Eon

Take Isaac Asimov's brain, Stephen King's wind, blend in a vacuum and you get a Greg Bear novel. Page 256... "Directly ahead, two broad cubes were strung in sucession along the pale thread of the singularity. Each of the visible faces of the cube were marked with a broad horizontal cleft; the front of the foremost cube welcomed the singularity through a large hemispheric dimple, marked by glimmering spokes. At the center on the indentation was a red hole, and there the singularity was engulfed." Don't spend too much time trying to comprehend Greg's grueling gambits or you'll lose track ever expanding cast. I Lost count at about 30 charachters. (Mirsky rocks!) If you do chose to sift through all 500 pages of this hard epic, may I suggest using your own slate and a tall stack memory cubes. Why did those silly russians biuld a compound from fallen trees in an asteroid full of abandoned cities? "Tools were scarce, everything was scarce." And where did the ham dinner come from? The (Ralph the Gentle Man) Naderites had dossiers and "knew everything" about the Americans, except the fact that they were approaching Axis City on their all-important singularity. Hmmmm. Even with a few contradictions and frequent incomprehensible passages, Eon is thoroughly enjoyable. Few can create images with Mr. Bear's grace and vision. Worthy of five stars... asteroids... stones.

Good science fiction should be innovative in the future it describes and suspensful in the story telling. Eon is a great example of both of these characteristics.

This book should have been called "Opus" and not Eon. It is the greatest piece of fiction that I have read, and I read about 60 books a year.It has all of the elements that could be hoped for in a Novel. Plot, suspense until the last page, complex characters in a complex universe.In terms of speculative fiction, it has it all: hard science, incredible imagination, alternative history, ponderings about our future evolution, and more. Read it.

EON is one of the best major sci-fi novels -- right up there with DUNE and GATEWAY and THE CITY AND THE STARS for world-building detail and quality, and their equal in terms of intensely tantalizing what-if and wonder-filled scenarios. Also a rarity: a hard-sf novel containing interesting, not deadly dull, political background. I could not put it down and unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone who wishes they were born 500 years from now. One caveat: although you'll want to desperately, as with GATEWAY, Do. Not. Read. The. Sequels. Leave it at EON and keep that sense of awe alive for a long, long time.

This extraordinary well-written book is probably one of the best in its genre. Here, the author Greg Bear, describes absolute impossible situations and possibilities in a such a detailed and convincing way that even a skeptic would believe it. Science-fiction books are often too imaginative to an extent that they border to total fiasco. However, this book succeeds in containing both imagination and fantasy without loosing its credibility. In fact, as you read, you will not question the secrets nor the tecniques being exposed to you. And this in a fully normal world, like the one you and I live in right now. The story may seem tame - a steroid is beeing discovered and later examined by a selected group of scientists and technicians. While exploring the "Potato", as they refer to it, the group slowly finds evidence that witness of an earlier population. And the mysteriouses keep growing. Who were they? Where are they now? Do we live in somebodys elses future and is our destiny already predestined? This book awakes your curiosity and will not leave you satisfied until you have read it all. And even after the book is finished, you will still be left with the erge to know more. Only one little detail makes this fabolous book annoying - you will have to read it over and over again to fully understand all the technical details described in it. Time-consuming, but definitely worth it!