Eon has just been reprinted in paperback and confirms Greg Bear's mastery of cosmological space opera written with style and energy. In the 21st century the United Nations, NASA, and NATO have sent explorers to a 300-kilometer-long asteroid which suddenly flashed into existence in solar orbit. Within the hollowed asteroid exists a vanished human civilization called Thistledown; and within this civilization exists a tunnel without end in space or time where the human explorers locate seven chambers to other worlds and dimensions. These seven chambers are larger than the asteroid itself since this continuum of chambers known as the Way is actually a singularity through infinite locations and into other universes.
Judith Hoffman from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the International Space Cooperation Committee and Garry Lanier of Orbicom are among the first to know about the arrival of the Thistledown asteroid; although their counterpart in Moscow, Major Pavel Mirsky, soon joins them along with Patricia Vasquez to carry out the expedition. The asteroid was engineered in the future, but probably not our future, by Konrad Korzenowski. The Way holds a different promise for each as Vasquez searches for a parallel earth, Mirsky seeks to explore the stars, and Lanier and Hoffman seek the meaning of life in their hope to rebuild this world.
Reminiscent of both the Rama world created by Arthur C. Clarke and the Heechee's Gateway by Fred Pohl, this novel of a past catastrophic war and the death that followed examines human motivation and technological advance on a universal scale.
Now Greg Bear has written Legacy, a vibrant prequel to Eon, where Konrad Korzenowski has completed and opened the Way only 25 years earlier. In Legacy the two cultures are either Naderites or Geshels. And the Hexamon Nexus, which is the ruling council of Axis City and the entire race of humanity, has ordered that certain worlds discovered on the Way shall be protected by being forever set aside, untouched, for their future needs, primarily because of their fears about their ongoing war with the Jarts.
Now young Olmy Ap Sennon, whose parents were devoted Naderites, is chosen to embark on an undercover mission into one of the protected worlds known as Lamarckia, just after Olmy has broken his bond with Uleysa Donnell, his betrothed. Lamarckia, with its extraordinary biology, is very Earth-like in some ways. A huge group of colonists lead by Jaime Carr Lenk has secretly entered this protected world and has regressed on Lamarckia to humanity's old ways of conflict and environmental degradation. Olmy Ap SennonŐs assignment is to find Lenk and his followers, primarily because Lenk has stolen a clavicle which could be used by the Jarts to invade Axis City.
Legacy is a bold and imaginative novel that well illustrates Greg Bear's sweep of ambitious vision. If you enjoy Eon and Legacy, you should consider Eternity, the sequel to Eon.
Larry D. Woods, an attorney, is an avid reader of science fiction.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.