Eon

Rating:
Summary: Too many notes
Review: Well, I can't fault Greg Bear for his imagination. He clearly has tons of ideas, many of which are wild and intriguing. His mistake was cramming them all into one novel, producing a hopelessly cluttered work in which so many threads are competing for attention that none of them is allowed any real development or substance. Early on, the book drops hints about the far-out ideas it contains, but devotes way too much attention to Cold-War squabbling which is boring and mundane in comparison, and hopelessly dated in retrospect. When it finally gets into the far-future stuff, the culture and technology are exotic to the point of caricature, more silly than awe-inspiring. It feels a bit like "Gulliver's Travels," but without a trace of Swift's satirical purpose. In fact, it's hard to see any real purpose underlying this story, other than to let Greg Bear unload his wild speculations. I read this book because I was interested in the physical concept of the Way and the technology of sculpting with spacetime; but this, like every other aspect of the story, is never explored with the detail it deserves. The characters have the same problem as the concepts: there are simply too many of them, and none is really given depth.

Rating:
Summary: Some good ideas poorly presented
Review: Never having read Greg Bear before I wasn't sure what I had in store for me when I picked up Eon. A few chapters into the book I was about ready to give up on Mr. Bear. I could forgive his frequent forays into the technical discussions of hard science fiction. I could forgive his tendency to introduce subjects/objects/phrases and not properly explain them until several chapters later. But I could not forgive the hollow characters who behaved more and more eratically as the story progressed. And I disliked the teasing of what seemed to be potentially important subjects (i.e. the Frants or the increasingly promiscious nature of characters) that went no where.

Despite all this, he managed to weave an intriguing enough story that I struggled through these faults and finished the book. I certainly wouldn't put this on any Top X book list, but neither would I toss it in the trash if I received it as a gift.

Rating:
Summary: Unfilmable
Review: If anyone can make this book a film then maybe it is those Matrix guys but this would be a huge production if they did.

The book is about a comet with an inside that is bigger than the outside. There are cities inside that have been deserted.

This book is a great cut of classic sci-fi. You will love it.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing
Review: "Eon" may pose more of a challenge when it comes to selecting a rating than any other book I've ever read, since it consists of one half of a solid, well-written SF epic, and one half of a piece of incoherent junk. The story starts out like this: a gigantic asteroid arrives from outside the solar system and moves into an orbit around earth. The United States sends teams of scientists to explore it, and they soon find that the asteroid was a gigantic spaceship of sorts that appears to have come from our own future. Investigations into a library found on board soon reveal that the world is moving towards a massive nuclear showdown. This is the good portion of the book. It is written with intelligence, clarity, and an almost nostalgia-inducing dose of Cold War paranoia. The cast of characters is what most people have come to expect from hard science fiction: not extremely deep or dynamic, but believable nonetheless.

However, it all breaks down about halfway through the book. The story makes a wide turn involving alien invasion, parallel universes, alternate geometries, and some other stuff. The problem, simply put, is that this part of the book is too confusing. The explanations are cryptic and difficult to follow, and keeping track of all the new concepts that get introduced becomes quite a chore. Also, the characterizations collapse during the second half of the book. All of the major characters seem too ready to forget and ignore their previous lives and to accept all of the weird stuff that happens to them. One might, of course, make the argument that some enigmatic writing is acceptable and that "Eon" is a novel one that requires multiple readings, somewhat like William Gibson's "Neuromancer". The problem is that Bear doesn't have the literary style to pull such a stunt off, and I really have no desire to pour through this book time after time trying to fit the puzzle together. While I have great respect for some of Bear's other works, this one could have used some more planning and rewriting.

Rating:
Summary: Bear had vision...
Review: Eon is a book ahead of it's time. Bear painted a picture of mankind becoming dependent on computers and implants, personal data pillars in dwellings, libraries without books, massive use of holography (WAAAAAAAAAAYYY before the holodeck) and other things that our modern life reflects as an almost certainty for our future. Bear shows a future technology that I would love to experience. I know that some of the "history" is dated, but you might look at it from the point of view of the story as one possible time line, not necessarily our own.

It is also interesting to ponder just how marvelously the humans on the Thistledown adapt and thrive in their confined space, and create a world of peace, beauty and eventually god-like technology through hard work and ingenuity.

I didn't care for all the political ideas presented in the book, but I guess that Bear was trying to bring some balance to the story.

Overall, I would highly reccommend this story to sci-fi fans. Others, read it at your discretion, but keep an open mind and try to imagine the scope of the genius of the best two characters in the story...Thistledown and The Way.

Rating:
Summary: Thou Dart Bullseye
Review: This book was painted by him as a Great Science Fiction Novel. When it dried, it hung proud in the Gallery of the Greats, and I always remember it as a fabulous touchstone to the emotions that accompany awakening. Both sequels are fabulous. This, and the sequels, are Greg Bear pouring kerosene on the red-hot Sci-Fi campfire. Not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: read a physics book
Review: Wow! Great story and characters. Really sucked me in an wouldn't let go. Bear's imagination is seldom rivaled.

I loved this book, but I felt at times that I needed a refresher course in physics. Not too badly however. I never felt lost among his wild concepts, I just wished I remembered more about some of the more complex physical thoeries that most hard sci-fi writers are more familiar with. If nothing else, this book will reaffirm your desires to refamiliarize yourself with some of the more intersting ideas from your favorite physicists.

Give it a read. I guarantee you'll at least learn something.

Rating:
Summary: The Eon Enigma. Great SF or complete bollocks?
Review: Something inbetween perhaps. The ideas in Eon earn 9/10, however Bear's writing style gets a 4. For starters, he describes the different locations in overtechnical geometric language. Sentences like "Patricia stood parallel to the vortex so that she formed a toroid at 90 degrees to its summit" tells the average reader nothing. I made this sentence up but its not an overexageration. The book is full of these sort of descriptions. Great for a hard geometry test, terrible for anything but. In my opinion Larry Niven's geometric descriptions in Ringworld are about as far as a writer should go. Its a shame because if Bear had used simpler language I probably would have been amazed by the pictures my imagination formed. I think Bear's characterisation is ok. I disagree with other reviews in that I didn't find his characters akin to carboard. Neither does the book fall apart at the half way mark. The story develops nicely. The problem is that Bear spends too much time describing some things and not enough entertaining. I am not asking for a shorter book or for his characters to do a tap dance. I was simply hoping that Bear's characters would play more of a key role in the events that shape the 2nd half of the book rather than just being the unwitting cause of what unfolds. If you think about it, only Patricia actually does anyhing, and only right at the end. More involvement, less babble is required. It could have been a 5 star earner. This is the first book I have read by Bear and it is worth reading. I will check out Blood Music as I have heard its pretty good.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Book
Review: This book is fascinating. If you are into science, especially time and space related, consider this book. If you like "Timeline" (Crichton) and "Star Trek", chances are good that you will like this book as well. It reads fairly easily and will keep your interest.

Rating:
Summary: This is a standard and a Classic
Review: When anyone asks me about what to read in scifi, I recommend this as one of the top 10 books. The wonder of this asteroid that is finite on the outside, but has a gateway on the inside to the "WAY"is absolutley captivating. The fashion of changing your body like you change your clothes, the war with the mysterious Jarts. All of this makes for incredible mind travel. This book makes you think on many levels. And at least two of the characters are really worth caring about. The concepts in the story have stuck with me 10 years after I have read it. I would ove to see this as a movie.