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Summary: one of best sci-fi books ever written
Review: brilliant book by greg bear - one of science fiction classics.the ideas in this book, about intelegent cells living in human body, were so revolutional, when it was written, and even now they sound un-imaginable.
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Summary: Imaginative evocation of a world of biotech marvels
Review: The creative "hard SF" speculation in Blood Music, published fifteen years ago, still makes most other explorations of the potential of biotechnology look unimaginative. An irresponsible maverick researcher at a California biotech firm converts his own white blood cells into tiny biological computers which aggregate in the test tube to form artificial intelligences. When the company demands that he destroy the results of his unauthorized experimentation, he surreptitiously injects them into his bloodstream, where they continue to evolve into ever more advanced forms, and from which they eventually escape to infect the rest of humanity, resulting in the end of history, not to mention the universe as we know it. Some of the characters are mildly engaging, the plotting is OK if rather episodic, and the writing is solid for the most part, if not inspired. The nerdy efforts to portray male-female relationships are so awkward as to be endearing. All of which merely to say that while Bear's handling in this book of the mechanics of fiction writing is (like much SF) far from masterful, it's not so bad that it distracts from the scientific speculation (which puts it a cut above a lot of other SF). Bear vividly imagines artificial intelligences orders of magnitude smarter than us and orders of magnitude smaller; communication based on chemical structures and concentrations rather than spatial relationships or atmospheric vibrations (i.e. smell & taste rather than sight & sound); new variations on the tension between individual and collective identity; an interesting if unsystematically thought through twist on Thomas Kuhn's concept of scientific paradigm shifts; and racial memory encoded in "junk DNA." A marvelous book.
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Summary: Unfocused Virus Story
Review: "Blood Music" has a cool premise about a bizarre, self-aware virus that spreads across the United States and communicates with its human hosts, but it sadly never really works. For one thing, there are WAY TOO MANY characters to keep track of. We don't care about too many of them, because (1)We don't spend enough time with them and (2)They die too quickly. The story moves at an incredibly slow pace, when it should be moving like a rocket. I don't mean to sound impatient, but a story like this deserved a faster pace. This book should have been tighter and more character-driven (with fewer characters). The story is too dull to complement its premise. All that promise from the premise was wasted. Oh well.
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Summary: Hard science Childhood's End
Review: For those few among you who don't know that my little title blurb means, Arthur C Clarke once wrote a nifty little book where the human race basically combined into this singular "Overmind" sort of thing and eventually left the planet to explore the Universe and join it. Sound familiar. Blood Music reminds me of Greg Bear reading it and actually trying to explain the science behind something like that (in Clarke's book it was said that it was part of evolution and natural mutation) and he does a fairly good job. The science in the beginning is mostly microbiology and for a science major like me it's a bit offputting because frankly I read this books to take a break from all the stuff they cram down my throat every day, being reminded of it isn't the first thing on my list when I pick a book. However the science is handled pretty well, and consider that the book is almost thirteen years old (if not older) I imagine if Bear went into detail about his science, it would make the book look out of date today, sort of like those books from the thirties that predicted by now we'd all have flying cars and hyperspeed. But the actual plot of the book ain't too bad, the suspense moves along well, most of the initial characters don't make it to the end of the book for a variety of reasons and that can be annoying if you're just getting used to them but it's all part of the plot. I think the scenario (barring Clarke) is one of the more interesting ones that have come across in SF and his marriage of hard science and what amounts to philosophical theories along the lines of nirvana comes across well even years later. Some of the scenes are a bit odd (I only wish I could pick up a girl that fast) but all in all it's a classic book that deserves to be read and discussed. It's thought provoking and entertaining and you can't ask for much more than that from a book.
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Summary: Very Different From The Short Story
Review: It has been pointed out that this novel isn't perfect. Of course not. Greg Gear was new to the business when he turned his short story of the same name (found in the compliation TANGENTS) into a full-length novel. In the story, the concept of self-aware microorganisms remaking the human body was presented as the end of the world through misery, while in the novel it leads humanity to a higher level of existence. It's not technically accurate and has a lot of omissions where it comes to the hard science, so maybe genetic engineers should keep their distance. To casual readers, though, it's very entertaining and thought-provoking, not to be tossed aside lightly.
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Summary: Finally read this book... some good parts, some bad.
Review: I bought this book 10 years ago, and I finally read it, after running out of books one day and grabbing the first thing I saw. I thought that the beginning was good, but it gradually lost interest. Every character I started to like got "integrated" into the noosphere, and there was no real closing to the book at all. I now do not feel bad about letting it sit on my shelf, unread, for ten years!
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Summary: Nice ideas...if not for Feynman
Review: The writing abilities are a bit weak at this point in Greg Bear's career, but the concept of ideas is fascinating. The biology is simplistic and actually says nothing at all as to how these things were created. Bear should have done his homework and read into the world of nanotechnology, endogenous retroviruses, and biology beyond the basics. Biochips, the name, has been used for the latest aspect of gene technology. Trying to show how one protein can turn on multiple genes or a virus, etc. The basics of which can be found in multiple articles in Science (the journal). Though this was mentioned as hard-science...us actually in the field almost laugh at the biology mentioned in this book...it's not even saying anything. The concept of introns has been discussed for years and there are theories as to their use. Introns are likely designed so that across evolution genes could swap and build up to more complicated proteins, such as hemoglobin. Introns also contain endogenous retroviruses...the remnants of the very aspect that likely made us human. Darwin's Radio begins to get into this. At this point...Bear could have taken some cues from Asimov and become even more hard-core science and then add the fiction. The suspense of the story, though, is great and the settings hysterical, especially living in Irvine and seeing how La Jolla has popped up as "Enzyme Valley." Add a bit of Feynman's nanotechnology and you see where this is going.
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Summary: Superior. You can't put it down.
Review: Despite the fact that the beginning is mostly a bunch of biological mumbo-jumbo that very few would actually comprehend, the book was truly stunning. Written beautifully, and with such imagination, it is enough to captify any reader. Eerie, and realm-breaking, the "noocytes" rule Earth, only to improve the human being - all from a cell-basis. The dialogue between the cell and the host is probably the most stunning. I loved it.
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Summary: wow
Review: This book was amazing....everything hurtled out of control so quickly i could not put it down. normally takes me a few weeks to read a book....this one i read in 2 days.
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Summary: One of the best books I've read.
Review: It's not just about science fiction, it's also about human emotions. The first part of the book gets quite confusing (it might help to have taken a year or two of a biology class) but after it, the book picks up and is quite good. Nice ending.
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