it yet. It's worth reading, OK (and did pick up both a Hugo and a Nebula, so it's not just my opinion).

The first third to half of this felt like you were sitting in a taut, well made thriller film. Virgil is a classic tool to set up an action/slight SF plot - a gifted geneticist, socially inept, is caught out doing shonky private research on the company time, and in a classy scene told he has two hours to destroy all his stuff. He manages to hide the most crucial enhanced 'learning' cells he's been working on, but eventually can only smuggle them out by injecting them in his own body - a crazy act, but he can't bear the thought of losing years of successful research. The stuff will probably die anyway, although of course it shouldn't have been let out of carefully quarantined conditions. All this presented skilfully, with the pseudo-scientific dialogue (how would I know) not abusing your suspension of disbelief.

Of course weird things start happening, and he calls on his friend (and seeming ideal hero vehicle), Edward, a Doctor and Harrison Ford style intelligent and resourceful (but still sort of everyman) figure. Has Virgil potentially unleashed a deadly virus? And who are these suspicious CIA types in the background - there was actually defence research secretly happening at Virgil's lab: are we squaring off for a standard little man against the establishment, using his wits to unravel the mystery while on the run, finally using whatever the discovery is to cleverly resolve the book? There's even a powerful potential mini-resolution relatively early on that Bear could have built up to as a satisfactory conclusion.

I would have enjoyed that, and I'm pretty sure he could have pulled it off nicely.

But the novel veers. First into, 'Oh, ok, he's sliding into Spiderman territory: the microbes in Virgil's body are reconstructing him, making him invulnerable to disease, attractive to women, and giving him superhuman powers.' Again, not what I was expecting, but, sure, lets run with it.

But then the novel careers. We've got a plague on our hands - that casually wipes out North America in a couple of days. We're now in a holocaust novel following around a few anomalous survivors. Meanwhile, over in Europe, a researcher has bravely taken his infection to an isolation tank so he can be studied as he dies. He starts communicating with the cells within him - they are intelligent and myriad.

The scope just keeps growing - now the cells are challenging our view of humanity: they're more like an alien species with Godlike powers. It's an odyssey, with basic questions about reality and life and identity.

Quite a ride - a writer who could put out a very decent thriller who is an SF thinker at heart - he keeps on throwing in new, 'Yeah, but what if's' along the way, any one or two of which would probably sustain a whole other book for someone else. We do lose out a bit on character, perhaps, because of this, but the people are not gallingly one dimensional, and are enjoyable as the sort of larger than life people you'd expect to meet in a decently cast slick film. Somehow, while not being as tight as it could have been, the book manages to cohere while wildly changing direction.

Rating:
Summary: Should have been left at Novella Length
Review: Book Review by C. Douglas Baker

Blood Music starts off with a promising concept and treats
it in a relatively sophisticated manner. Through the use of
recombinant DNA research, Vergil Ulam, creates a sentient single
cell organism. These organisms subsequently begin to build a
society to fit their needs. This means changing the molecular
structure of living creatures, including human beings, to suit
them. Thus begins (and ends) Blood Music.

The better aspects of Blood Music involve the exploration of
the possibility of intelligent single-cell organisms. The scenes
where organisms actually "talk" or communicate with Vergil and
later Bernard had great potential. Unfortunately, most of the
novel reads like a second rate horror flick. I have not read the
novelette that won a Hugo so I suspect the more carelessly
conceived aspects of the novel were left out. The "blob" that
takes over New York city and the "ghosts" that appear to convince
Suzy to "join" them are simply trite B-movie devices.

It's hard to recommend reading the entire novel. Only the
first third and second third are worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable, or is it?
Review: I am a big fan of Greg Bear, but only recently got around to reading Blood Music. Okay, there's one big nit here. Bear knows a lot more about biology than computability, so the "intelligent cells" idea is not very plausible. Adding computational theory to the science, including how DNA could be similar to a Turing maching would have made it work better, but there are some important speed issues that would have to be dealt with. But, if you get past that and accept the Asimov "big lie" idea and get on with the book, this is a fabulous read.

What I really liked is how well Bear set me up. The first half of the book sets up what you know is going to happen. It's all completely predictable. Then, Bear tosses a massive wrench into the works, doing the unexpected again and again. I realized that, had this been a Stephen King novel, my predictions would have been right, but Bear is better than that and has a much larger imagination. What follows is an expansion of the story to Bear-sized proportions (and if you've read much Bear, you know how big that can be).

I highly recommend this book to people who like their science fiction to include more science and less (or no) magic.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling and throughly enjoyable
Review: I first read this book as a disillusioned teenager and it restored my faith in SF. I have just re read Blood Music for the third time and it has lost none of its potency. If anything it was more enjoyable reading it 8 years later with the weight of experience giving the story even greater depth and texture. Greg bear has the intensity of William Gibson (without the nihilism) the technical savvy of Larry Niven and the world Building skills of Robert Forward. My only regret would be that it is too short and a little thin on characterization (lessons learned in Songs of Earth and Power could be well applied here) To the reader from PA who found the story too "fantastic" I would urge you to considder the full implications of Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principal. Observation does indeed have a tangible effect on reality. There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies. A critical mind is a good thing to have and nurture but don't allow it to blind you to the fantastic :)

Rating:
Summary: a gripping and inventive novel
Review: I read this novel yesterday - literally read it in one sitting - maybe not so good for my productivity at work today (I was up until 4 in the morning reading it) but this was one I couldn't put down. Good writing and a gripping idea.

This is NOT a conventional "horrific plague" novel, although it appears to be so at the beginning.

I do agree that there are problems with characterization. The logic of his idea leads Bear to introduce and kill off (sort of) a series of main characters, so they don't have much chance to develop. Despite this problem, characterization is one of the stronger points in Blood Music's first half, although it gives way in the second half to development of a visionary idea. I DID feel sufficient sympathy with the characters to feel them as real and to care about what happened to them.

The power of Blood Music is that it starts off as a "plague" novel and by novel's end has brilliantly turned this premise on its head.

Over the past decades, I haven't read much science fiction, including several sci fi novels with good reputations that I started but didn't see any reason to finish. Blood Musicis my first intro to Greg Bear, and based on its quality and the grudging respect that even some of its carping critics have for Bear's other novels, I plan to read more of his stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating Adrenaline Rush & Great Speculative Fiction!
Review: Looking for a book so good you drop everything else and get behind on all that stuff you should be doing? This is one of those books!

This had the same derail-my-other-projects distraction factor as King's "The Stand," Case's "The Genesis Code," Preston's "The Hot Zone," and assorted other favorite thrillers. Reading "Blood Music" felt like a ride on a really fast train. Even when I had a good idea of where we were going, the ride there was exhilarating.

"Blood Music" is also a great piece of speculative fiction. Lovers of hard SF will appreciate the solid science foundation. People who don't care about hard SF for its own sake will find "Blood Music" all the more creepy because it is oh-so-believable.

Greg Bear is excellent. If you have not read him, this is a great start. If you like him and missed this, buy it now. If you wait, you'll be sorry you did when you finally get around to reading "Blood Music."

If you read this and would like more Greg Bear, try "The Forge of God."

For more plague fiction by someone you may not have read, try Connie Willis's "The Domesday Book."