Greg Bear

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gregory Dale Bear (born August 20, 1951) is a science fiction author. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), artificial universes (Eon series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin's Radio, and Darwin's Children). Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin also wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov's famous Foundation trilogy with Bear credited for the middle book in the trilogy.

Bear was born in San Diego, California. From 1968 to 1973 he attended San Diego State University, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1975, he married Christina M. Nielson, but they divorced in 1981. He remarried in 1983, to Astrid Anderson, the daughter of science fiction author Poul Anderson. They have two children, Erik and Alexandra, and live outside of Seattle, Washington.

Contents 1 Work 2 Bibliography 2.1 Collection of Short Stories 2.2 Darwin 2.3 The Eon Series 2.4 The Forge of God series 2.5 Second Foundation Series 2.6 Songs of Earth and Power 2.7 Star Trek: The Original Series 2.8 Man-Kzin Wars 2.9 Star Wars 2.10 Queen of Angels 2.11 Non-series Novels 3 External links

[edit] Work

The scientific details in his work are such that he is usually classified as a hard science fiction author.

Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture with fictional solutions. For example, The Forge of God offers an explanation for the Fermi paradox, supposing that the galaxy is filled with potentially predatory intelligences, and that those young civilizations which survive are those which do not attract the attention of the predators — by staying quiet. In Queen of Angels Bear examines crime, guilt and punishment in society, framing these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly-advanced computers in communication with humans.

One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observers. In Blood Music' reality becomes unstable as the number of observers — trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms — spirals higher and higher. Both Anvil of Stars — a sequel to The Forge of God — and Moving Mars postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles, capable of being altered at the "bit level". (Bear has credited the inspiration for this idea to Frederick Kantor's 1967 treatise, "Information Mechanics.") In Moving Mars this knowledge is used to remove Mars from the solar system and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.

Blood Music (first published as a short story in 1983, and expanded to a novel in 1985) has also been credited as being the first account of nanotechnology in science fiction. More certainly, the short story is the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines, and to treat DNA as a computational system, capable of being re-programmed--that is, expanded and modified. In later works, beginning with Queen of Angels and continuing with its sequel, Slant, Bear gives a detailed description of a near-future nanotechnological society. This historical sequence continues with Heads — which may contain the first description of a so-called "quantum logic computer" — and with Moving Mars. This sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in AIs, with its continuing character, Jill, inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

More recent works such as the Darwin's Radio/Darwin's Children pair of novels, which deal with the impact of a strange disease which appears to drive evolutionary transitions, stick closely to the known facts of molecular biology of viruses and evolution. While some fairly speculative ideas are entertained (it is after all, fiction) they are introduced in such a rigorous and disciplined way that Darwin's Radio gained praise in the science journal Nature.

While most of Bear's work is science fiction, two of his early works, The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage which are now published together as one novel Songs of Earth and Power are clearly fantasies, and Psychlone is horror. Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy was described by Bear as a "high tech ghost story" (interview, Fiction Writers of the Monterey Peninsula). First and foremost, Bear is an author of works of speculative fiction that are intended to entertain, edify and inspire, and the sheer audacity of his scope and vision, as well as the expertise and intelligence that he has exhibited throughout his career, have made him one of science fiction's most respected authors. He has received many accolades, including five Nebula awards and two Hugo awards for science fiction. New readers wanting to familiarize themselves with his writing could start with the award winners from the list below. Blood Music, Moving Mars, and Darwin's Radio serve as a fine introduction to Greg Bear's body of work.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Collection of Short Stories

• The Wind from a Burning Woman (1983)
• Early Harvest (February 1988)
• Tangents (1989)
• The Venging (1992)
• Bear's Fantasies (1992)
• W3 Women in deep time (2003)
• Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies (November 2005)

[edit] Darwin

• Darwin's Radio (1999) (winner 2000 Nebula award for best novel and 2000 Endeavour Award)
• Darwin's Children (2003)

[edit] The Eon Series

• Eon (1985)
• Eternity (1988)
• Legacy (1995)

[edit] The Forge of God series

• The Forge of God (1987)
• Anvil of Stars (1992)

[edit] Second Foundation Series

• Foundation and Chaos (1998) (Second Foundation series: book 2)

[edit] Songs of Earth and Power

• The Infinity Concerto (1984)
• The Serpent Mage (1986)
• Songs of Earth and Power (1994 - combines The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage)

[edit] Star Trek: The Original Series

• Corona (1984)

[edit] Man-Kzin Wars

• The Man Who Would Be Kzin (with S.M. Stirling)

[edit] Star Wars

• Rogue Planet (2000)

[edit] Queen of Angels

A group of novels featuring a shared history and some common characters.

• Queen of Angels (1990)
• Heads (1990)
• Moving Mars (1993) (won the 1994 Nebula award for best novel)
• / (aka Slant) (1997)

[edit] Non-series Novels

• Psychlone (1979)
• Hegira (1979)
• Beyond Heaven's River (1980)
• The Strength of Stones (1981)
• Blood Music (1985) (won the 1984 Nebula award for best novella, and the Hugo award)
• Sleepside Story (1988)
• New Legends (1995)
• Dinosaur Summer (1998) (winner 1999 Endeavour Award)
• Country of the Mind (June 1998)
• Vitals (2002)
• Dead Lines (2004)
• Quantico (2005)

[edit] External links

• Darwin's Radio Review
• Greg Bear's website
• Interview at SFFWorld.com
• All of Greg Bear's audio interviews on the podcast The Future And You (in which he describes his expectations of the future)
• Greg Bear at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• An excerpt from Slant (1997)
• The 20th challenge of the society of digital artists, which made use of EON. In the about part it includes the chapters 1, 2, 10 and 33 [1].