Slant

Rating:
Summary: This book had great potential...
Review: First off, this is the first book I've ever read by Greg Bear. I didn't know what to expect, and I was disappointed. I don't think that this novel was completely and fully realized, as it easily could have.

Slant begins with a 70 page assortment of complex and interesting characters that have absolutely nothing in common. I found this portiong of the book fascinating; all of the characters were deep and interesting. I was excited to see how they would be intertwined. This is where the disappointment came in; with the plot development. Basically, this group of people decide to storm Omphalos, a meat locker of cryogenically frozen humans. It is more complec, but that's the gist of it. The concepts here are wonderful, but Greg Bear didn't pull them together and I found the ending of the book to be very lacking and not very well-written.

Slant is a slow-moving novel with good characters and a fascinating future. I think that the writing was mediocre (in many parts) as was the plot. I've heard that this isn't the greatest Bear novel...I'll give him another chance, but I don't recommend this book.

-Taylor

Rating:
Summary: complex start and scrambled conclusion
Review: Greg Bear is often a great writer, with wondrous concepts and sweeping societal themes that only science fiction seems able to handle so well. Bear extrapolates a good story of near future psychological manipulation from certain liberal tendencies and delusions of today, but Slant is not his best. The story drew me in--from many vantage points, with shifting main characters--via seemingly unconnected but temporally parallel stories: the plot design is dendritic and slowly coalesces into a frightening whole at mid-story.

I was disconcerted by some rough plot holes, the lack of more coherent background on the political factions that apparently motivate the plot, and an ending that lost momentum, despite spots of brilliant nano and organic invention. Perhaps they would have been clearer if I'd known first to read the earlier book, Queen of Angels (but the publisher's blurbs utterly failed to warn); however, I might then have overlooked the wonderful way in which the plot structure comes together and mysterious happenings suddenly make sense, one of the delights of the best speculative fiction.

The story is more intellectually suspenseful then it is emotionally involving or convincing. The characters feel real and their situations are interesting, the dialogue is smooth, and the virtual reality episodes are seamless. For no clear reason, the woman characters are more interesting than the simple or befuddled men, perhaps as one aspect of the "/" relationships permeating this story (e.g., male/female, real/virtual, rich/good, machine/organ).

For another story based on Tourette syndrome, read Donald Hecht's Skull Session, a mystery with SF elements.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting vision with cardboard characters
Review: Greg Bear outdid himself with this one. He turned what appeared to be headed for another dystopia on its head and managed to salvage a rather happy ending. His creative ingenuity salvaged the so-so plot-his content definitely outshone the package. The comparison of the human brain to colonies of bacteria was stunning-how the mind operates by using molecular language. His story shows how the shape of society may rely on its language, e.g., being "happy" or being "rich" can become a kind of drug and staying so can stifle initiative.

Bear's levels of conflict rise as high into the sky as his Omphalos, a utopian temple turned sour. His character Schnee has combined the neural nets of bees, wasps, ants and bacteria laden loam to create an ultimate biological computer capable of spreading prions of infectious RNA material throughout the globe-an ultimate biological weapon. Her tourette like virus, while forcing victims to utter obscenities also makes their brains work faster. Schnee sought revenge on and recognition from her old boss Nathan who had discounted her ideas. AI Jill, a conventional computer, finds herself in a death struggle with AI Roddy, a biological computer. Every character he uses either has an opponent or is engaged in a fierce struggle for their own identity.

We've heard of the quantum computer, the molecular computer, the DNA computer but who has even thought of a bacterial computer? And no writer gives a better model of how data flow can create designs to makes nanotechnology work. Bear seems to rip a crack in the biosphere-noosphere and peer into the future. Futuristic ideas abound-his speaker Torino explains how the earth has become a gigantic single cell. And as man creates self aware AI computers man's own personality is subject to fragmentation. All in all, enough new ideas to make Bear a trailblazer for future writers.

Rating:
Summary: TURNS DYSTOPIA ON ITS HEAD
Review: Greg Bear outdid himself with this one. He turned what appeared to be headed for another dystopia on its head and managed to salvage a rather happy ending. His creative ingenuity salvaged the so-so plot-his content definitely outshone the package. The comparison of the human brain to colonies of bacteria was stunning-how the mind operates by using molecular language. His story shows how the shape of society may rely on its language, e.g., being "happy" or being "rich" can become a kind of drug and staying so can stifle initiative.

Bear's levels of conflict rise as high into the sky as his Omphalos, a utopian temple turned sour. His character Schnee has combined the neural nets of bees, wasps, ants and bacteria laden loam to create an ultimate biological computer capable of spreading prions of infectious RNA material throughout the globe-an ultimate biological weapon. Her tourette like virus, while forcing victims to utter obscenities also makes their brains work faster. Schnee sought revenge on and recognition from her old boss Nathan who had discounted her ideas. AI Jill, a conventional computer, finds herself in a death struggle with AI Roddy, a biological computer. Every character he uses either has an opponent or is engaged in a fierce struggle for their own identity.

We've heard of the quantum computer, the molecular computer, the DNA computer but who has even thought of a bacterial computer? And no writer gives a better model of how data flow can create designs to makes nanotechnology work. Bear seems to rip a crack in the biosphere-noosphere and peer into the future. Futuristic ideas abound-his speaker Torino explains how the earth has become a gigantic single cell. And as man creates self aware AI computers man's own personality is subject to fragmentation. All in all, enough new ideas to make Bear a trailblazer for future writers.

Rating:
Summary: Another great book from Bear
Review: Have patience, or else Bear will bore you to death with the first two thirds of this book. Unfortunately he needs it to unravel the story. He does something fairly similar in EON, which is a better book, where you have to patiently read through 300 pages of mediocre plus writing in order to get to 200 of the best pages of fiction ever written.

Slant is exciting. Bear is courageous enough to write about a future only 70 years away. His heroes are real and the story, after its snail starts, finishes like lightening.

Rating:
Summary: Slant takes a different direction than Bear's other books.
Review: Having read Eon and Eternity, I was struck by Greg Bear's emphasis on sex in Slant. He uses this most intimate human act to show what the possibilites and disasters might result in the combination of sex and technology of the future. I found this to be a more personal book in that it dealt with the human psyche, rather than trips to uncharted space. The potentials of the human mind is itself an uncharted space.

I picked this book out a few other of Bear's books that were on the store's shelf. It has his usual talent for detail and great storytelling.

Rating:
Summary: A complicated book that makes heavy demands on the reader
Review: I agree completely with those critics who have written of the difficulty of getting involved with this book. Greg Bear is obviously not afraid to make substantial demands on his readers, but rightfully so, in my opinion. The first six chapters (72 pages) introduce a large number of seemingly unrelated characters--the course of the novel will see them interact eventually, but that does not happen for quite some time, and the reader is left wondering where the book is going. That the story takes completely unexpected paths repeatedly was one of its delights for me--I can honestly say that it was totally unpredictable and convincing nonetheless. Further demands on the reader are made with the use of future vocabulary--Bear condescends to no one with lengthy explanations of the terms the characters use, preferring to let us figure them out in context as best we can. This quality and complexity of writing, along with Bear's deeply grim vision of the future, reminded me of John Brunner's novel Stand on Zanzibar. Slant is an exploration of a world driven by the twin forces of nanotechnology and mental therapy, and Bear seems uncannily precognisant of the issues that are likely to arise. Thus sex, Hollywood, the military, politics, religion and personal freedom are all involved in one of the most sophisticated and well-thought out plots I've read in years. Quotes from a future book, Alive Contains a Lie (reminiscent of Brunner's The Hipcrime Vocab) allow Bear to get a bit preachy at times, moralizing as events allow: "Conservative elitists rule much of modern religion, making it a branch of the Entertainment State. So sayeth the evangelistic moneychanger in the dataflow temple: Money can buy peace and salvation! Good works count for nothing against an ever-growing pile of status. Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades...It is about money and the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy." To be fair, liberals come in for an equally harsh treatment--in fact, Bear's depressingly disturbing future vision is clearly a result of the clash of values between conservatism and liberalism and the failure of a humanistic approach to life. If you are unafraid to engage the world of ideas and willing to pay the cost, Slant is a marvelous book, and I highly recommend it. (Although Slant is technically a sequel to Queen of Angels, one need not have read the previous book to understand Slant, although there are a few references to prior events, and certain characters return.) If, instead, you prefer light entertainment, go rent a video of Men in Black.

Rating:
Summary: A complicated book that makes heavy demands on the reader
Review: I agree completely with those critics who have written of the difficulty of getting involved with this book. Greg Bear is obviously not afraid to make substantial demands on his readers, but rightfully so, in my opinion. The first six chapters (72 pages) introduce a large number of seemingly unrelated characters--the course of the novel will see them interact eventually, but that does not happen for quite some time, and the reader is left wondering where the book is going. That the story takes completely unexpected paths repeatedly was one of its delights for me--I can honestly say that it was totally unpredictable and convincing nonetheless. Further demands on the reader are made with the use of future vocabulary--Bear condescends to no one with lengthy explanations of the terms the characters use, preferring to let us figure them out in context as best we can. This quality and complexity of writing, along with Bear's deeply grim vision of the future, reminded me of John Brunner's novel Stand on Zanzibar. Slant is an exploration of a world driven by the twin forces of nanotechnology and mental therapy, and Bear seems uncannily precognisant of the issues that are likely to arise. Thus sex, Hollywood, the military, politics, religion and personal freedom are all involved in one of the most sophisticated and well-thought out plots I've read in years. Quotes from a future book, Alive Contains a Lie (reminiscent of Brunner's The Hipcrime Vocab) allow Bear to get a bit preachy at times, moralizing as events allow: "Conservative elitists rule much of modern religion, making it a branch of the Entertainment State. So sayeth the evangelistic moneychanger in the dataflow temple: Money can buy peace and salvation! Good works count for nothing against an ever-growing pile of status. Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades...It is about money and the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy." To be fair, liberals come in for an equally harsh treatment--in fact, Bear's depressingly disturbing future vision is clearly a result of the clash of values between conservatism and liberalism and the failure of a humanistic approach to life. If you are unafraid to engage the world of ideas and willing to pay the cost, Slant is a marvelous book, and I highly recommend it. (Although Slant is technically a sequel to Queen of Angels, one need not have read the previous book to understand Slant, although there are a few references to prior events, and certain characters return.) If, instead, you prefer light entertainment, go rent a video of Men in Black.

Rating:
Summary: /
Review: I can't believe I haven't reviewed this on here yet! Slant is one of my top-five favorites. I read it while I was camping in rainy Door County, and I averaged a hundred pages a day (it usually takes a week to do that much). It was totally engrossing. Sure, the plot wasn't overloaded with suspense or action or anything like that (until the climax, when things speed up a little), but the density of the near-future world that Bear creates is incredible. The words he invents, the language he uses to describe things, all the references to other books and people such as "Alive Contains a Lie" by Kiss of X (a book that one of Slant's character's is reading), and the realistic, every-day characters made me feel like this novel was actually taking place in the future.
The plot deals with a group of rich snobs using nanotechnology to reverse medical and psychological therapy and create chaos in America; the policewoman, a self-aware AI, and a psychiatrist who become involved; a team of saboteurs seeking to infiltrate and destroy Omphalos, the group's giant headquarters; a middle-class family, and a prostitute, who are also entangled. The book moves at a steady, reasonable pace which adds to the realism. There are no action heroes (or even regular heroes) - everyone is a normal person who becomes imbroiled in strange events. The science, while complex, is written clearly and concisely, and never gets in the way of characters or story. Bear's five or six plots only come together loosely towards the end of the book, but are strongly tied together thematically.
As for the ending, which other reviewers have complained about, it didn't bother me. I guess I don't care much for endings anyway -my own fiction supports that. Some of the plots are left to come to their own conclusions, or for the reader to decide. This is another part of the realism I experienced - in real life there is no explosive climax to every "episode" of our lives, everything just keeps on moving.

This is a fascinating book, and I will gladly read it a third time as soon as I have the opportunity.

Rating:
Summary: Splintered interests
Review: I completely agree with [e-mail]'s comments about too many totally separate "main" characters. Also, I felt the Giffey plotline was totally useless.