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The Collected Stories |
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ith one or two minor exceptions, this book assembles all of Greg Bear's acclaimed short fiction: two dozen stories, several of them novellas, with many award-winners among them. The book opens with the short version of "Blood Music," surely Bear's most famous story. Vergil Ulam's invention of smart biochips proves the undoing of the human race, as the sentient plague spreads via contact. "Sisters" explores the feelings and fate of an unmodified human—an average teen named Letitia—in the face of a new generation of genetically enhanced peers. And the Red Planet proves to be host to a strange and deadly ecosystem in "A Martian Ricorso."
Two intersecting threads inform and enliven "Heads." On the Moon, a scientist attempts to create temperatures of absolute zero, while his associates are intent on digging into the memories of corpsicles—frozen heads. But neither party has reckoned with the fact that one of the icy heads belongs to a man revered by fanatics. Will Earth be utterly destroyed by a lone woman who directs a rogue asteroid at the planet? Such is the question posed by "The Wind from a Burning Woman." Anna Sigrid Nestor is the heroine of "The Venging," which find mankind up against the merciless Aighors. "Scattershot" tells of a potent weapon which displaces a person across alternate realities. How to find one's way back from an alien timeline is the problem for the woman named Francis Geneva.
What are the roots of the storytelling impulse? Bear fashions an objective correlative for the burgeoning urge in the form of an old man and an old woman who seduce a young latent storyteller in "The White Horse Child." "Dead Run" follows the daily tribulations of a truck driver assigned to haul dead souls into Hell. After the death of God, as described in "Petra," the warped survivors must reassemble a personal basis for continuing to live. "Webster" proposes a unique solution to a lonely old maid's quandry: a man fashioned solely of words.
As the universe winds down in its heat-death, only the "Judgment Engine" can provide the perspective needed to reboot the successor cosmos. Revivifying a dead magician, the nearly omnipotent being known as Roderick Escher seeks to enliven the boredom of his perfect existence in "The Fall of the House of Escher." "The Way of All Ghosts" ties into Bear's Thistledown novels and describes what happens when the Way—an infinite corridor granting access to a myriad universes—is threatened by an eruption of hyper-order. Finally, closing out the volume, comes "Hardfought," detailing an endless war between much-modified humans and the alien Senexi.
A captivating career retrospective
This is the kind of landmark, monumental volume which instantly becomes a keystone in any SF collection that regards itself as even partially complete. Among the newer writers to debut in the 1980s who went on to consolidate their reputations as leaders in the field in the 1990s, Greg Bear stands almost without competition. Able to take the most reconditely intriguing scientific matters and cloak them in exciting action; intent on rethinking all the old cliches; not content to repeat himself endlessly—Well, Bear has been the very model of the Principled Hard SF Writer. Having all these stories assembled together for the first time offers a brilliant overview of this still-unfolding career. And Bear's sidebar material, as well as the respectful and intelligent presentation (giving prominence to the editors and publications which form the rungs of his career ladder), just add icing to the cake.
Yet this facade of unstoppable leaping from strength to stefnal strength is only half the story. Such a glossy press-release history omits two important things: the years of early, indecisive struggle; and Bear's fascination with the softer side of the unreal. Almost half the stories date from before 1983, the year "Blood Music" appeared and marked Bear's ascension. Reading these, one witnesses a talent casting about for forms to fill, and sees the inchoate iconography and themes struggling for expression. Enjoyable on their own merits, they also provide a valuable track record of Bear's development.
As for Bear's non-scientific side, this is the book's major revelation. Who would have suspected that Ray Bradbury, William Hope Hodgson and Peter Beagle had just as much formative influence on the man as Clarke and Stapledon? Yet the fantasies here are almost in their way more vivid and evocative than the SF. The concentrated theological excursion of "Petra" casts light on some of the metaphysics of the SF, revealing Bear to be one of the few heirs to the religious impulses of James Blish. And in fact, my favorite story here—hard as that decision is to make—might very well be the Fritz-Leiberish "Sleepside Story," which is one of those few modern creations that achieve archetypical fairytale status.
This book is like Bear's invention, the Way: an infinite corridor full of doors into marvelous universes.
In the light of the success of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (1985), it's interesting to speculate why Bear's "Hardfought" (1983), which tells of youths being virtually trained for war against aliens, did not become the standard for such tales, despite its Nebula win. — Paul
Also in this issue: Strange But Not A Stranger, by James Patrick Kelly
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