Eon: 1

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At the opening of the novel, in 2005, Judith Hoffmann, head of the commission that coordinates the exploration of the Stone, recruits a theoretical physicist. The physicist, Patricia Vasquez, arrives at the Stone and receives clearance for all the information discovered by the existing science teams, including libraries that describe a nuclear holocaust—“the Death”—taking place in 2005. Only some NATO science teams are privy to this information. Chinese and Russian science teams are present, but politically restricted. And if you want something different, more thriller-like, give Vitals a go. It is a compelling sci-fi conspiracy thriller. Bear’s admiration for Star Trek resulted in an original novel Corona (1984). Later franchise novels included Star Wars: Rogue Planet (2000); one volume of a second trilogy continuing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Foundation and Chaos (1998); and the Forerunner Saga trilogy establishing the origins of the Halo computer games universe: Cryptum (2011), Primordium (2012) and Silentium (2013). Bear was also one of a group of writers and others interested in swordplay and western martial arts who created The Mongoliad cycle (2010-12), distributed as apps developed by Neal Stephenson’s Subutai Corporation for smartphones.

The journey is meant to take 60 years, as the ship can only maintain a velocity of 20% the speed of light. This limitation is removed after the technology of the Thistledown was improved to include inertial dampeners, allowing higher accelerations. Before becoming a freelance writer in 1975, he held several jobs, such as technical writer, lecturer, a clerk at a bookstore, and a planetarium operator. Greg Bear started to write short stories very early in his life. He wrote his very first one at the age of nine. At the time he was living in Alaska with his parents.Greg Bear was born as Gregory Dale Bear in 1951 in San Diego, California. During his childhood, he often traveled to Japan, the Philippines, and Alaska, since his father was in the navy at the time. Great! Great characters, science, cultures, action. Moving Mars brings together all the things that make science fiction wonderful! (Vernor Vinge) Bear truly found his feet with two stories in 1983: Hardfought, about a far future interstellar war between an ancient race of gas giant-dwelling aliens and humans almost as incomprehensible, and Blood Music, two years later expanded into a novel, in which a scientist creates computerised blood cells, which infect and assimilate humanity into a group mind. Tangents (1986) was an account of a boy who can see the inhabitants of four-dimensional space. In the short story, The Way of All Ghosts, soldier Olmy ap Sennon is sent to close a lesion that formed out of a wayward gate into perfection. This story was published in 1999 in Far Horizons.

Juno has been hollowed out along its long axis, subdivided into seven cylindrical chambers, and rotates to provide artificial gravity. The chambers are terraformed, with the second and third containing cities that have been maintained by automatic systems for centuries. This small world is dubbed "the Stone" by the Americans, "the Potato" by the Soviets, “the Whale” ( 鲸) by the Chinese and “the Thistledown” by its absent makers. Explorers of its interior discover that the end of the Stone's seventh chamber opens into “the Way”, a corridor that extends beyond the size of the asteroid. The Stone’s original inhabitants have been evacuated into the Way at some time in its past, which is the explorers’ future. Greg completed his first novel at the age of 19, but he didn’t publish it until much later, only after as he spent his next 13 years rewriting it completely.After gaining his BA in English from San Diego State College (now University), Bear worked as a lecturer for tourists at the San Diego Air and Space museum in Balboa Park. He later narrated shows at the Reuben H Fleet Space Theater, which opened in 1973, and worked in secondhand bookshops. By Journey Year 950, the Thistledown was empty, and history proceeded gently until the cataclysmic events of Journey Year 1175.

If you’re looking for the best Greg Bear books and haven’t read anything by this author yet, here are my top Greg Bear recommendations: Eon chronicles the appearance and discovery of the Thistledown, and its subsequent effect on humanity.Bear began constructing a loose future history with Queen of Angels (1990), commencing in 2047 in a socially stratified US and involving psychology, artificial intelligences and a murder plot. Its sequels, Slant (1997) and Heads (1990) explore further the mental and political repercussions of medical and social changes, while in Moving Mars (1993), a scientist from the planet makes a breakthrough that shifts the balance of power with Earth. Darwin’s Radio (1999) and its sequel Darwin’s Children (2003) tell of the spread of a disease that causes miscarriages, soon discovered to be an awakening of non-coding DNA that results in genetically enhanced children – the next step in human evolution.