Blood Music

This story is brilliantly composed. The pacing is superb. If you're looking for a solid sci-fi classic that makes you think, pick this up.

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.

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.

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.

I first read this book as a disillusioned teenager and it restored my faith in SF. I have just re read Blood Music for the third time and it has lost none of its potency. If anything it was more enjoyable reading it 8 years later with the weight of experience giving the story even greater depth and texture. Greg bear has the intensity of William Gibson (without the nihilism) the technical savvy of Larry Niven and the world Building skills of Robert Forward. My only regret would be that it is too short and a little thin on characterization (lessons learned in Songs of Earth and Power could be well applied here) To the reader from PA who found the story too "fantastic" I would urge you to considder the full implications of Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principal. Observation does indeed have a tangible effect on reality. There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies. A critical mind is a good thing to have and nurture but don't allow it to blind you to the fantastic :)

This is the book that opened up the career of Greg Bear, who later wrote such classics as Queen of Angels, Songs of Earth and Power, and Eon. Blood Music is the story of of a brilliant but troubled and careless scientist named Vergil Ulam, who accidentally creates cells capable of high-speed learning and intelligent growth. The cells teach themselves to evolve and remember, and adapt their environment. They are an intelligent species, and Vergil loves them, calling them noocytes. Until his work is uncovered and shut down. Knowing the immeasurable value of, and acting on personal love for, his cells, he injects them into his own bloodstream, with the hope of being re-hired elsewhere, where they can be removed and studied. Before he can, hovever, Vergil starts to slowly change. His eyesight, health, and even sex life improves. Then his body starts to change. The noocytes have studied and begun adapting their host's body. And they have learned of the outside world. In a matter of weeks, an intelligent plague sweeps across North America, entering and assimilating humanity, changing the very landscape, terraforming the body and all living things around it into something profoundly alien and new. How do you stop an intelligent plague? But the noocytes have a plan of their own, and the Universe at its most fundamental will be affected by it. I won't tell how the story ends, although it is one the most exalting, dazzling endings to any science fiction novel I have ever read. The story itself is immensely powerful, and a chance for Bear to point out the ridiculousness of our current opinion of the body's cells, and the quality of elan(explained in the book: the body is worth, and has power equal to, ten trillion of its component parts: its cells) that supposedly rules them. As said in the introduction, "Which of our generations will come to disagree?" The point of the book: _This_ one, bucko. The short story that was the novel's basis won, quite deservedly, the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story of the Year. As always, Greg Bear's characterizations, especially of Vergil Ulam, are moving and haunting, showing the human side of the next step of Man. The premise of the story is a stimulating, fascinating one, the writing is elegant, the character's shine, and the science is indefagitable. But the premise of the story is one that immediately wounds character continuity; the story leaps from well-writeen character to well-written character, but there is no feeling of the interconnectedess of their individual situations, although the epic weight of what is occurring is continuously palpable. The story is told from the character's-eye-view except at the very beginning and end, and so, can seem to jump and start occasionally, but the beauty of Blood Music, and the essential triumph of the spirit that ends it, is no less poignant and exalting because of that. MY OVERALL SUMMARY:This is the best hard-SF novel of the last 1