Eon (S.F. Masterworks)

The book focuses primarily on the impact that an artifact from the future has on the world when it unexplainedly appears in orbit around Earth. The fact that the future it comes from is not quite "our" future adds to the mystery. The struggle between the major powers on Earth to control this artefact, and ultimately its secrets, is exceptionally well presented by Bear, who seems to have an uncanny knack of creating characters who are very easy to relate to. He also manages to get across the sense of helplessness that those on the artifact (a large, hollowed out asteroid) have when things back on Earth get somewhat dicey.

This book deserves a place in your collection if you are even half way serious about SF. If SF is not your thing, I would suggest that you will still find much to enjoy in this book.


Big Science: Great Characters. Works on all levels   April 24, 2003
 15 out of 16 found this review helpful

Although 'Blood Music' received more attention from the SF community , this is probably the book in which Bear set the standard for his subsequent work.
It's Hard SF/Big Science at its hardest, and in one sense can be seen as a 'Rendezvous with Rama' for the Nineteen Eighties.
Bear should also be applauded for his portrayal of female characters as in this and subsequent novels he places strong female characters centre-stage, in this case, Patricia Luis Vasquez, a young gifted physics student who is drafted in to solve the mysteries of the Stone and becomes important to the plans of all the factions involved.
The plot involves some complex physics and the concept of parallel universes.
It is always interesting to look at authors' views of the future once that future is past and gone. Written in 1985, Bear's future world has become a kind of 'alternate future' since perhaps no-one could have predicted that the abrupt fall of the USSR and the smashing down of the Berlin wall. Here, the USSR is still a superpower, and the Cold War very much alive.
Bear cleverly sets up the East/West ideological divides while Nuclear War destroys the Earth in the background, before bringing in the people of Earth's future. They live in Axis City, a vast mobile habitat which roams 'The Way' (the corridor which stretches along the infinity of parallel Universes) and which is itself divided along ideological lines between radical Geshels and orthodox Naderites.
It's a compelling and scientifically convincing novel, and one of Bear's best.


The Pleasure is in the Journey.   November 2, 2002
 13 out of 17 found this review helpful

This is the sort of book I love. HUGE SciFi in the vein of Iain M Banks and the Culture. I really enjoy these books where the pleasure is in the details of the weird and wonderful stuff that the author has put in his world rather than where the story is going. Another is Cryptinomican by Neil Stephenson.

Well worth a read.