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Forge of God #1
La Fragua de Dios
26 de junio de 1996: Europa, la sexta luna de Júpiter, desaparece repentinamente de los cielos, sin dejar tras de sí la menor huella de su existencia.
28 de septiembre de 1996: en el Valle de la Muerte, en California, en pleno corazón de los Estados Unidos, aparece un cono de escoria volcánica que no se halla registrado en ningún mapa geológico de la zona, y a su lado es hallada una criatura alienígena que transmite un inquietante mensaje: «Traigo malas noticias: la Tierra va a ser destruida...»
1 de octubre de 1996: el gobierno australiano anuncia que una enorme montaña de granito, un duplicado casi perfecto de Ayers Rock, ha aparecido de pronto en el Gran Desierto Victoria; junto a ella, tres resplandecientes robots de acero traen consigo un mensaje de paz y amistad...
Así se inicia una de las más apasionantes novelas de ciencia ficción de los últimos tiempos, que combina sabiamente el interés científico, la alta política internacional y la amenaza de una invasión alienígena, para ofrecernos una obra apasionante con una profundidad temática raras veces alcanzada, que se lee de un tirón hasta la última página.
28 de septiembre de 1996: en el Valle de la Muerte, en California, en pleno corazón de los Estados Unidos, aparece un cono de escoria volcánica que no se halla registrado en ningún mapa geológico de la zona, y a su lado es hallada una criatura alienígena que transmite un inquietante mensaje: «Traigo malas noticias: la Tierra va a ser destruida...»
1 de octubre de 1996: el gobierno australiano anuncia que una enorme montaña de granito, un duplicado casi perfecto de Ayers Rock, ha aparecido de pronto en el Gran Desierto Victoria; junto a ella, tres resplandecientes robots de acero traen consigo un mensaje de paz y amistad...
Así se inicia una de las más apasionantes novelas de ciencia ficción de los últimos tiempos, que combina sabiamente el interés científico, la alta política internacional y la amenaza de una invasión alienígena, para ofrecernos una obra apasionante con una profundidad temática raras veces alcanzada, que se lee de un tirón hasta la última página.
373 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1987
About the author
Greg Bear
211 books1,964 followersGreg Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), parallel universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin’s Radio, and Darwin’s Children). His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 670 reviews
January 25, 2016
Greg Bear is one of the more popular science fiction authors that I have been neglecting. I have only read his best-known book Eon prior to this one. Perhaps that is just as well as I have quite a few more to look forward to. I like sci-fi books set in “the present day” (in this case 1996), they tend to be immediately relatable. They also tend to be about First Contact, the meeting of mankind and extraterrestrials.
"“Do you have a name?” the President asked.
“Not in your language. My name is chemical and goes before me among my own kind.”"
Ah, I love such alien weirdness. The Forge of God seems to be all about First Contact during the first half of the book until some unexpected turns of event divert the storyline into an apocalyptic territory.
A crashed alien spaceship disguised as a volcanic cinder cone is found in the desert near the town of Shoshone, USA, at the crash site some geologists find an alien in very poor health. Around the same time another faux-cinder cone is found in an Australian desert, no alien found but some robots make contact instead. The alien in the US bears a message of doom, the robots in Australia bring glad tidings for mankind. WTF? Soon the human characters discover something “off” about the alien and the robots and things escalate quickly.
The plot of The Forge of God is very intriguing and I had no idea where the story will go. I love the way science is woven into the fabric of the story rather than simply dumped as blocks of info. Biology, geology, physics and astronomy expositions are cleverly used to make the story much more believable (as advantage sci-fi has over fantasy for me). The mystery of who or what the alien and robots are and what their agenda is fascinating.
Greg Bear makes more effort than most sci-fi authors to develop his characters. However, for sci-fi this can be a double–edged sword. Sometimes the epic sci-fi storyline dwarfs the characters and the readers become more interested in the events in the story than the struggles of the characters. It is not enough for characters to be believable and realistic, they also need to be interesting, to stand out in a sci-fi epic. I think this is the single flaw of this book, Bear spends a lot of time developing characters, and they do seem like real people, but, unfortunately, not interesting people. It also does not help that there are too many “point of view” characters and most of them remain flat in spite of the author’s valiant efforts. Arthur C. Clarke never bothered much with characterization, he played to his strength of plotting and storytelling and the style works very well for him.
The above-mentioned gripe aside, The Forge of God is a tremendously good read. The ending really is a humdinger, I wish I can tell you something about it without spoiling the book horribly. OK, I’m going to put something behind this spoiler tagged paragraph:
.
On the whole, Bear tells a very gripping and wondrous narrative and even gets a few digs in at religious fanatics and politicians. In spite of some superfluous characterization—which does not detract much from the book—I highly recommend this (Hugo and Nebula nominated) book.
"“Do you have a name?” the President asked.
“Not in your language. My name is chemical and goes before me among my own kind.”"
Ah, I love such alien weirdness. The Forge of God seems to be all about First Contact during the first half of the book until some unexpected turns of event divert the storyline into an apocalyptic territory.
A crashed alien spaceship disguised as a volcanic cinder cone is found in the desert near the town of Shoshone, USA, at the crash site some geologists find an alien in very poor health. Around the same time another faux-cinder cone is found in an Australian desert, no alien found but some robots make contact instead. The alien in the US bears a message of doom, the robots in Australia bring glad tidings for mankind. WTF? Soon the human characters discover something “off” about the alien and the robots and things escalate quickly.
The plot of The Forge of God is very intriguing and I had no idea where the story will go. I love the way science is woven into the fabric of the story rather than simply dumped as blocks of info. Biology, geology, physics and astronomy expositions are cleverly used to make the story much more believable (as advantage sci-fi has over fantasy for me). The mystery of who or what the alien and robots are and what their agenda is fascinating.
Greg Bear makes more effort than most sci-fi authors to develop his characters. However, for sci-fi this can be a double–edged sword. Sometimes the epic sci-fi storyline dwarfs the characters and the readers become more interested in the events in the story than the struggles of the characters. It is not enough for characters to be believable and realistic, they also need to be interesting, to stand out in a sci-fi epic. I think this is the single flaw of this book, Bear spends a lot of time developing characters, and they do seem like real people, but, unfortunately, not interesting people. It also does not help that there are too many “point of view” characters and most of them remain flat in spite of the author’s valiant efforts. Arthur C. Clarke never bothered much with characterization, he played to his strength of plotting and storytelling and the style works very well for him.
The above-mentioned gripe aside, The Forge of God is a tremendously good read. The ending really is a humdinger, I wish I can tell you something about it without spoiling the book horribly. OK, I’m going to put something behind this spoiler tagged paragraph:
.
On the whole, Bear tells a very gripping and wondrous narrative and even gets a few digs in at religious fanatics and politicians. In spite of some superfluous characterization—which does not detract much from the book—I highly recommend this (Hugo and Nebula nominated) book.
September 16, 2008
With its pacing and readability, The Forge of God reminded me of a Michael Crichton novel - the kind of science fiction story where scientific plausibility reigns and the narrative structure keeps you reading. This is a good novel. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Reading this book, however, incited musings on the various incarnations of science fiction, its characteristics and purposes. Musings follow.
The Forge of God was recommended to me by the kind of reader who dismisses Ray Bradbury and Phillip K. Dick because the science in their stories ranges from unconvincing to non-existent. This reader would not consider Vonnegut a science fiction writer. I suppose, if pressed, he'd call these authors fantasy writers. Basically, this fellow has no use for your so-called science fiction unless the "science" determines the "fiction". Now, I appreciate the heck out of a science-heavy science fiction story. I value plausibility, to an extent, and my brain definitely revels in some technical scientific information - about physics, astronomy, geology - bring it on! But the science fiction that makes my mind bend does not necessarily possess this characteristic.
I have a special and abiding affection for science fiction that lets the science work in service of the story instead of making the story revolve around the science. Authors like Bradbury, Dick and Vonnegut do not spend loads of time trying to convince their readers of the scientific plausibility of the worlds they've created. I suppose they assume their genre allows for this kind of suspension of disbelief. Science does not comprise the soul of these author's novels anyway - it is merely the precondition of the action. It is the agar in the petri dish, not the culture that develops on it. The preoccupation of this kind of author's story comes principally in human interaction and the examination of what it means to be human, especially when human limits and capabilities are challenged. Science fiction premises present wonderful observation grounds for this kind of question because, so often, they involve artificial intelligence, alien intelligence, or human beings in non-terrestrial environments. For my taste, what authors like Bradbury and Dick lack in scientific rigor, they more than make up for in the keenness of their psychological insights into human behavior and the depth of their ontological inquiries regarding humans.
Which brings me back to Greg Bear. His story is neat, as in tidy and as in cool. It's clever, built like a page-turner (short chapters, frequently-shifting points of view), and especially fine are the chapters where his scientific-minded characters dissect the central quandaries of the novel. But (slight spoiler follows), once the protagonists figure out the situation and the earth is pretty much doomed, I kept waiting for the ponderings on human behavior, worth, and ability. This book has all the scientific agar - aliens, artificial intelligence, impending destruction of the primary human habitat - but it grew very little by way of psychological culture. There are lots of references to narrowly-controlled panic, lots of discussion of how Bear's characters really just hope they're having sex when the sh*& hits the fan, and some retreat into nature to say goodbye to the mother about to be destroyed. And that's it. Once the science is explored, once military responses to the invaders fail, there's very little to bring the characters of this novel out of the superficiality in which they were drawn. Science certainly can't do it.
The Forge of God was recommended to me by the kind of reader who dismisses Ray Bradbury and Phillip K. Dick because the science in their stories ranges from unconvincing to non-existent. This reader would not consider Vonnegut a science fiction writer. I suppose, if pressed, he'd call these authors fantasy writers. Basically, this fellow has no use for your so-called science fiction unless the "science" determines the "fiction". Now, I appreciate the heck out of a science-heavy science fiction story. I value plausibility, to an extent, and my brain definitely revels in some technical scientific information - about physics, astronomy, geology - bring it on! But the science fiction that makes my mind bend does not necessarily possess this characteristic.
I have a special and abiding affection for science fiction that lets the science work in service of the story instead of making the story revolve around the science. Authors like Bradbury, Dick and Vonnegut do not spend loads of time trying to convince their readers of the scientific plausibility of the worlds they've created. I suppose they assume their genre allows for this kind of suspension of disbelief. Science does not comprise the soul of these author's novels anyway - it is merely the precondition of the action. It is the agar in the petri dish, not the culture that develops on it. The preoccupation of this kind of author's story comes principally in human interaction and the examination of what it means to be human, especially when human limits and capabilities are challenged. Science fiction premises present wonderful observation grounds for this kind of question because, so often, they involve artificial intelligence, alien intelligence, or human beings in non-terrestrial environments. For my taste, what authors like Bradbury and Dick lack in scientific rigor, they more than make up for in the keenness of their psychological insights into human behavior and the depth of their ontological inquiries regarding humans.
Which brings me back to Greg Bear. His story is neat, as in tidy and as in cool. It's clever, built like a page-turner (short chapters, frequently-shifting points of view), and especially fine are the chapters where his scientific-minded characters dissect the central quandaries of the novel. But (slight spoiler follows), once the protagonists figure out the situation and the earth is pretty much doomed, I kept waiting for the ponderings on human behavior, worth, and ability. This book has all the scientific agar - aliens, artificial intelligence, impending destruction of the primary human habitat - but it grew very little by way of psychological culture. There are lots of references to narrowly-controlled panic, lots of discussion of how Bear's characters really just hope they're having sex when the sh*& hits the fan, and some retreat into nature to say goodbye to the mother about to be destroyed. And that's it. Once the science is explored, once military responses to the invaders fail, there's very little to bring the characters of this novel out of the superficiality in which they were drawn. Science certainly can't do it.
September 9, 2017
All I kept thinking while reading this was that it felt like an Arthur C Clarke story. You know, complicated science, great concept, crappy two-dimensional characters. I didn't like or dislike one character. They were there only to showcase the idea and the science.
Geologists happen across a large "rock" structure in Death Valley that wasn't there before. While investigating, they discover an alien. It can speak English (having learned it from our radio waves in space) and it says it is a hitchhiker with another entity that will destroy Earth. Meanwhile, a similar thing is happening in Australia but the message is one of peace. The more humans investigate and learn, the more the situation gets out of control. It's much more complicated than this but I don't want to give anything away.
I wasn't a big fan of the writing style, but then again I'm not a fan of Clarke's either. The story could also shed about 10% of the filler and be much better. If you like ACC, you'll probably like this as well.
Geologists happen across a large "rock" structure in Death Valley that wasn't there before. While investigating, they discover an alien. It can speak English (having learned it from our radio waves in space) and it says it is a hitchhiker with another entity that will destroy Earth. Meanwhile, a similar thing is happening in Australia but the message is one of peace. The more humans investigate and learn, the more the situation gets out of control. It's much more complicated than this but I don't want to give anything away.
I wasn't a big fan of the writing style, but then again I'm not a fan of Clarke's either. The story could also shed about 10% of the filler and be much better. If you like ACC, you'll probably like this as well.
January 29, 2010
4.0 to 4.5 stars. Excellent, gripping story.
Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1988)
December 31, 2011
I was really disappointed by this. I had picked it up because I had really liked other Greg Bear novels: "Eon," "Eternity," and "Legacy." So I was expecting something fantastical on the same scale as those are.
Instead, it was a dull romp through 1980s paranoid Earth. Pages and pages of the government trying to keep extraterrestrial contacts secret from the populace.
There was one very annoying literary device used throughout. The novel is told from a 3rd person omniscient viewpoint. And every time a major character appears to have figured something important out, just as it would be revealed, we switch to another character for several pages. Seems like desperation to keep the reader interested.
This reminded me a lot of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama books: no contact with the aliens, just observations of their technology. No supraluminal travel, so everything takes ages. No explanation of what the aliens (possibly up to three factions, but it was never clear) are really up to.
I'm amazed I made it all the way through. I kept hoping something interesting would be revealed, but it was not to be.
Instead, it was a dull romp through 1980s paranoid Earth. Pages and pages of the government trying to keep extraterrestrial contacts secret from the populace.
There was one very annoying literary device used throughout. The novel is told from a 3rd person omniscient viewpoint. And every time a major character appears to have figured something important out, just as it would be revealed, we switch to another character for several pages. Seems like desperation to keep the reader interested.
This reminded me a lot of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama books: no contact with the aliens, just observations of their technology. No supraluminal travel, so everything takes ages. No explanation of what the aliens (possibly up to three factions, but it was never clear) are really up to.
I'm amazed I made it all the way through. I kept hoping something interesting would be revealed, but it was not to be.
July 13, 2013
Having read and enjoyed several other Bear books, I had high hopes for this one. Sadly, Forge of God is perhaps the only book I've ever read that has literally nothing to redeem it. I cannot figure out why Bear bothered to write this story. It seemed to have nothing to say, no commentary to impart, and no excitement to bring, while at the same time depicting a human race that, faced with ultimate destruction, fails to attempt even the smallest action in their own defense. Humanity is depicted as sheep being herded to slaughter with only the merest hint of retaliation being given. The plot line is nothing but a simple linear march to the earth's destruction. Humanity learns of the threat, does absolutely nothing during the middle 2/3 of the book, following which the earth is blown to bits. Given the lack of big picture response, you'd think perhaps Bear wanted to explore the end of the world scenario on a personal level. However, the characterizations are, at best, shallow. We never come to care enough about any of the characters to develop an emotional connection, much less feel anything when they die or get any insight into the human condition. In short, this is one big, empty book that goes nowhere except exactly the place we are told it's going very early on.
Bear simply appears to have mailed it in when he wrote this one. Take a pass on this one and look into some of his other work instead.
Bear simply appears to have mailed it in when he wrote this one. Take a pass on this one and look into some of his other work instead.
February 6, 2024
2.5 Stars
The premise of this one was fantastic, if not a bit heavy. However the actual story was disappointing as it focused too much on character drama than the actual potential doom of humanity. The execution was a big miss which is a shame.
The premise of this one was fantastic, if not a bit heavy. However the actual story was disappointing as it focused too much on character drama than the actual potential doom of humanity. The execution was a big miss which is a shame.
February 17, 2015
The difference between a 4 star book and a 5 star book is vast, definitely more than the span of one star. Bear.......bears comparisons with Stephen King in his ability to draw huge inferences in character from descriptive narrative passages, the actions of his characters, and interior and exterior dialogs, as well as relationships between characters. For this reader, they share a knack for initiating caring about what's happening to the characters and the magical gift of crafting a new world that's as believable as anything that can be touched, seen, or heard in the world that we witness everyday. Bear's gift of creating these believable, easy to care about characters draws the reader into this extraordinary plot where the Earth is seemingly doomed. What does he offer any more than any other apocalyptic version of Earth's demise? Well, the characters themselves make the journey worthwhile, and while some may make an argument for nihilism or meaninglessness out of our characters' adventures, I find my way into meaning. I love the descriptive passages about Arthur Gorden's friend, Harry and the wonderful bond of friendship between these two scientists. Harry's letter to Arthur embracing James's Lovelock's theory of Gaia give their own special 'meaning' to existence, and to what's happening in this novel. While not having read a great deal about Lovelock's theory, I understand that it's under a lot of criticism by modern day scientists. Lovelock's theory, however, fits in very well with the plot that unfolds from the mind of Greg Bear. Bear brings a lot of hard science into the novel to support his created world, thereby adding more elements of believability. The settings are absolutely fantastic. Written in 1987 before everyone had a cell phone glued to their fingers, communications in the novel appears specialized and laborious, not the instantaneous institution that it has come to be today. This is well represented in the novel and makes Bear's telepathic 'network' with aliens seem almost prophetic. There are moments of tedium in the novel, but for me, also moments of exhilaration in reading such a well crafted work. At the outset, I could never have guessed how the plot would unfold, and all the way to its ending, I knew that like King, Bear could not be trusted to bring my favorite characters through the mayhem. The ending was deeply believable and as a result of that believability, reaching toward some kind of spiritual meaning that other readers may be able to define more than myself.
August 7, 2011
Aliens launch a covert attack on Earth with no motive ever provided. Humans are defenseless and are unable to provide even token resistance. Earth is destroyed. These are not spoilers because there's really nothing worth spoiling. This book manages to take the opening few scenes of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and drag it out over 400+ pages, without the humour or the Vogon poetry. Overall, a tiresome and forgettable read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2008
Wow. Not one of Greg Bear's finest, I would say. Although the last third does try to make up for the plodding two thirds.
Like most sci-fi written in the past talking about "the future" that is now our past, it has a few stumbling blocks where he didn't get it quite right. Forge of God was written in 1986, the cold war was still on with no end in sight, computers were just starting to reveal their usefulness as personal computing platforms and modern data storage techniques were coming to light.
Set in 1996, he gets a surprising number of things right: personal computers small enough to carry around to hotels and airplanes, optical storage media as a standard, and flat-panel screens. On the other hand, there are a couple references to the Soviet Union and Marxists as adversaries to the U.S. that are kinda grimace-worthy.
True to Bear fashion, however, the akwardness of the future come and gone is pretty easily overlooked, as he focuses mainly on the people, not the tech, and the ways that their lives and character are changed over the course of the novel.
Basic premise: two alien "bogeys" are discovered on earth. The occupants of one, landed in Australia, say they bring enlightenment for all of humanity, and start teaching those who'll listen about advanced physics etc. The second craft, landed in Nevada, ejects a dying alien who lives long enough to claim that "the planet-eaters" have come to destroy Earth and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. (There's also a third, but we never really find out about it because the Evil Soviets are hiding it.)
So what happens? A group of scientists are wrapped up trying to figure out what's going on and who to believe, a group of government officials are trying to decide how much and what to tell the rest of the world and eventually the planet is destroyed in prose at times so moving and evocative that I don't recommend reading it alone in an empty apartment like I did. I put the book down and picked up my cat so I could hold in my arms a breathing, fuzzy reminder that the planet does in fact still exist.
So where does it go wrong? Well, there's a story line about a dying scientist, the point of which I'm still trying to understand. As a friend to one of the main, and most developed, characters, it could have been a great vessel for exploring the fragility of human life and the upcoming confrontation he'll have with his own mortality, but instead it just kinda peters out.
As I mentioned earlier, it starts out kinda plodding and slow. It falls victim to the Heroes Phenomenon - there are a lot of characters, we don't know why they're in the story and we're not terribly inclined to pay attention to them. Eventually, like Heroes, it does all come together and make sense, but I was left wondering if there isn't a better way to get there.
Also, like the last Harry Potter, I really could have done without the epilogue. The story itself sets up enough information as to what's going to happen "afterward" that we really don't need to be propelled a couple hundred years into the future to have it spelled out to us. Not to mention, it was probably the lamest part of the book.
I would say that his later works are definitely better than this, although I can see the promise here for those. I rate this book so high because of the end really the meat of the story. Perhaps it would have worked better as a short story, truncating the beginning and focusing in on the main events as they happened.
Like most sci-fi written in the past talking about "the future" that is now our past, it has a few stumbling blocks where he didn't get it quite right. Forge of God was written in 1986, the cold war was still on with no end in sight, computers were just starting to reveal their usefulness as personal computing platforms and modern data storage techniques were coming to light.
Set in 1996, he gets a surprising number of things right: personal computers small enough to carry around to hotels and airplanes, optical storage media as a standard, and flat-panel screens. On the other hand, there are a couple references to the Soviet Union and Marxists as adversaries to the U.S. that are kinda grimace-worthy.
True to Bear fashion, however, the akwardness of the future come and gone is pretty easily overlooked, as he focuses mainly on the people, not the tech, and the ways that their lives and character are changed over the course of the novel.
Basic premise: two alien "bogeys" are discovered on earth. The occupants of one, landed in Australia, say they bring enlightenment for all of humanity, and start teaching those who'll listen about advanced physics etc. The second craft, landed in Nevada, ejects a dying alien who lives long enough to claim that "the planet-eaters" have come to destroy Earth and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. (There's also a third, but we never really find out about it because the Evil Soviets are hiding it.)
So what happens? A group of scientists are wrapped up trying to figure out what's going on and who to believe, a group of government officials are trying to decide how much and what to tell the rest of the world and eventually the planet is destroyed in prose at times so moving and evocative that I don't recommend reading it alone in an empty apartment like I did. I put the book down and picked up my cat so I could hold in my arms a breathing, fuzzy reminder that the planet does in fact still exist.
So where does it go wrong? Well, there's a story line about a dying scientist, the point of which I'm still trying to understand. As a friend to one of the main, and most developed, characters, it could have been a great vessel for exploring the fragility of human life and the upcoming confrontation he'll have with his own mortality, but instead it just kinda peters out.
As I mentioned earlier, it starts out kinda plodding and slow. It falls victim to the Heroes Phenomenon - there are a lot of characters, we don't know why they're in the story and we're not terribly inclined to pay attention to them. Eventually, like Heroes, it does all come together and make sense, but I was left wondering if there isn't a better way to get there.
Also, like the last Harry Potter, I really could have done without the epilogue. The story itself sets up enough information as to what's going to happen "afterward" that we really don't need to be propelled a couple hundred years into the future to have it spelled out to us. Not to mention, it was probably the lamest part of the book.
I would say that his later works are definitely better than this, although I can see the promise here for those. I rate this book so high because of the end really the meat of the story. Perhaps it would have worked better as a short story, truncating the beginning and focusing in on the main events as they happened.
January 31, 2010
A really great concept marred by heavy-handed yet poorly detailed plotting. For a world-wide crisis, one gets only momentary high-level glimpses of how most of the world is taking it; the conceptualization of politics and diplomacy (and government) is pretty simplistic, and for all the talk of characters' intelligence, none of them seem that bright (which may actually be the point.) The most distracting thing for me was noticing how, no matter how often they were referred to as intelligent and competent, there was not one woman in the entire book who acted independently, or whose inner thoughts were exposed, or who served any other purpose than to comfort, support, distract, or sleep with the male characters (except possibly the president's wife.) It's the sort of thing I accept as part of older SF, but seems less excusable in more recent decades.
January 6, 2013
Its not clear to me why this book won so many awards. Its a pretty generic science fiction story with the added bonus of all sorts of premise holes. Also, the character development is terrible.
November 11, 2022
Some interesting ideas in this book, but more threads left hanging than anything. Not particularly well-written - awkward, unbelievable dialogue, ham-handed attempts to create characters, uninteresting and unsympathetic characters ... Just not very well done.
The concepts that we are introduced to at the beginning are never developed. We never learn why the planet-eaters pick earth to destroy when there are lots of unoccupied planets around, why they create beings that interact with humans and then just drop the interaction or why they oppose humans being saved. There's a lot of talk about a war between the planet-eaters and the aliens that are trying to save humanity, but it all takes place out of sight of the story. Instead, we spend lots of time listening to hand-wringing about how the President's not going to do anything, and listening to Bear display his knowledge of Yosemite by name-checking every feature of the park. A waste of time.
Bear would have been better off having his characters at least try to fight the invaders or find ways to resist them instead of blithely going about their visit. Instead, we follow a bunch of uninteresting characters around for almost 500 pages, doing very little. Badly written, poorly plotted with weak characters, this is a bad book.
I just noticed after I read this review that the book was nominated for several major scifi awards. All I can say is that it must have been a bad year.
The concepts that we are introduced to at the beginning are never developed. We never learn why the planet-eaters pick earth to destroy when there are lots of unoccupied planets around, why they create beings that interact with humans and then just drop the interaction or why they oppose humans being saved. There's a lot of talk about a war between the planet-eaters and the aliens that are trying to save humanity, but it all takes place out of sight of the story. Instead, we spend lots of time listening to hand-wringing about how the President's not going to do anything, and listening to Bear display his knowledge of Yosemite by name-checking every feature of the park. A waste of time.
Bear would have been better off having his characters at least try to fight the invaders or find ways to resist them instead of blithely going about their visit. Instead, we follow a bunch of uninteresting characters around for almost 500 pages, doing very little. Badly written, poorly plotted with weak characters, this is a bad book.
I just noticed after I read this review that the book was nominated for several major scifi awards. All I can say is that it must have been a bad year.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2014
Excellent story. First contact with a twist. The reader was/is warned because this is a "prequel" that's it's a 473 set up for another book: Anvil of Stars. Though since The Forge of God was published first, it isn't really a prequel. Sigh.
Despite writing in 1987, Bear fails to anticipate the break up of the Soviet Union just three years later. Think back: how many of us would have? He did a better job of predicting laptop computers, though he missed the speed with which cell phones replaced pay phones.
Continuity problem: one character boards an "ark" near Cleveland, then suddenly appears among the passengers of the ark from San Francisco.
Quibble: The inciting incident is the disappearance of Europa. Nearly as much water could have been obtained from the asteroid Ceres, closer at hand.
Good, hard SF. Almost textbook dry in places, but balanced by lots of personal interactions and human interest.
Point for pondering: In our breathless search for extraterrestrial life, we forget that if only one out of a hundred alien cultures is set on destroying all the others, guess which one's most likely to respond to our signals?
Despite writing in 1987, Bear fails to anticipate the break up of the Soviet Union just three years later. Think back: how many of us would have? He did a better job of predicting laptop computers, though he missed the speed with which cell phones replaced pay phones.
Continuity problem: one character boards an "ark" near Cleveland, then suddenly appears among the passengers of the ark from San Francisco.
Quibble: The inciting incident is the disappearance of Europa. Nearly as much water could have been obtained from the asteroid Ceres, closer at hand.
Good, hard SF. Almost textbook dry in places, but balanced by lots of personal interactions and human interest.
Point for pondering: In our breathless search for extraterrestrial life, we forget that if only one out of a hundred alien cultures is set on destroying all the others, guess which one's most likely to respond to our signals?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 15, 2019
While I was reading this book, I couldn't escape the feeling that I should've been enjoying it more than I was.
I loved the premise, I loved the set-up; it's exactly the sort of thing I'd normally eat up with a huge grin on my face... BUT...
There was something about it that left me entirely un-gripped for huge swathes of the book. I'm not even entirely sure what... maybe the writing style? Perhaps it was that I didn't particularly like the characters? Perhaps the fact that humanity was so blatantly entirely powerless to do anything about their plight robbed the book of a big chunk of dramatic tension?
Whatever it was, it left me reasonably entertained but not in any way enthused. I'm almost regretting my decision to buy the sequel at the same time as the first book... I say almost because a number of people whose opinions I trust have rated the sequel higher than this book, so I'm going into reading 'Anvil of Stars' in the hope they're right...
I loved the premise, I loved the set-up; it's exactly the sort of thing I'd normally eat up with a huge grin on my face... BUT...
There was something about it that left me entirely un-gripped for huge swathes of the book. I'm not even entirely sure what... maybe the writing style? Perhaps it was that I didn't particularly like the characters? Perhaps the fact that humanity was so blatantly entirely powerless to do anything about their plight robbed the book of a big chunk of dramatic tension?
Whatever it was, it left me reasonably entertained but not in any way enthused. I'm almost regretting my decision to buy the sequel at the same time as the first book... I say almost because a number of people whose opinions I trust have rated the sequel higher than this book, so I'm going into reading 'Anvil of Stars' in the hope they're right...
July 30, 2019
Read for the Apocalypse 2019 Reading Challenge.
Method of the world's destruction: Unknown aliens using a combination of self-replicating nuclear explosions to shatter the Earth's crust at the tectonic faults, while superdense compressed matter and anti-matter come together at the Earth's core to disintegrate the planet. (Sorry if that's a spoiler, but it's got to be the absolutely coolest apocalypse I've ever read.)
My partner Jamie has been recommending this book to me for literally years. I wanted to save it and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, for when I was reading for an apocalypse challenge and a space opera challenge at the same time (because the sequel is a space opera.) That opportunity came when I decided to jump into a new apocalyptic-fiction challenge and a space opera challenge on Worlds Without End.
I wondered at the range of ratings I saw for this book on Goodreads - everything from a one-star to a five-star rating. "2/3rds of the book was a trip through the paranoid 80s as everyone ran around and did nothing," said one review. "A boring apocalypse," said another. "400 pages spent doing what The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did in the book's beginning," said a third. "Flat, undeveloped characters," said a fourth.
I strongly disagree with all of this! I think this is flat-out one of the best books of apocalyptic literature I've ever read - and I have read quite a few.
I wondered what it was that differentiated the people who loved it and the ones who hated it. Perhaps those who hate it don't like science fiction much?
There's an argument for that, because there's a lot of science, especially geology, physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics, and biology, involved in this book. Maybe people just couldn't follow it, I thought, because Bear in his wisdom does not coddle his readers. He expects you to keep up.
Or maybe people didn't like the idea of the world running around, chasing its tail, instead of facing the direct existential threat as an organized force. Well . . . that's human. The cast of Game of Thrones ran around doing that for seven seasons. We're doing it now in the face of the threat of global climate change.
Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, there are many viewpoint characters in this book, presented in tight third person personal. We only get to see what happened if a character saw it; we only understand what's going on if a character understands it. Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, the plot is complex.
At the beginning of the book, rock formations, large ones, suddenly appear in places where they have never been on any map before. The first one is noticed in Australia's desert, the second in Death Valley. Remote areas. More follow later.
The geologists who happen upon the one in Death Valley call the Air Force to report that a MiG has gone down, knowing they won't believe, over the phone, what has really happened; they have discovered a weak, possibly dying, alien creature near the formation. It speaks perfect English but doesn't necessarily understand every concept presented to it. They and the alien are taken into custody (and quarantine.) The American government decides to keep a tight lid on the alien presence so as to not panic the public, until they have more information.
The alien tells them that it has traveled with the formation, which is actually a disguised spacecraft, to warn the Earth. It says its people, its world, were destroyed by the aliens who have landed, and it has come in the hopes that the Earth could prepare itself to fight back. But now that it is here, it realizes that we lack the technology to do so, and there is no hope.
In the meantime, the Australians have been visited by robots with a pleasing, friendly shape, who are telling them that the aliens have come to help us, offering us technology and to bring world peace.
Who do we believe?
The President of the United States asks the alien if it believes in God. "I believe in punishment," it says before it dies. That leads the President to believe that the End of Days as described in the Bible are here. When he is re-elected to a second term, he announces this almost right away. He forbids any counterstrike on the aliens.
The American team assigned to work on it (dated in the distinct absence of women and lacking even a token Person of Colour - well, this was written in the 80s) share their information with the Australian team and confront their aliens with questions about what the American visitor has said. The Australian aliens are promptly destroyed - or destroy themselves.
Why? What happened? We don't know. Is it a ruse? Are there two alien factions, one benevolent and the other malignant? Again, who do we believe?
To make things more complicated, the alien is autopsied, and there is evidence that it, too, was artificially created.
Confusion results. Are there any aliens among the Russians or Chinese? Again, we don't know, because in Bear's future, the Cold War still exists and no information is exchanged across the Iron Curtain.
Not long after, a strange unidentified flying object is seen over the Atlantic Ocean by a boat of oceanographers who are charting seismic activity under the ocean floor. Strange seismic readings start appearing on their graphs immediately after. Other scientists in the field elsewhere in the world notice the same things.
Then something even weirder happens. It turns out that while they are as mysterious and opaque as the aliens who have arrived, Earth may have a benefactor. I can't tell you anything else that won't be an enormous spoiler. I may have given you too much information already.
In a way, I can understand the confusion, because this book is almost three different books in one. The first is a first contact story like The Arrival: Why are the aliens here? How do we know what they really intend? The second is a scientific thriller like The Day After Tomorrow: What's going on? Can we discover enough about it with science that we can do something about it before it's too late? The third is the true apocalypse story, with a race against time to preserve what of Earth can be preserved before the end arrives.
The ending of this story is beautiful and horrible and poignant. It's weep-worthy. I was riveted from start to finish. And in this I found what I believe to be the answer to the question: why did some people love this so much, while others obviously hated it and couldn't understand its point?
I think the answer might be that the people who hated it have never had to confront their own mortality. Much of this story is about how people die when they know they are going to. You can't stop it, you barely understand it, you get sad and angry and you want to understand why. And there are no real answers to that question. But in the end, you either go raging into the dying of the light, or you come to a place of acceptance - but either way, nothing you can do will stave off the inevitable.
I thought the characters were flat and undeveloped at the beginning of the book too. I thought Greg Bear was an "idea guy," like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. But I underestimated him. By the end of the book, all of the characters, whether they have survived or not, have undergone profound, dare I say "earth-shattering," changes.
There are some distinct flaws in the book. It's a bit dated. The Cold War has been projected into a 1990s without the internet and where 1980s ideas about gender still exist. It's notable that there are no women on the investigatory team of experts, even when one of the major characters is a sociologist married to one of the physicists on the team. I mean, you're talking to aliens and trying to discern their motivations, and you have not one sociologist or psychologist on the team? Are you insane?!
But all in all, it's a study of human nature, and philosophy, and existential angst, as powerful on an emotional level as any of the great works of Ursula K. Le Guin - and it is brilliant. I can't recommend it enough!
Method of the world's destruction: Unknown aliens using a combination of self-replicating nuclear explosions to shatter the Earth's crust at the tectonic faults, while superdense compressed matter and anti-matter come together at the Earth's core to disintegrate the planet. (Sorry if that's a spoiler, but it's got to be the absolutely coolest apocalypse I've ever read.)
My partner Jamie has been recommending this book to me for literally years. I wanted to save it and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, for when I was reading for an apocalypse challenge and a space opera challenge at the same time (because the sequel is a space opera.) That opportunity came when I decided to jump into a new apocalyptic-fiction challenge and a space opera challenge on Worlds Without End.
I wondered at the range of ratings I saw for this book on Goodreads - everything from a one-star to a five-star rating. "2/3rds of the book was a trip through the paranoid 80s as everyone ran around and did nothing," said one review. "A boring apocalypse," said another. "400 pages spent doing what The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did in the book's beginning," said a third. "Flat, undeveloped characters," said a fourth.
I strongly disagree with all of this! I think this is flat-out one of the best books of apocalyptic literature I've ever read - and I have read quite a few.
I wondered what it was that differentiated the people who loved it and the ones who hated it. Perhaps those who hate it don't like science fiction much?
There's an argument for that, because there's a lot of science, especially geology, physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics, and biology, involved in this book. Maybe people just couldn't follow it, I thought, because Bear in his wisdom does not coddle his readers. He expects you to keep up.
Or maybe people didn't like the idea of the world running around, chasing its tail, instead of facing the direct existential threat as an organized force. Well . . . that's human. The cast of Game of Thrones ran around doing that for seven seasons. We're doing it now in the face of the threat of global climate change.
Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, there are many viewpoint characters in this book, presented in tight third person personal. We only get to see what happened if a character saw it; we only understand what's going on if a character understands it. Like with A Song of Ice and Fire, the plot is complex.
At the beginning of the book, rock formations, large ones, suddenly appear in places where they have never been on any map before. The first one is noticed in Australia's desert, the second in Death Valley. Remote areas. More follow later.
The geologists who happen upon the one in Death Valley call the Air Force to report that a MiG has gone down, knowing they won't believe, over the phone, what has really happened; they have discovered a weak, possibly dying, alien creature near the formation. It speaks perfect English but doesn't necessarily understand every concept presented to it. They and the alien are taken into custody (and quarantine.) The American government decides to keep a tight lid on the alien presence so as to not panic the public, until they have more information.
The alien tells them that it has traveled with the formation, which is actually a disguised spacecraft, to warn the Earth. It says its people, its world, were destroyed by the aliens who have landed, and it has come in the hopes that the Earth could prepare itself to fight back. But now that it is here, it realizes that we lack the technology to do so, and there is no hope.
In the meantime, the Australians have been visited by robots with a pleasing, friendly shape, who are telling them that the aliens have come to help us, offering us technology and to bring world peace.
Who do we believe?
The President of the United States asks the alien if it believes in God. "I believe in punishment," it says before it dies. That leads the President to believe that the End of Days as described in the Bible are here. When he is re-elected to a second term, he announces this almost right away. He forbids any counterstrike on the aliens.
The American team assigned to work on it (dated in the distinct absence of women and lacking even a token Person of Colour - well, this was written in the 80s) share their information with the Australian team and confront their aliens with questions about what the American visitor has said. The Australian aliens are promptly destroyed - or destroy themselves.
Why? What happened? We don't know. Is it a ruse? Are there two alien factions, one benevolent and the other malignant? Again, who do we believe?
To make things more complicated, the alien is autopsied, and there is evidence that it, too, was artificially created.
Confusion results. Are there any aliens among the Russians or Chinese? Again, we don't know, because in Bear's future, the Cold War still exists and no information is exchanged across the Iron Curtain.
Not long after, a strange unidentified flying object is seen over the Atlantic Ocean by a boat of oceanographers who are charting seismic activity under the ocean floor. Strange seismic readings start appearing on their graphs immediately after. Other scientists in the field elsewhere in the world notice the same things.
Then something even weirder happens. It turns out that while they are as mysterious and opaque as the aliens who have arrived, Earth may have a benefactor. I can't tell you anything else that won't be an enormous spoiler. I may have given you too much information already.
In a way, I can understand the confusion, because this book is almost three different books in one. The first is a first contact story like The Arrival: Why are the aliens here? How do we know what they really intend? The second is a scientific thriller like The Day After Tomorrow: What's going on? Can we discover enough about it with science that we can do something about it before it's too late? The third is the true apocalypse story, with a race against time to preserve what of Earth can be preserved before the end arrives.
The ending of this story is beautiful and horrible and poignant. It's weep-worthy. I was riveted from start to finish. And in this I found what I believe to be the answer to the question: why did some people love this so much, while others obviously hated it and couldn't understand its point?
I think the answer might be that the people who hated it have never had to confront their own mortality. Much of this story is about how people die when they know they are going to. You can't stop it, you barely understand it, you get sad and angry and you want to understand why. And there are no real answers to that question. But in the end, you either go raging into the dying of the light, or you come to a place of acceptance - but either way, nothing you can do will stave off the inevitable.
I thought the characters were flat and undeveloped at the beginning of the book too. I thought Greg Bear was an "idea guy," like Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. But I underestimated him. By the end of the book, all of the characters, whether they have survived or not, have undergone profound, dare I say "earth-shattering," changes.
There are some distinct flaws in the book. It's a bit dated. The Cold War has been projected into a 1990s without the internet and where 1980s ideas about gender still exist. It's notable that there are no women on the investigatory team of experts, even when one of the major characters is a sociologist married to one of the physicists on the team. I mean, you're talking to aliens and trying to discern their motivations, and you have not one sociologist or psychologist on the team? Are you insane?!
But all in all, it's a study of human nature, and philosophy, and existential angst, as powerful on an emotional level as any of the great works of Ursula K. Le Guin - and it is brilliant. I can't recommend it enough!
June 1, 2020
"The end of the world is coming, so let’s hide under a sheet. With eyeholes cut out.” (pp. 264-265).
Alien space ships land in the US and Australia. The group of aliens landing in Australia say all is wonderful and we have super-duper technology to share, while the alien landing in the US says that the other aliens plan to destroy our planet in less than one year: “The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false." (p. 89).
How do you make sense of this contradiction? And, once you do make sense of it, what do you do? Would you want to know what was to come?
Greg Bear explores the various ways that people respond to the news – which is interesting, but a bit pat, mostly because his characters are two-dimensional. They are (almost) all smart, thoughtful, and hard-working. They are generally honorable and acting as well as they could, given their limited understandings of what was going on. On the one hand, I enjoy spending time with such a uniformly delightful group of people, but Bear's world doesn't feel real, and things fall into place a bit too easily.
There are occasional brown people in Forge of God, but this is a white male-dominated book, something that bothers me. Of the 20 most frequently referenced characters, 18 are male. The women are wives and girlfriends. Why can't women be scientists, authors, or politicians, too? I'll be generous by assuming this gender bias is a consequence of when Bear wrote (1987). I want to think that the world has changed a lot – and I think it has in some places – but populating his novel in this way is one reason why there has been a feminist backlash in the science fiction community.
Alien space ships land in the US and Australia. The group of aliens landing in Australia say all is wonderful and we have super-duper technology to share, while the alien landing in the US says that the other aliens plan to destroy our planet in less than one year: “The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false." (p. 89).
How do you make sense of this contradiction? And, once you do make sense of it, what do you do? Would you want to know what was to come?
“It might be nice to be ignorant,” Edward said, lowering the binoculars.Forge of God's plot is tight (too tight?) and moves along quickly. It is long, but a page turner. It has a goodly amount of science, but not so much as to lose most readers – and that science can be skimmed without harm.
Minelli shook his head adamantly. “At the end, I want to know what’s happening. I don’t want that … panic, when it comes. I want to know and sit and watch as much of it as I can. (p. 373)
Greg Bear explores the various ways that people respond to the news – which is interesting, but a bit pat, mostly because his characters are two-dimensional. They are (almost) all smart, thoughtful, and hard-working. They are generally honorable and acting as well as they could, given their limited understandings of what was going on. On the one hand, I enjoy spending time with such a uniformly delightful group of people, but Bear's world doesn't feel real, and things fall into place a bit too easily.
There are occasional brown people in Forge of God, but this is a white male-dominated book, something that bothers me. Of the 20 most frequently referenced characters, 18 are male. The women are wives and girlfriends. Why can't women be scientists, authors, or politicians, too? I'll be generous by assuming this gender bias is a consequence of when Bear wrote (1987). I want to think that the world has changed a lot – and I think it has in some places – but populating his novel in this way is one reason why there has been a feminist backlash in the science fiction community.
February 13, 2020
Holy cow was this book boring. There were some genuinely good ideas here, but the execution! I did not care at all about any of the characters. Mid and late book I started even just scanning the paragraphs for relevant info to the overall story.
There is WAAAAY too much of both men and women "sobbing, crying, wailing" etc. Everyone seems to need to cry all the time. It was ridiculous.
No real payoff either.
*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS*
You never do figure out just WHO the "planet-killer" aliens are, what their motivations are, or why they feel the need to distract everyone. There is literally NOTHING that any of the characters could have done to prevent the earth from being wiped out, so why all the subterfuge? It was pointless. Why have the "guest" alien tell the humans that he believes in punishment... if you were NEVER GOING TO CONTINUE THAT THREAD!?
Man, I tell ya. It was a slog to get through this one. I rate it 2 stars instead of 1 because like I said, there WERE some clever ideas here, but overall it was boring and I wished multiple times that I was reading something else.
There is WAAAAY too much of both men and women "sobbing, crying, wailing" etc. Everyone seems to need to cry all the time. It was ridiculous.
No real payoff either.
*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS*
You never do figure out just WHO the "planet-killer" aliens are, what their motivations are, or why they feel the need to distract everyone. There is literally NOTHING that any of the characters could have done to prevent the earth from being wiped out, so why all the subterfuge? It was pointless. Why have the "guest" alien tell the humans that he believes in punishment... if you were NEVER GOING TO CONTINUE THAT THREAD!?
Man, I tell ya. It was a slog to get through this one. I rate it 2 stars instead of 1 because like I said, there WERE some clever ideas here, but overall it was boring and I wished multiple times that I was reading something else.
February 24, 2014
Another "golden oldie" of the SF genre, and part of my quest to read all past Hugo winners. This was a disappointment. Touted as "literary SF", my expectations were high. Unfortunately, those who made such statements must spend more time with science fiction than with literature. The author's prose is flat and dull, with only a few sentences here and there that shne. The characters are well developed (to a painful degree), but in a spoon-feeding manner, which I can't stand. Furthermore, thought he cast of characters is rather wide, I found nearly every one of them uninteresting and unsympathetic (including the added "drama" of a cancer diagnosis, and the quirky theologic "meltdown" of the President Of The United States). The plot itself is interesting, but is so ploddingly delivered that I eventually didn't give a shit about the final outcome. Overall, a pretty big dud for me, amplified by the heaps of praise that falsely raised my expectations.
February 2, 2013
Ive read many post-apocalyptic stories, but this is the first pre-apocalyptic book Ive encountered! And Bear does a very good job.
Written in 1987 and set in the mid 90s, a strange object appears in the American desert resembling a volcano cone, and next to it is found a strange dying alien, The alien speaks English and has a message for Earth: "I'm afraid I have bad news".
Later a second cone is found in Australia but this time mechanical beings, robots, appear around it and they appear benevolent. While in the US the scientists are getting worried, those in Australia believe the aliens are our allies....
This is hard SF but its very reader friendly; there's no scientific preaching or technobabble, and despite being over 450 pages the story flows really well. So much so I'd have to say this is the best Greg Bear book I've read so far! As such it gets a well deserved 5 stars.
Written in 1987 and set in the mid 90s, a strange object appears in the American desert resembling a volcano cone, and next to it is found a strange dying alien, The alien speaks English and has a message for Earth: "I'm afraid I have bad news".
Later a second cone is found in Australia but this time mechanical beings, robots, appear around it and they appear benevolent. While in the US the scientists are getting worried, those in Australia believe the aliens are our allies....
This is hard SF but its very reader friendly; there's no scientific preaching or technobabble, and despite being over 450 pages the story flows really well. So much so I'd have to say this is the best Greg Bear book I've read so far! As such it gets a well deserved 5 stars.
October 31, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Greg Bear. It wasn't nonstop action, but it was well paced. I thought the characters were believable and I felt the story from their perspective. Overall, I enjoyed the storyline and bought-in to its believability. This is why I gave it the rating I did. I recommend this book for science fiction fans.
January 27, 2015
In short, this book is a boring apocalypse.
I wish that I had read this book 15 years ago. Back then I had lower standards. It does a good job of presenting some compelling scientific ideas, like self-replicating space probes and the concept that the earth can be thought of as an organism which will might eventually be spread by humans acting as a sort of seed or spore. Another point in its favor is that this book is at least as scientifically plausible as any other Science-Fiction I've read in the last decade.
However, I didn't much enjoy the book's actual writing. The pace was slow, the action indirect, and the characters dull. The way the author speculated technology would develop (with desktop computers but no cell phones) is occasionally distracting, but quaint. Worst of all the women in this story were emotionally-hyperactive but otherwise flat inert accessories. Even women who were supposed to be brilliant scholars or influential career politicians did nothing except in relation to men. In the author's defense, the men were equally tired cliches.
I wish that I had read this book 15 years ago. Back then I had lower standards. It does a good job of presenting some compelling scientific ideas, like self-replicating space probes and the concept that the earth can be thought of as an organism which will might eventually be spread by humans acting as a sort of seed or spore. Another point in its favor is that this book is at least as scientifically plausible as any other Science-Fiction I've read in the last decade.
However, I didn't much enjoy the book's actual writing. The pace was slow, the action indirect, and the characters dull. The way the author speculated technology would develop (with desktop computers but no cell phones) is occasionally distracting, but quaint. Worst of all the women in this story were emotionally-hyperactive but otherwise flat inert accessories. Even women who were supposed to be brilliant scholars or influential career politicians did nothing except in relation to men. In the author's defense, the men were equally tired cliches.
August 16, 2012
Why oh why didn't I read this sooner? Without doubt, The Forge of God is one of the finest books, of any genre, that I have read. The scifi is top notch - the enigmatic first encounter with two types of alien, one foretelling the end of the world and the other promising a glorious future with shared knowledge and technology - but what makes The Forge of God stand out is the depth of its characterisation. The many characters live and breathe on the page and, as a result, you care all the more what happens to them as we watch the earth draw closer to its fate.
The Forge of God might have been written in the 1980s (and set in 1996) but aside from some out of date technology (VHS and data disks), it is timeless.
I cannot praise or recommend this book enough. I'll be reading everything Greg Bear has written.
The Forge of God might have been written in the 1980s (and set in 1996) but aside from some out of date technology (VHS and data disks), it is timeless.
I cannot praise or recommend this book enough. I'll be reading everything Greg Bear has written.
November 27, 2017
Storyline: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5
I must confess that I have a (perhaps indefensible) fascination with stories like this. I loved the initial setup, the wonder and anticipation instilled early on. So too did I cling to the anxiety in waiting for those initial seeds to come to fruition. The ending was everything I dared hope for - more, actually, than I had come to hope for. The late 1980s produced a lot of this type of book, and some of my delight in this story probably derived from my childhood adoration of the Michael Crichton take on it.
These books seem to rely heavily on thriller, and often on political thriller. This was a more science heavy approach - something I appreciated - than others. The middle was still built as a political thriller, however, though lacking any real insights into the political and offering few thrills. There's a part where a significant political decision is looming, and it appears that it will not be made in time (suspense! suspense!). What is keeping the decision at bay? Is bureaucracy defeating reason, inertia carrying the country where it doesn't want to go? Is it a political impasse with partisans declaiming compromise? Are there protests keeping the leaders from attending the meetings and making the needed decisions? We don't know. Bear never gets to that level of detail and intrigue. So what could have been an informed and interesting political thriller largely falls flat. Similarly, the "Forge of God" idea was promising. This was a good place to discuss religion, its role and the consequences for it, but Bear, again, left it at a superficial level. It mostly comes off as a mockery of mysticism and an ode to reason, but our author doesn't pursue the theme with any vigor. Many characters also operated this way. We get to follow the experiences of at least nine different characters, generally focusing on one for a chapter and then popping in here and there to check on them. Most of the characters are not only forgettable but largely unnecessary. To the extent that some of them are essential, we didn't need their background information or the narration of their days and experiences; we could have just has profitably viewed them from the perspective of the lead character. Entire scenes and even chapters and characters could easily have been cut from this without much loss.
What the middle two-thirds of the novel did was keep the ending more distant. Between our initial understanding of the central problem/mystery and the climax, we needed time to steep and worry. If the ending had followed shortly after the beginning, we readers would not have appreciated the gravity, would not have savored the significance of it all. That lengthy middle was there mostly to set up the ending. Bear does have something more to reveal about politics. He does have something more to say about religion. He does have something to say about those nine or so characters and how they approach the end. Everything is built for the ending, but the author didn't have an idea as to how to make the middle plot and character development engaging. So he gave us science; here is where the hard science fiction elements do the most work and have the most to offer. Here is where the science fiction enthusiast will enjoy this more than the thriller fan. And that allows Bear to steer us toward the exciting destination he has planned for us. He seems to have seen it as a choice between the unremarkable shortcut (i.e. a novella) and the long, winding route that offered little more by the way of scenery. He chose the long route thinking it made the final destination all the more notable. And he was right; it did. Still, it would have been a much more enjoyable experience had that long, winding route offered more by the way of scenery and attractions.
Characters: 3/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5
I must confess that I have a (perhaps indefensible) fascination with stories like this. I loved the initial setup, the wonder and anticipation instilled early on. So too did I cling to the anxiety in waiting for those initial seeds to come to fruition. The ending was everything I dared hope for - more, actually, than I had come to hope for. The late 1980s produced a lot of this type of book, and some of my delight in this story probably derived from my childhood adoration of the Michael Crichton take on it.
These books seem to rely heavily on thriller, and often on political thriller. This was a more science heavy approach - something I appreciated - than others. The middle was still built as a political thriller, however, though lacking any real insights into the political and offering few thrills. There's a part where a significant political decision is looming, and it appears that it will not be made in time (suspense! suspense!). What is keeping the decision at bay? Is bureaucracy defeating reason, inertia carrying the country where it doesn't want to go? Is it a political impasse with partisans declaiming compromise? Are there protests keeping the leaders from attending the meetings and making the needed decisions? We don't know. Bear never gets to that level of detail and intrigue. So what could have been an informed and interesting political thriller largely falls flat. Similarly, the "Forge of God" idea was promising. This was a good place to discuss religion, its role and the consequences for it, but Bear, again, left it at a superficial level. It mostly comes off as a mockery of mysticism and an ode to reason, but our author doesn't pursue the theme with any vigor. Many characters also operated this way. We get to follow the experiences of at least nine different characters, generally focusing on one for a chapter and then popping in here and there to check on them. Most of the characters are not only forgettable but largely unnecessary. To the extent that some of them are essential, we didn't need their background information or the narration of their days and experiences; we could have just has profitably viewed them from the perspective of the lead character. Entire scenes and even chapters and characters could easily have been cut from this without much loss.
What the middle two-thirds of the novel did was keep the ending more distant. Between our initial understanding of the central problem/mystery and the climax, we needed time to steep and worry. If the ending had followed shortly after the beginning, we readers would not have appreciated the gravity, would not have savored the significance of it all. That lengthy middle was there mostly to set up the ending. Bear does have something more to reveal about politics. He does have something more to say about religion. He does have something to say about those nine or so characters and how they approach the end. Everything is built for the ending, but the author didn't have an idea as to how to make the middle plot and character development engaging. So he gave us science; here is where the hard science fiction elements do the most work and have the most to offer. Here is where the science fiction enthusiast will enjoy this more than the thriller fan. And that allows Bear to steer us toward the exciting destination he has planned for us. He seems to have seen it as a choice between the unremarkable shortcut (i.e. a novella) and the long, winding route that offered little more by the way of scenery. He chose the long route thinking it made the final destination all the more notable. And he was right; it did. Still, it would have been a much more enjoyable experience had that long, winding route offered more by the way of scenery and attractions.
June 25, 2019
I found Forge on a list of recommended "first contact" books. I had read one or two of Bear's books in the past, but couldn't honestly remember if I actually liked them. Now that I've finished Forge, methinks I kept away for a reason.
First and foremost, I love the really big idea sci-fi stories. I don't want super dense, super scientific 'hard' sci-fi. I want enjoyable reads that my brain turning. I want to see what decisions the author makes to unfold their own speculative approaches. And one thing I do like about Bear is his characters are pretty one-dimensional. At the scale of 'big idea' books, I'd rather not waste time on the minutiae of tiny humans when we could be talking about aliens, space travel, and cool technology. To an extent, Bear delivers on that in Forge, but on the whole, the book felt lacking in creativity. He conjured up a few concepts - competing alien narratives, the 'bullets' in the Earth, the spiders - but nothing all that special, even for having been written in 1987.
The biggest issue I have with Forge, though, was in the pacing - on two levels. First, of the book's ~460 pages, it doesn't actually pick up and get interesting until the last 60 or so. It does jump right in on page 8, I'll give it that. But then it's just a ton of talking, traveling, thinking, and more talking. The potential for expounding on Big Ideas is totally wasted. And secondly - and most importantly - the in-book pacing and logic of the characters was, frankly, dumb. We make first contact with aliens and the earth doesn't significantly change AT ALL? People take weeks and months to change their behaviors in any meaningful way? Bear proposes we would just ...carry on, barely acknowledging them on the grand scale? Throughout my entire reading session, I just kept thinking there might be a huge twist; neither Bear nor the reader could possibly be missing the forest for so big of a tree - right? But no, he misses the forest entirely. For all of his ideas and plot, Bear wrote a book about first contact where the protagonists carry on in an almost vacuum-like parallel world to the rest of humanity, only until THE direst of situations begins to finally unfold. Illogical and flat. Admittedly, there were a couple of pages in the last 20 or 30 that got me feeling something, but it was brief and passing and unsubstantial.
I wanted a Big Idea book, and I suppose in a literal sense, I got that. I don't regret spending the time; it was a fun little summertime jaunt. But I can't say I really enjoyed it all that much, nor do I expect to remember it after I try a Bigger Idea.
First and foremost, I love the really big idea sci-fi stories. I don't want super dense, super scientific 'hard' sci-fi. I want enjoyable reads that my brain turning. I want to see what decisions the author makes to unfold their own speculative approaches. And one thing I do like about Bear is his characters are pretty one-dimensional. At the scale of 'big idea' books, I'd rather not waste time on the minutiae of tiny humans when we could be talking about aliens, space travel, and cool technology. To an extent, Bear delivers on that in Forge, but on the whole, the book felt lacking in creativity. He conjured up a few concepts - competing alien narratives, the 'bullets' in the Earth, the spiders - but nothing all that special, even for having been written in 1987.
The biggest issue I have with Forge, though, was in the pacing - on two levels. First, of the book's ~460 pages, it doesn't actually pick up and get interesting until the last 60 or so. It does jump right in on page 8, I'll give it that. But then it's just a ton of talking, traveling, thinking, and more talking. The potential for expounding on Big Ideas is totally wasted. And secondly - and most importantly - the in-book pacing and logic of the characters was, frankly, dumb. We make first contact with aliens and the earth doesn't significantly change AT ALL? People take weeks and months to change their behaviors in any meaningful way? Bear proposes we would just ...carry on, barely acknowledging them on the grand scale? Throughout my entire reading session, I just kept thinking there might be a huge twist; neither Bear nor the reader could possibly be missing the forest for so big of a tree - right? But no, he misses the forest entirely. For all of his ideas and plot, Bear wrote a book about first contact where the protagonists carry on in an almost vacuum-like parallel world to the rest of humanity, only until THE direst of situations begins to finally unfold. Illogical and flat. Admittedly, there were a couple of pages in the last 20 or 30 that got me feeling something, but it was brief and passing and unsubstantial.
I wanted a Big Idea book, and I suppose in a literal sense, I got that. I don't regret spending the time; it was a fun little summertime jaunt. But I can't say I really enjoyed it all that much, nor do I expect to remember it after I try a Bigger Idea.
October 9, 2017
The Forge of God was interesting and I had no trouble finishing the book. In some ways it was well-written. But...
It had a very frustrating ending that provided virtually no answers to the many questions raised in the book. For example:
Spoilers
The book was not short, and for how much the reader has to invest, I feel we deserve some answers. The author doesn't need to spoon-feed us everything, but at the end all you've accomplished is finishing a depressing story with a lot of loose ends. It was relatively enjoyable to read, and the author clearly put in a lot of work, but altogether it was unsatisfying.
It had a very frustrating ending that provided virtually no answers to the many questions raised in the book. For example:
Spoilers
The book was not short, and for how much the reader has to invest, I feel we deserve some answers. The author doesn't need to spoon-feed us everything, but at the end all you've accomplished is finishing a depressing story with a lot of loose ends. It was relatively enjoyable to read, and the author clearly put in a lot of work, but altogether it was unsatisfying.
June 19, 2012
It's been a while since I last read a book by Bear. I still remember enjoying Darwin's Radio and Eon when I read them years ago. (Bears is one of the writers who made me hooked on science fiction.) Thus, I'm glad when I start reading his works again I picked a novel that I found equally exciting. In this book, Bear kept his narrative focused in spite of the global setting. Alien invasion is often - in my reading experience at least - expounded at the expense of the characters. I'm glad Bear gave some depth to some in this book (Arthur and his family, Edward...). Consequently, the actions became meaningful; the ending, moving. There are no "cowboy" heroes here to make the narrative silly nor cartoonish. Nonetheless, Bear didn't exclude hope to prove human resilience. The invasion and destruction are complete, quite convincing, and backed with understandable science in most parts. I am eager to read the sequel.
January 22, 2015
The premise for the book is pretty interesting, but this book suffers from poor pacing (the book plods on for the first 85%, with a lot of superfluous scenes and sentimentality) and boring characters (and really Mr. Bear, you couldn't have ONE remotely important female character in the ENTIRE book?! The portrayal of the female characters that are included is positively insulting...). The motivations and actions of the characters don't seem realistic. I only kept going because of a strong recommendation and because I loved the author's other books (Eon and Eternity especially), but I don't think I'll continue with this series.
March 13, 2011
One of the best Hard Sci-Fi books I have had the pleasure of reading. Strong on ideas, possibly at the expense of characterisation, although this never deterred me. This was read in the Eighties...
After a second read twenty five years later the story was a lot different to what my memory thought it was. However that said it is still great and apart from a touch of editing here and there still one of my favourite sci-fi books.
For some strange reason I always remember a dying alien in a spacecraft dominated the story. Not sure where that idea came from???
After a second read twenty five years later the story was a lot different to what my memory thought it was. However that said it is still great and apart from a touch of editing here and there still one of my favourite sci-fi books.
For some strange reason I always remember a dying alien in a spacecraft dominated the story. Not sure where that idea came from???
July 19, 2017
WOW.
Imagine if someone rewrote the first twenty pages of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (without the humour), but expanded it to an epic, hard sci-fi story with multiple characters, similar in tone and scale to Stephen King's The Stand, while written in the techno-thriller style and pace of Michael Chrichton.
I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I'm really interested to read more of Greg Bear.
Imagine if someone rewrote the first twenty pages of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (without the humour), but expanded it to an epic, hard sci-fi story with multiple characters, similar in tone and scale to Stephen King's The Stand, while written in the techno-thriller style and pace of Michael Chrichton.
I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I'm really interested to read more of Greg Bear.
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