From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jul 9 13:18:00 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!sun-barr!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-path From: wex@ursa-major.spdcc.com (Alan Wexelblat) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Queen of Angels Message-ID: <9207071308.AA24693@ursa-major.spdcc.com> Date: 8 Jul 92 00:40:45 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Lines: 63 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) X-Now-Playing: Silence X-Dj-In-The-House: Wex Queen of Angels by Greg Bear Review Copyright (c) 1992 Alan Wexelblat I'm still a little unhappy about paying five bucks for a paperback, even if it is 420 pages long, and even if it's by an author I know I can trust to fill those pages with something more than the usual fluff. "Queen of Angels" is a cut above the standard novel, but it's not all that spectacular. Queen is basically a murder mystery, set in a not-too-distant future. Certain elements of this future society are pivotal to making the murder mystery what it is, and Bear uses the crime -- a multiple homicide -- to throw a harsh light on his world. Along the way, of course, he is saying things about our own society which the future of this book resembles in many ways. The basic premise is that American society has developed means to treat any possible mental ailment. People are either perfectly mentally healthy by accident of nature/nurture or they are cured into perfection. Any lingering unhappiness and dissatisfaction can be eliminated along the way. Now, anyone with any background in SF knows that this is a strawman set up to fail. And fail it does, as one of the therapied -- a world-famous poet -- commits a gruesome multiple murder. The issue of who really committed the crime is settled early in the book. Given the advances in surveilance and detective technologies this is not too surprising. What is surprising is that the murderer eludes capture, both by Mary Choy -- the police detective on the case -- and by the Selectors -- self-appointed vigilantes of the Combs. The Combs are the grandchildren of today's enclosed, self-sufficient apartment complexes. In the future, one's status is reflected by one's position in the Combs. Higher floors, sunnier windows, etc. Another thread running through the plot is that of the emergence of the first true artificial intelligences. One such is AXIS, the mind of mankind's first true interstellar probe, which awakens to find itself closing on a possibly-inhabited world light-years from home. Only slightly ahead of AXIS is Jill, a larger computer-based program which contains a full simulation of AXIS within itself. These two entities and their creator follow their own course, their story rarely intersecting with that of the murder/solution. With material like this, I hoped for better from Bear. But the book moves too slowly for a murder mystery. Since we readers know ahead of the characters what the true solution is, the fact that it takes so long for the players to solve the puzzle left me bored. I also found that the extra threads (including the AXIS story) while having their own interest were not well-integrated into the story as a whole. They seem to serve only to provide a false tension -- false in the sense that the suspense has nothing to do with the main plotline. If you can pick this one up for a few bucks, or if you're a Bear fan, go for it. Otherwise, I'd say give this one a miss and save your five bucks. %T Queen of Angels %A Greg Bear %I Warner paperback %G ISBN 0-446-36130-5 %D 1991 %P 420 pp %O $4.95 From rec.arts.sf.written Mon Aug 10 13:25:15 1992 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!csus.edu!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Anvil of Stars (spoilers) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 05 Aug 92 22:26:48 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Lines: 72 Greg Bear's "Anvil of Stars" is the sequel to "Forge of God", in which the Earth is destroyed by alien Von Neumann machines. A small portion of humanity has been saved by yet another set of aliens, "the Benefactors", and a hundred teenagers have been sent out on a mission of revenge. The Benefactors have a 'law' that civilizations that send out self- replicating, world-destroying machines be destroyed. In support of this law, they have provided the kids with a well-armed starship (stl, but capable of moving at relativistic velocities), but the actual destruction of the aliens is up to the humans. Moral ambiguities abound. One which is not brought up is that in sending this shipload of humans, the Benefactors too are sending out self-replicating, world-destroying machines. Another arises from the fact, mentioned only once, and in passing, that sending out such machines, while not uncommon, tends to be a passing phase in a civilization's ascent to maturity. In fact, by the time the machines have made the stl trip to their targets and the revenge ship has made the trip back, what it will probably find and destroy are the perpetrators no-longer bloodthirsty descendents. The reason for the Benefactors' insistance on sending surrogates to do the job is not clear. There is considerable reference to the importance of free choice and the need for the victims to take their own revenge, but it is the Benefactors' machines that do the job at the end, albeit under human orders. (Speaking of ambiguities, there are a number present in the last statement. First, isn't it equivalent to blaming the gunsmith for a shooting? To an extent it is, but I'd suggest that a better analogy would be that of putting a battleship under the control of a child. Second, as the story falls out, it's not clear that the order to pull the trigger was a legal one. Was the fact that Hans was the elected leader more important than the fact that he hadn't taken a vote on the destruction? Or would the ship have accepted the order from *anyone*?) There seems little doubt to me that the Benefactors already had the technology to destroy the Leviathan system. That system's inhabitants would not have placed a time-bomb in their midst had they known that it could be suborned, and that simply seeing it could give enough clues on how to accomplish the deed. I conclude that the Benefactors were more advanced, scientifically, and were deploying canned technology, rather than producing it in response to new insights. At the end of the book, they find the smoking gun: In contrast to the normal pattern of development, and in opposition to what the appearance of revenge ships would suggest as common sense, this civilization was still making and dispatching planet killers. Which raises the question of whether this makes what appeared to have been a bad decision into a good one. I'd suggest that the Benefactors are indeed in the planet-killing business. They've been at it a lot longer than the Leviathans. They are much more cautious about getting caught: They only send out killers when they can do so under the cloak of righteousness, and use surrogates through whom they can't be traced. Whether the Benefactors are responsible for the target's destruction -- and whether this destruction was wrong -- is very similar to the question of Hans's responsibility for Rosa's death. Interesting book. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (Mark R. Leeper) Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Subject: FORGE OF GOD Date: 11 Dec 87 13:43:55 GMT FORGE OF GOD by Greg Bear Tor, no ISBN number, $17.95. A book review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper There is a curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." If you look back at what were the interesting eras in history, you will understand why you want to live in the dullest times possible. Well, you can tell that you are in for an interesting time when Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, suddenly goes AWOL. You can guess that something is happening that is pretty unusual. What is happening is that our world is being invaded, not by one, but by two alien races at the same time. Or maybe it is just one race. In any case, it is darn hard to tell what we've been invaded by, but part of it is something that ate Europa, and that cannot be a good sign. Unfortunately, it is a little tough to say much about FORGE OF GOD without giving away too much of the plot. It is quite likely that you have not read an invasion novel in which the Earth has been invaded in quite this way before. This is certainly not a standard "interstellar gunship" sort of invasion. This is very much an alien invasion novel of the 1980s and it has 1980s concerns. It concerns itself with questions like the Fermi Paradox, which asks, with all the possible intelligent races out there, why haven't we been contacted--it in fact comes up with a neat if not entirely pleasant solution to this paradox. It also deals with Von Neumann machines--the cybernetic equivalent of viruses. They do little in life but reproduce themselves. It has been suggested that because FORGE OF GOD deals with these concepts it is a very realistic science fiction novel. I doubt that myself. It contains up-to-date ideas, but there is a certain pomposity to saying that in the 1960s we didn't know how really advanced aliens would be likely to attack us but in the 1980s we do. About the best I could say is that FORGE OF GOD is a better guess than many we have seen before. And still there is a lot about the invasion technique that Bear leaves unexplained and other parts that seem out-and-out wrong. But overall, it is a novel that keeps the reader guessing and turning pages. That and some decent ideas to chew on make this a well-above-average invasion novel. Mark R. Leeper ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu From: duane@anasaz.UUCP (Duane Morse) Organization: Anasazi Inc., Phoenix AZ Subject: _The_Forge_of_God by Greg Bear (no spoiler) Date: 28 Nov 88 16:30:21 GMT Time: near future Place: Earth SF elements: First Contact Introduction: Europa disappears. Later, aliens land in Australia and in California. The ones in Australia are robots and seem to have friendly intentions. The one in California is a biological organism and announces that the Earth is doomed to destruction. Main storylines: the first contact, trying to figure out which story is real and what action to take. Critique: After the first few pages of this book you realize that you're at the uppermost point of a rollercoaster ride and that you'd better get a good grip on the safety bar. The story is a wonderful blend of hard science (the main characters are scientists and science writers), action, and drama. It's thrilling, exciting, and moving. My thanks to the person on the net who first recommended this one. Rating: 4.0 out of 4.0 - one of the best I've ever read. -- Duane Morse ...!noao!{asuvax or nud}!anasaz!duane (602) 861-7609 From archive Fri Aug 21 13:23:20 MDT 1992 From: MPAGAN%HENRY.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA Subject: Fantasy Recommendation Date: 20 Jan 88 00:46:00 GMT Okay, so I'm always one step behind the current topics. Blame this on the computer services people at my humble place of employment who refuse to set us up as a USENET host. Were it not for the efforts of the good folk at SF-LOVERS Digest, I'd be completely in the dark. Anyway, I just got an SF-LOVERS full of fantasy recommendations and I just have to add my two cents; _The Infinity Concerto_ _The Serpent Mage_ both by Greg Bear Why do I wake from my ancient slumber to recommend these books? Well, they're good of course, but there's something else. I have been reading fantasy and science fiction for over 18 years (I count Dr. Seuss), and for the past decade of that time I have been trying to recapture some of the "Gosh, Wow! Sense of Wonder!" I got from reading books in the first eight years (all books, even the lousy ones). These two books have shaken my jaded sensibilities out of their stupor and sent me daydreaming again. They are not Tolkien-style. They are not Zelazny-style. They are not LeGuin style. Not Donaldson. Not Moorcock, Eddings, Brust,Vance,... They are like nothing else I've read (and I've read alot). The plot centers around a young (15 or so) self proclaimed poet who leaves our world for the surreal world of the Sidhe. (Aside: I had avoided reading the book for months because the blurb made me think it was just another damned Celtic mythos elf-lover book. Wrong.) Aeons ago there was a cataclysmic conflict in which the humans destroyed(or stole) the souls of the Sidhe, and in retaliation the Sidhe managed to de-evolve us into small furry tree-dwelling primates. Later the Sidhe left, finally settling into their own pocket universe. Is our universe a pocket universe? well, yes and no; it was, but now it isn't... to say more would be spoiling. Anyway, the protagonist goes there, goes through a "boot camp of life" (quick coming of age stuff; The World Is Not Fair, The Good Thing And The Right Thing Are Not Always The Same, etc.) and proceeds to be manipulated by everybody and his brother. As he learns the nature of things (as well as the fact that he has something everyone else wants) he takes control of what he can, but never completely and certainly never perfectly. In most fantasy he would eventually find that he is the wielder of the Great Sceptre of Wazoo and proceed to smite the bad guys and re-instate utopia. In most adult fantasy, he would discover that waving the Great Sceptre of Wazoo doesn't solve anything. In this case there is a Great Sceptre of Wazoo(sort of), but neither of the previous things happens. I guess the real miracle of this book is that it made me, a gruff engineer who (wrongly) deplores art as effete and self-serving, feel I understood this poet (my Italian grandmother would use the word "sympatico"). The same goes for all the characters; their actions are logical and uncontrived. This is saying alot for most fantasy, even so-called "adult" fantasy. Okay, enough. Note that these two books are not independant. As usual, it is one big book in two volumes. Since I don't have direct access to postings, you may flame me directly at: mpagan%henry.decnet@GE-CRD.Arpa From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:22:04 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.written:37673 alt.books.reviews:1503 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!haven.umd.edu!cville-srv.wam.umd.edu!cbaker From: cbaker@wam.umd.edu (C. Douglas Baker) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.books.reviews Subject: __Blood Music__ by Greg Bear Book Review Date: 25 Oct 1993 00:21:11 GMT Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 39 Message-ID: <2af65n$66m@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: rac3.wam.umd.edu __Blood Music__ by Greg Bear Book Review by C. Douglas Baker __Blood Music__ starts off with a promising concept and treats it in a relatively sophisticated manner. Through the use of recombinant DNA research Vergil Ulam creates a sentient single cell organism. These organisms subsequently begin to build their society to fit their needs. This means changing the molecular structure of living creatures, including human beings, to suit them. Thus begins (and ends) __Blood Music__ The better aspects of __Blood Music__ involve the exploration of the possibility of intelligent single-cell organisms. The scenes where organisms actually "talk" or communicate with Vergil and later Bernard had great potential. Unfortunately, most of the novel reads like a second rate horror flick. I have not read the novelette that won a Hugo so I suspect the more carelessly conceived aspects of the novel were left out. The "blob" that takes over New York city and the "ghosts" that appear to convince Suzy to "join" them is simply dumb. Its hard to recommend reading the entire novel. Only the first third and second third are worth the effort. %T Blood Music %A Greg Bear %C New York %D 1985 %I Ace $4.99 (pbk) %G ISBN 0-441-06797-2 (pbk) %P 246 Doug Baker cbaker@wam.umd.edu cb52@umail.umd.edu From new Thu Jun 16 18:57:14 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aol.com!normanc523 From: normanc523@aol.COM Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: MOVING MARS (Spoilers) Message-ID: <9405110232.tn383507@aol.com> Date: 11 May 94 06:32:52 GMT Sender: news@rutgers.rutgers.edu Lines: 72 Book review by Norm Cook (normanc523@aol.com) MOVING MARS, by Greg Bear (Tor 1993) MOVING MARS is an apt title for this novel, describing both the literal and the figurative. It is set in the same continuity, about 125 years later, as Bear's extraordinary QUEEN OF ANGELS. Nanotechnology, the science of building microscopic machines, is a mature technology of the late 22nd century that spawns true artificial intelligence and allows humans to live and work relatively comfortably on Mars. But amazing new wonders are on the horizon, as scientists delve into the very heart of the reality of nature, and as politicians wrestle with the pangs of separation from their mother planet. Casseia Majumdar is a student at the University of Mars, Sinai, when she and two hundred of her classmates and professors are abruptly expelled. Not quite realizing what she is about to get into, Casseia joins a group of student protesters who are trying to usurp the new central government that is paranoid of the existing Binding Multiples (BMs) that have guided the economic and political path of the citizens of Mars since its initial settlement. BMs are independent coalitions of extended families, each one maintaining an area of expertise, such as finance or manufacturing, and alliances are often forged through marriage. The Majumdar BM is one of the largest and most conservative, and Casseia's rebellion is somewhat of an embarrassment to them. During the time with the protesters, Charles Franklin, a physics student, develops a crush on Casseia. They eventually become lovers, but despite Charles's declaration of love, Casseia breaks off the relationship, citing her need to experience more in life before settling down. Casseia goes back to school after the Statists are deposed, majoring in government management. She eventually wins an apprenticeship to her uncle Bithras Majumdar on a diplomatic mission to Earth to negotiate new trade agreements. On the eight-month voyage to Earth, Casseia meets a young girl named Orianna returning to Earth. Orianna seems to be a typical, spoiled Terrie, physically and mentally enhanced by nanotechnology, ready and willing to engage in any new experience, real or simulated. Orianna and Casseia continue their friendship while on Earth, as Orianna shows Casseia a culture that is very different than on Mars. Bithras's mission runs into all kinds of political roadblocks, and the Martians unhappily return to their home. However, the real-world education Casseia receives by observing Bithras's negotiations and from her experiences with Orianna will become invaluable as she moves up the ladder of Martian politics in the coming years. Casseia marries Ilya Rabinovitch, a fossil hunter from the Erzul BM. Fossils of ancient Martian organisms have been found and studied, but their biology remains mysterious until Ilya and Casseia make a startling discovery about them during their honeymoon. Casseia then begins her political career in earnest, joining Ti Sandra Erzul's bid to form a new republic, this time one that leaves the BMs autonomous. During this period, Charles Franklin comes back into Casseia's life as the physicist in charge of a secret project that threatens the stability of the Earth-Mars relationship. As a result of the actions by the neo-government in this matter, a civil war of sorts erupts between the two worlds. Casseia and Charles find themselves at the center of the conflict. MOVING MARS is a fascinating examination into the politics of colonialism and revolution. The distinctions between the cultures of Mars and Earth were well thought out and Casseia emerged as a remarkably developed person that changed significantly from beginning to end. The scientific aspects of the book are not nearly so well characterized; the fossil cysts remain enigmatic, and the quantum physical breakthroughs take on the air of magic rather than realism. I thought the setup took a bit too long and there was not enough time left to adequately explore all the avenues of wonder before the nonstop action of the final act unfolded. Greg Bear is now on my must-read list and I anxiously await further developments in this intriguing universe he has created. From new Thu Jun 16 18:57:20 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!yale!yale.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aol.com!normanc523 From: normanc523@aol.COM Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: QUEEN OF ANGELS (Spoilers) Message-ID: <9405110233.tn383524@aol.com> Date: 11 May 94 06:33:37 GMT Sender: news@rutgers.rutgers.edu Lines: 70 Book review by Norm Cook (normanc523@aol.com) QUEEN OF ANGELS, by Greg Bear (Tor 1990) QUEEN OF ANGELS is an extraordinary novel that succeeds on every level. It is at once a riveting tale of suspense and an exploration into the nature of the mind, with plenty of thought provoking scientific extrapolation. The time is December 2047, the eve of the binary millennium (100000000000 in base 2). This is a rather symbolic milestone, one borne of the computer age, yet very appropriate in this context as one of the major subplots involves a highly advanced robotic explorer, called AXIS, that has found life on planet B-2 orbiting Alpha Centauri. Whether or not the life on B-2 is intelligent is a question that will change the way humans see themselves. However, it is the exploration of the artificial intelligence designed into AXIS by its creator Roger Atkins that ultimately becomes the fulcrum for the events of the principal narrative. Eight students are found murdered in poet Emanuel Goldsmith's home. Murder itself has become unusual in this society and mass murder is almost unheard of. Almost everyone is Therapied to remove the mental instabilities that in the past created so much violent conflict. Some like Goldsmith are Naturals, having never undergone Therapy, either because their innate personalities are well balanced, or in the case of Goldsmith simply refusing to submit to a perceived artificiality. LAPD Inspector Mary Choy is assigned to the investigation. Forensic evidence proves Goldsmith did the killings, but he is nowhere to be found. Choy's mission becomes a quest to find Goldsmith before the Selectors do. Selectors are vigilantes who bring their own torturous brand of mental punishment to those they feel have harmed society. Choy's investigation ultimately takes her to the island nation of Hispaniola (formerly Haiti) where she believes Goldsmith will find refuge with its corrupt dictator. Meanwhile, psychiatrist Dr. Martin Burke is hired by the father of one of the murder victims to examine Goldsmith's mind in an attempt to determine his motivation for the killings. Burke is agreeable to this proposition because his benefactor has the wealth and power to reopen Burke's clinic which had been closed under a cloud of controversy with Burke himself disgraced as a result of his unconventional experiments pioneering into what he refers to as the Country of the Mind. The other major character in this story is Richard Fettle, a Goldsmith protege whose creativity takes a bizarre twist as a result of the murders. Fettle becomes obsessed with trying to understand Goldsmith's thinking, going so far as writing a disturbing poem chronicling Goldsmith's actions and motives during the killings. The society depicted in QUEEN OF ANGELS has advanced itself quite remarkably due to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, the science of building microscopic machines. It is nanotechnology which enables Mary Choy to become a Transform with pure ebony skin and other more subtle changes to her body. It is nanotechnology that enables Martin Burke to access the innermost regions of the Country of the Mind. And it is nanotechnology that enables Roger Atkins to design an artificial intelligence that can begin to question its own destiny. QUEEN OF ANGELS takes place less than sixty years from now and there are plenty of speculations, particularly in regards to what nanotechnology will produce. The events and societal changes described are logical within the given premises and are convincing within the context of those assumptions. Nevertheless, Bear never gives the impression that he is deliberately making specific predictions about our near future. The events are structured such that the focus is on the difficult questions of what is self awareness and what are the ethical implications thereof, not on the easier and less subtle aspects of future life. In other words, Bear does not fall into the trap that David Brin did with EARTH; i.e., writing a foreseeably soon outdated extrapolation of the future. Whether or not nanotechnology comes to fruition, QUEEN OF ANGELS will be a relevant novel for a long time to come due to its theme of the exploration of the nature of sentience and the allegorical reflections on various modes of thinking. From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:05:53 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--Greg Bear:Moving Mars Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 7 Jun 1994 08:09:20 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 52 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2sp6j9$be5@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Greg Bear: Moving Mars A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey When I first heard the title of this book, I figured that it must be about a gigantic engineering project to move the planet Mars. But after reading the dust-jacket blurb and the first hundred pages, I decided it must be called that for a different reason. Perhaps it was the population of Mars that was "moving". While not trying to spoil anything...my first impression was fairly close. The book takes a long time to really get moving. The first half is devoted to how the main character, Casseia Majumdar, first gets involved with a student protest against the first unified Martian government (which doesn't last too long), then falls in love with a young physicist named Charles Franklin but decides she doesn't want to marry him, and finally goes to Mars as part of a diplomatic mission. This is all buildup for the second half of the book, and IMHO goes on too long. Upon Casseia's return from Earth, she's beginning to realize that Earth is somehow scared of Mars, or something Mars might be able to do...and that something is linked with the research project Charles is involved with. She gets involved with another attempt at a unified Martian government, this one more successful, and ends up as Vice President. Then she finds out what Charles has been working on, and all hell breaks loose. A bit less at the beginning and a bit more at the end would have been nice, but the second half of the book leaves little to be desired. It compares favourably to _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_, with which there are nontrivial similarities, and my pulse was pounding right to the very end. In all, a great book, but a bit off in the pacing. It will rank high on my Hugo ballot, but not at the top. %A Bear, Greg %T Moving Mars %I Tor %C New York %D November 1993 %G ISBN 0-312-85515-X %P 448 pp. %O Hardcover -- --Alfvaen (Editor of Communique) Current Album--Jane Siberry:When I Was A Boy Current Book--Janet Kagan:Hellspark "It's a one-time thing. It just happens a lot." --Suzanne Vega From ../rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Nov 14 14:27:42 1995 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Aug 4 22:27:30 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.kth.se!admin.kth.se!celsiustech.se!seunet!news2.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsfeed.internetmci.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: beckers@bga.com (Roberta and Craig Becker) Subject: _New Legends_, edited by Greg Bear with Martin H. Greenberg Message-ID: <3vs3h0$5to@giga.bga.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Real/Time Communications - Bob Gustwick and Associates Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 16:13:25 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 111 _New Legends_, edited by Greg Bear with Martin H. Greenberg Tor, ISBN 0-312-85930-9, 1995, 379pp A book review by Craig Becker Copyright 1995 Craig Becker It's a bit difficult to tell just what _New Legends_ is all about. In the introduction, Greg Bear says that he wanted to put together a collection of SF stories with "great soul" and "...whatever we do, we won't call it _hard science fiction_." Yet the back cover of the book says "Original hard science fiction stories by..." And then there's the title itself: _New Legends_ implies new stories by new, up-and-coming writers in the field. So what are Ursula K. LeGuin, Robert Sheckley, Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg, and George Effinger doing here? Not much, I'm sad to say. Surprisingly, the stories by the Big Name authors are some of the weakest in the book. They're not quite pages ripped from the New York telephone directory, but if they had been penned by Joe Newwriter, I doubt they would have made the cut. For me, _New Legends_ worked best if I ignored the established writers and concentrated on the new talent. There's some exciting stuff here: Paul J. McAuley's "Recording Angel" is a dark, haunting tale of the far future. Dreadful title aside, I'm looking forward to reading more of his work. I'll also be reading anything I can find by Geoffrey A. Landis. His "Rorvik's War" is a gripping look at near-future battle technology, and a reminder that it takes more than weaponry to win a war. You probably think First Contact has been done to death, but you're wrong: Greg Egan comes up with an entirely new wrinkle in "Wang's Carpets". No mean feat, and it's easily the best story in the book. Carter Scholz's "Radiance" follows in the footsteps of Benford's _Timescape_ with an adroitly written story of science (and humanity) within a bureaucracy. "When Strangers Meet", by Sonia Orin Lyris, is a nasty-but-nice little story told from an alien viewpoint. There is also, unfortunately, some not-so-exciting stuff in _New Legends_: Gregory Benford's "High Abyss" gets an A for science and an F for punchline. His non-fiction article "Old Legends" is much better, a fascinating look at how SF has influenced some of the Great Scientists of our time. Contrawise, Sterling Blake's "A Desperate Calculus" gets an A for punchline (I was reminded of National Lampoon's "The War Between the Blacks and the Jews") and an F for technology, with people sending and receiving email via portable satellite rigs, yet they haven't a clue about modern encryption. My Suspension of Disbelief was Unwilling. Sheckley's "The Day The Aliens Came" is light and amusing, but seems out of place here amidst all of the science and technology. Poul Anderson's "Scarecrow" is a minor effort from the Old School of SF. Interestingly enough, it's paired with Egan's "Wang's Carpets", and the difference is like that between vacuum tubes and VLSI circuitry. On the whole, I found _New Legends_ to be of uneven quality. It contains sixteen titles, a few of which are excellent stories that do indeed possess "great soul", but most fall short and have only mediocre, rather worn soul. Given the cost of hardback books these days, I'd recommend borrowing _New Legends_ from the library before deciding whether or not to buy it for your collection. %B New Legends %E Greg Bear %E Martin H. Greenberg %T Elegy %A Mary Rosenblum %T A Desperate Calculus %A Sterling Blake %T Scenes From A Future Marriage %A James Stevens-Arce %T Coming Of Age In Karhide %A Ursula K. LeGuin %T High Abyss %A Gregory Benford %T Recording Angel %A Paul J. McAuley %T When Strangers Meet %A Sonia Orin Lyris %T The Day The Aliens Came %A Robert Sheckley %T Gnota %A Greg Abraham %T Rorvik's War %A Geoffrey A. Landis %T Radiance %A Carter Scholz %T Old Legends %A Gregory Benford %T The Red Blaze Is The Morning %A Robert Silverberg %T One %A George Alec Effinger %T Scarecrow %A Poul Anderson %T Wang's Carpets %A Greg Egan %C New York %D 1995 %I Tor %G ISBN 0-312-85930-9 %P 379pp From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 9 19:24:43 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!globalcenter1!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed1-hme1!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.88.144.6!news.kei.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: sfrevu@aol.com (SFRevu) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Slant by Greg Bear Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 02 Sep 1997 20:58:28 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 121 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1525 Slant by Greg Bear Review Copyright 1997 by Ernest Lilley [contains possible spoilers, in the form of a cast list] In a society built on the therapied stability of the working class, something threatens to unravel the reconstructed psyches of the masses. In SLANT, Greg Bear paints a carefully constructed picture of America in the middle of the next century. Nanotech, body modification, dataflow, virtual living, therapy, sex and religion all swirl together in Bear's masterful style. Not only is the techno and sociological fabric of SLANT tightly woven by this master craftsman, but he has created characters with a depth and consistency equal to their environment. The story is engrossing and well conceived, building to a satisfying conclusion in the universe he created in QUEEN OF ANGELS. SLANT is one of Bear's best. SLANT comes together from several directions at once, but how the storylines merge is not revealed until well into the book. Bear builds his structure piece by piece, as each character develops along his own path. I discarded the breakneck pace with which I devour space opera and read SLANT carefully watching each character's progress. Allow me to introduce some prominent members of the cast. Jack Giffey - He's never met a machine he can't beat, but he keeps looking. He's been a lot of things in his day, soldier and spy among them and now for a change of pace, perhaps grave robber. He's lying low in seceded Green Idaho casing the impregnable Omphalos, the cryogenic tomb/vault of the wealthy, lying frozen in wait for a better tomorrow. Mary Choy - A rising cop on the beat, she wanted the perfect cop body - so she bought one. She's had enough of perfection and now she's drifting back to her same old used to be. She's keeping the new feet though, and they're about to walk her into the case of her career. Alice Grale - An erotic media star in a world where the audience can plug into your sensations. Her career is stalled and suddenly she's being stalked by a most unusual fan. She'd like to be noticed by the right people but can she avoid the wrong ones? Jill - One of the most powerful AI's in existence. She's wondering about her purpose, teaching morality to a rogue AI, and trying to avoid catatonia. Some say information exchange is just another way of saying sex, but Jill has to be very careful about her partners. SLANT is complex and worthwhile, and sports a sizable cast, I went to the trouble of making a character list which I've left as an appendix to the review. Some say that reading the list before you meet the characters is a spoiler. A number of Heinleinian elements and situations occur in SLANT, from the seceded Green Idaho (a.k.a. Coventry) to a secret society waiting out the end of a corrupt society and the self aware artificial Intelligences, readers of RAH will recognize familiar scenery. SLANT is not a mere rehashing of old news. It is a fresh appraisal of familiar themes by an author with the insight into individuals and society needed to make it worthwhile. Beginning chapters are quotes from the future news media or the future bestseller THE KISS OF X, ALIVE CONTAINS A LIE that are worth examining on their own. No one is safe from Greg Bear's insight, as he dissects liberal and conservative alike. SLANT is an adventure, a whodunit, and a critical essay. Together they show Bear to be a master among SF authors. SLANT - a partial dramatis persona The Omphalos - A tomb for the storage of the wealthy. A massive pyramid rising about Green Idaho. It's indestructible, but is it impregnable as well? Green Idaho - They don't approve of government, fire inspectors, or messing around with the gene pool. The roads are rough and their manners rougher. On the Fourth of July they hand out dynamite for fireworks. "We ought to just drop a rock on the whole place." mutters a Fed. Terrance Crest - The Terrance Crest, a man on top of the world, with wealth, power and success undreamed of by all but a few, and in terror of losing it all. Martin Burke - A therapist in a world where the unanalyzed is the exception. He came to Seattle to escape the constant glare of the sun, now he wishes he could escape the gray pallor he lives under. An engineer of the therapied society, he's about to watch everything he helped create go through catastrophic failure. Jonathan and Chloe - Married with children, the timeless balance of self and family. Approaching a crisis in marriage, Jonathan is seeking closeness, while Chloe is looking for freedom. Or is she hiding from the ghost of her past? Yvonne - A waitress in a backwoods land, she's looking for a better man and it might just be Jack Giffey. Nussbaum - He's an old time police detective whose unmodified nose can still smell trouble, into which he doesn't mind putting Choy. Roddy - an illegal AI who appears to Jill with temptations of freedom and danger. She pulls away at first, cautious, scared, then absorbs herself in his conundrums to the exclusion of all else and the risk of her sanity. Whoever created Roddy is asking him some scary questions. Torino - Scientist, social theorist. It all begins with sex, he says, and sex is really information exchange, as Jonathan listens despite himself. Marcus - Jonathan's mentor, Heinlein's old man, a door into a secret order, or just a corrupt deal maker? (All of the above) Nathan - Creator of Jill, once a lover of Sceefa Schnee, a woman who induced a little madness in herself to make her more brilliant. Jill is the AI he created, the daughter he doesn't have, and very nearly the woman he loves. Sceefa Schnee - A radical AI scientist who entered the mouth of madness to find her voice. When she found it, her words came out with a snarl. %G ISBN 0-312-85517-6 %P Tor %D July 1997 SFRevu - Reviews and interviews from the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy. http://members.aol.com/sfrevu/sfraug97.html Copyright 1997 by Ernest Lilley From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 17 14:23:27 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Subject: DINOSAUR SUMMER by Greg Bear Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 09 Apr 1998 13:46:55 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 41 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1850 rec.arts.books.reviews:2470 DINOSAUR SUMMER by Greg Bear Warner Aspect, ISBN 0-446-52098-5, 1998, 325pp, US$23 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper This is billed as an alternate history, and it is in the sense that its premise is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's LOST WORLD was non-fiction, and dinosaurs did survive on a Venezuelan plateau. But it's not alternate history in the sense of looking at what changes there would be in society because of the change. This is not so much a complaint as a warning. If you like alternate histories for that sociological aspect, you will be disappointed in DINOSAUR SUMMER. It is more aimed at the person who enjoyed THE LOST WORLD and wants to read more about dinosaurs and the lost plateau. The story starts out in a dinosaur circus, but that seems mostly to allow Bear to introduce his human, reptilian, and avian characters before heading back to the plateau. Some of the latter two are real, others are fictitious, and you probably can't tell the players without a scorecard, which Bear provides in an afterword. I was really looking forward to this book, but found it a disappointment. Perhaps I was looking for more change in society than the fact that KING KONG flopped. As an adventure novel, it starts off very slowly, and doesn't offer the reader much to carry hold her interest. I suppose if you really like dinosaurs, they will carry the book, but I found DINOSAUR SUMMER a disappointment. %T Dinosaur Summer %A Greg Bear %C New York %D February 1998 %I Warner Aspect %O hardback, US$23 %G ISBN 0-446-52098-5 %P 325pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?" "I'm not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 12:47:00 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: "Slant" by Greg Bear Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 03 Aug 1998 11:59:58 -0400 Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 70 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2076 "Slant" by Greg Bear A Postview, Copyright 1998 P-M Agapow A sequel to "Queen of Angels:" it is the near future, in a world where nanotechnology is common, body-transformation easy and treatment of the smallest mental defect thorough and necessary. Jack Giffey is a tomb robber. His target is the high-tech and impossibly secure cryogenic facility Omphalos, located in the paranoid and independent Green Idaho. Mary Choy is a cop fallen from grace and trying to restart her career. The bust of a pornography racket leads her to the mysterious death of a millionaire and a series of unexplained computer intrusions. Martin Burke is a psychiatrist, also fallen from grace, confronted with a widespread failure of mental conditioning. Jill is an AI, recently rescued from psychosis, who has begun to receive strange messages from another AI, one that cannot exist ... In my mind, there are two Greg Bears, separated by the publication of "Queen of Angels." The first had big and breathtaking ideas that were wounded, sometimes fatally, by terrible characterisation and ho-hum story-telling. Included in this category are books that are well-regarded by many ("Blood Music," "Eon," and "The Serpent Mage") but which I frankly wish had been better written. Then there was "Queen of Angels" and its successors, which look almost as if they were written by someone else. Although their success did not always match their ambition, the stories were more personal, character driven and busy and, as a consequence, more intense. "Slant" continues this trend, being a multi-viewpoint tale spiralling around a mysterious cryogenic facility. "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant," warns Emily Dickinson at the book's beginning. With eight significant points of view, and a plot that after 150 pages is only just beginning to get started, the narrative is very slant indeed. Some plot threads come together only at the very end. In fact, there may be more slant than necessary - one of the main characters steps offstage at the halfway point and several make so little impact on the story you wonder what the point is. But there's a lot be happy with, as with all of Bear's later books. The world of "Queen of Angels" has become distinctly grimy, with a large sector of the population displaced permanently from work by computers. Citizens spend all their money on Yox, virtual reality porn. Discrimination against anyone with less than a perfect psychological profile runs deep. Even the proudly retrogressive inhabitants of Green Idaho lust after what the outside world has. There are well-drawn individual crises too, with Mary Choy hovering indecisively in the middle of a body transformation and another main character Jonathan caught in a deadend career and a deteriorating relationship with his wife. Of course there's the technology. The tomb robbers go in equipped with frighteningly powerfully military-grade nanotechnology that can dismantle anything and rebuild it into weapons. Housing comes stacked 500 levels high, communication and job "touches" flock for attention on a doctor's desktop, "metabolic carpet" devours debris and regrows damage. Perhaps "Slant" isn't a great book, the story sometimes serving the slant rather than the other way around. But it is a very readable and interesting one, another solid entry for Bear, and comes recommended. As an aside, enjoying "Slant" does not require that you have read the prequel. [***/interesting] and "Short Cuts" on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Greg Bear %T Slant %I Tor %C New York %D 1997 %P 505pp %G ISBN 0-812-52482-9 %O paperback, Aus$15.95 Paul-Michael Agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au) Postviews SF/F reviews & mailing-list at www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Oct 20 12:31:47 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 11 Oct 1999 23:17:10 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 79 Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2477 Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Worth Reading I thought some of the prose and dialog was clunky, and I had a problem with a couple of the scientific premises of the story, but I still managed to find this a quick and entertaining read. The story's premise was spectacular, and Bear does a great job of making it seem credible and even possible. This is a work of true hard science fiction, a subgenre that Bear is a master of. The plot is pretty straightforward. Endogenous retroviruses (bits of leftover viruses that we incorporated into our own DNA) have started becoming active and infectious. The viruses cause a disease nicknamed "Herod's flu" because it causes miscarriages. Kaye Lang is a biologist who predicted that infectious endogenous retroviruses were possible, and she gets swept up into the battle to understand and contain this new infection. But is it really a disease? The more Lang learns, the less sure she is. What she suspects is really going on could change humanity forever. Bear buttresses his story with tons of scientific details. Perhaps a bit too many. There are several times in the book where I thought I was listening to a university lecture on biology instead of reading a novel. You can learn some things this way, nice buzzwords if nothing else, but I thought it interfered with the story. Also, a lot of the characters didn't work for me. Particularly a few of the CDC/HIH bureaucrats seemed like characatures of government workers. Their dialog about hyping up different health threats seemed a bit overdone. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how probably true it was. After all, the Waco Massacre started out as a publicity stunt by the ATF to help it secure more federal funding. In a work of hard SF like this, scientific plausibility is a must. As I said, this book largely delivers, but there were a couple of things I had a problem with. First, Bear claims many times that the likeliest cause of the spontaneous expression of these viruses is environmental stress from modern living. This Malthusian belief could have come straight out of the Environmental Defense Fund Newsletter. By many standards, humans are living in an environment much less stressful than in times past. Even the third world has made dramatic strides in reducing mortality and increasing quality of life. Food is more abundant than ever. Modern medicine has cured many diseases that formerly scourged the planet. When I think back on things like the Black Plague, I can't really believe that we live in some uniquely stressful time for humanity. Quite the opposite in fact. The other bothersome thing was how Bear pointed to gaps in the fossil record to provide evidence for his claim that current notions of evolution are wrong. Creationists have pointed at this for years as evidence of the Divine origins of life, and have been roundly lambasted for it. Now someone who embraces evolution (at least in this book, and I presume in real life) points to this as a "problem" and wouldn't you know it just happens to have a "solution" that preserves an evolutionary basis for the origins of life. You can't play it both ways boys. If there's a problem with the fossil record, then it's a problem right now, not just when you have a solution for it, even a fictional one. I'm not bringing this up in order to argue that the world is 6,000 years old. It was just something that bugged me. But despite its problems, I thought this was a good, solid book. It's an excellent pick for anyone who likes their SF diamond hard, but is good enough as a story to appeal to those who don't. I think this could have good mainstream crossover success. Books about viruses -- for example, The Hot Zone -- have done well with the general public, and I think this novel could too. %A Bear, Greg %T Darwin's Radio %I Del Rey %D 1999-09 %G ISBN 0-345-42333-X %P 430 pp. %O hardcover, US$24.00 Reviewed on 1999-10-02 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 1 13:36:59 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gblx.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@poison-ivy.media.mit.edu From: Gary McGath Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Darwin's Radio Organization: Thermian Refugee Aid Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.0 (PPC) X-Complaints-To: abuse@shore.net Date: 31 Jul 2000 11:46:09 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 82 NNTP-Posting-Host: poison-ivy.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965058370 9443 18.85.23.103 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2771 Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear Review Copyright Gary McGath This isn't a review in the full sense. About halfway through the book, I became sufficiently bored with the characters and impatient with the scientific mystery that I began skimming the "people" passages to get to the resolution of the mystery. Thus, I'm restricting my comments here to the scientific issue. The premise of the book is that since our ancestors were monkeys, there has been a feature in our genetic makeup which causes abrupt advances in a single generation. This feature caused the leap from Neanderthal to modern human and in the course of the book causes a leap from human parents to superhuman babies. I am not a biologist but simply from the standpoint of information theory, Bear's premise is wildly implausible. The genetic feature, called SHEVA (Scattered Human Endogenous RetroVirus Activation), is discovered to have been causing miscarriages in the Caucasus area for decades, and something about it has been prompting acts of mass murder against women who have been affected. It quickly becomes worldwide in the course of the book. The discoverers speculate on some stress which activated SHEVA on such a broad scale, but never come up with an explanation. It affects only married or long-term couples; again, this is not explained. Bear provides only a vague analogy to a "network" by which SHEVA operates. But a network is a collection of interconnected information channels. DNA is, in the broad sense, information; evolution requires updated information in order to continue. According to conventional evolution theory, the information on which it operates is that the parents of an organism were able to survive and pass on their genetic code. This is a slow, error-prone process which takes millennia to bring about specific change. SHEVA operates in a different way. Women affected by it conceive a fetus which is little more than an ovary; it aborts itself after leaving a self-fertilized ovum in the womb. At first the secondary fetuses aren't viable. But then SHEVA modifies itself globally, and women begin giving birth to the new post-humans. These children have fifty-two chromosomes compared to the standard forty-six; they look a little different from normal humans and learn much more quickly. Each chromosome of the human genetic makeup contains a large amount of information. According to standard biology outside Kansas, there is no programmer coding these chromosomes; they have developed by the process of natural selection. But SHEVA, by some unspecified method, has coded up these six new chromosomes in a way that generates a significantly improved Homo. Moreover, it somehow got information that the first generation was unsuccessful, so it made corrections. How does SHEVA get its information? What is the "network" which allows it to design successfully modified offspring or to know about its failures? There is no answer. Does the intermediate generation have some role in gathering this information? No clue is given as to how it could. SHEVA's success is comparable to writing 50,000 lines of code to add new features to a program, sending it out to a beta tester who doesn't send back reports, and then making successful fixes based on the unreported failures at the beta site -- all without ever having studied programming. When I started the book, I was hoping for a decent James Hogan-style scientific detective story. Instead, the protagonists' view is bolstered only by the facts that their opponents act like jerks and that ultimately viable SHEVA children are born. Bear writes in the afterword, "I've made a substantial effort to make the science accurate and the speculation plausible." This effort didn't succeed. %A Bear, Greg %T Darwin's Radio %I Ballantine Books %C New York %D September 1999 %G ISBN 0-345-43524-9 %O Paperback, US$ 6.99 Other book reviews which I've written can be found at Gary McGath gmcgath@REMOVETHISmcgath.com http://www.shore.net/~gmcgath/