Comments on: Enthralling Books: Blood Music, by Greg Bear

By: Nicky G

Nicky G — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:12:00 +0000

I decided to read Blood Music based on this post, and while I’m not done, it’s already blowing my mind. Some of the lines of thinking, about the fundamentally informational nature of reality, is tying into stuff I’ve been mulling over heavily as of late. Perfect timing. I’ll probably finish it tonight. Off to read! Oh, and Queen of Angels is downright amazing.

By: John A

John A — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:42:00 +0000

I too am glad to see this type of article here. I hope we see this series fairly often.

By: Johanna Preiszner

Johanna Preiszner — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:14:00 +0000

For those who loved Blood Music…try ‘Darwin’s Radio’ by Bear. Could not sleep for two days after reading it. Hard SF can’t get harder than that.

By: Alasdair Spark

Alasdair Spark — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:11:00 +0000

Hi
Should be “sheer” imagination not “shear”

Interesting that I keep seeing this substitution recently

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:08:00 +0000

Really the whole thing could be replaced by a single +1 or upvote.

I disagree.

Although perhaps ‘ZOMG this is AWESOME’ would do it ; )

By: Conor Quinn

Conor Quinn — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:04:00 +0000

Not sure how legal this is but here is a link to the pdf I found and read on this recommendation. Excellent story.

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/tangents_ch1_blood_music.pdf

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:02:00 +0000

I couldn’t imagine reading a review that sells me a book any better; all this sounds like pretty much what I look for in a story : D

Except when something’s this good (allegedly), I want it to be 1000 pages.

I love it when an author than can pull off that gob-smacking transcendence trick… it’s a kind of magic.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Its an okay book but not the blockbuster that Eon is.

By: kjoonlee

kjoonlee — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:58:00 +0000

My first introduction to nanotech was probably Gammn (Battle Angel Alita) during the early 90s. Later on I read Snow Crash and the Diamond Age.

I only read Blood Music (the short story) in 2007, and by then, I thought the story was neat, but it didn’t give me any sense of awe or anything. Read the longer novel, and still nothing.

Maybe if I had read Blood Music first, I might have thought differently, but I don’t think I like Greg Bear that much anyway.

By: PKMousie

PKMousie — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:25:00 +0000

Yep, this book was SO GOOD. Blew my mind, made me long for it to be real, damn the consequences!

By: Jason Mullins

Jason Mullins — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:51:00 +0000

I love this series on enthralling books!!!!! I have found out about so many great books I haven’t heard of before since I started reading Boing Boing and just wanted to say thank you!

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:10:00 +0000

Ouch… thanks for the correction. I did binge on all three of them at the same time.

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:02:00 +0000

Love the book.

My signed copy has a little sketch of a microbe drawn by Bear.

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:01:00 +0000

There’s more than a little presaging of Vinge’s “Singularity” in there as well.

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Heart of the Comet was written by Benford and Brin.

They pal around a lot . . . the “Killer Bs.”

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:07:00 +0000

There’s also the epiphany revelation, the moment of awe… that’s what I read science fiction for.

One of my favorites in Bear’s work (with Benford) is in Heart of the Comet, when they find a fossilized sea creature deep in a cave on the comet. Just the existence of such a thing implies a cascade of truths that set the right mind entirely alight.

edit – not Bear, Brin, as corrected by Stefan below.

By: technogeekagain

technogeekagain — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:45:00 +0000

Maybe it’s because I read Blood Music after reading a lot of more recent — and more realistic — nanotech/biotech fiction, but it really didn’t work very well for me. Ambitious attempt to extend a concept to its extreme, but it felt more like creature-feature than like science fiction. Science fantasy at most. Since it *was* an early attempt I’ll cut it a bit of slack… but it’s badly dated, and it hasn’t aged well.

Either that, or it really was intended to lean toward being a monster movie, despite the nod to biotech. In which case I’m simply not the target audience.

By: Jonathan Badger

Jonathan Badger — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:33:00 +0000

Although there are a lot of implausible things in this novel, I have to admit that reading this in high school was a large part of the reason why I became a microbiologist — well, that and the discussion of molecular biology in Gödel, Escher, Bach (which was supposed to have made me want to be an AI researcher instead, I guess).

By: Mitchell Glaser

Mitchell Glaser — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 22:56:00 +0000

I agree with your opinion that science is the most interesting character (though sometimes it is the situation rather than the science) in science fiction. But I don’t think it is a problem. There are many other genres of writing that are more focused on character, but there are various points of balance that are enjoyable. Mystery, for instance, or horror have different sweet spots that often rely less on character. Some science fiction writers even focus more on their language and achieve an almost poetic beauty.

By: Michael Wiik

Michael Wiik — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 22:06:00 +0000

The Outer Limits episode ‘The New Breed’ was supposedly based on the novella. It’s on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xNjWysFxzA

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:19:00 +0000

I dunno, Bear has some pretty cool ideas, but I find him a flat and boring writer. Science fiction often has this problem: the science is the most interesting character.

By: planettom

planettom — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:48:00 +0000

This book had me (And every friend who read it) at the phrase, “The North American biomass,” which could have as well been titled, BEWARE! THE BLOB!

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:42:00 +0000

What impacted me most when I first read it around 1987 was that I had just read Engines of Creation, and was struck by how thoroughly Bear had extrapolated nanotech medicine.

It was only just now that I realize Bear had written it several years prior to Drexler’s speculative non-fiction work. He’s often nicely just ahead of the curve in using cutting edge real-world research.

Tangentially, our first interstellar generation ship should steal the name Thistledown from him.

By: CH

CH — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:08:00 +0000

It’s such a long time since I read this book (hmm, it might have been my first Greg Bear book, too)… I really need to re-read it, because it was seriously good! Thanks for reminding me!

By: blindidiotgod

blindidiotgod — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:03:00 +0000

Nice to see this surface again. I remember reading this in ’86 while skipping out on classes. At that point I was reading Theodore Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, John Brunner, and other authors of that ilk. It opened my mind to how a sci fi story could transcend the genre. That same year I read ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ and was blown away. This made way for Ballard, Burroughs, Pynchon…well you get the point. It was a gateway book for me, and for that reason, I’ll always be fond of it.

By: liquidstar

liquidstar — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:41:00 +0000

I’ve been recommended to this book to anyone who will listen for years now; it s good to see I wasn t the only one who noticed it s tremendous scope (not that I would be in any case…). There are certain (sci fi) books that seem to suddenly step outside of what the genre had been doing – one I would also recommend as a life changer would be Richard Garfinkle’s All of An Instant, which is almost impossible to describe.

By: abul4f1a

abul4f1a — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:39:00 +0000

For those of you wanting to know what the Hell the book is about: a scientist creates intelligent microorganisms, which he then injects into himself to save from destruction. Said organisms then figure out a way to communicate with their host, and before long evolve to the point where they begin changing his genetic structure. From there, wackiness ensues. It’s sort of _The Stand_ sans goofy Apocalyptic theology, mixed with Japanese body-horror, and has a truly transcendent conclusion on the level of _2001_.

I read the short story first, and loved how the novel goes to the ultimate logical extreme with the original premise. Why oh why hasn’t someone with good SF chops optioned this for a mini-series?

This and _Queen of Angels_ are Bear’s most “visually” compelling works for me, with imagery that still sticks in my head like the best of nightmares.

By: Darcy Casselman

Darcy Casselman — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:26:00 +0000

I read Blood Music in university (for a course, no less) and loved it. I heard one episode of a radio dramatization on the CBC years ago, but never got to hear the end. Radio drama is sadly extremely ephemeral, so I’ve never been able to track it down. It was very well done, though, and I’d love to hear it again.

By: Jonathan Colvin

Jonathan Colvin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Read it in 1987 and it didn’t really stick in my mind I must confess. Moving Mars and The Forge of God made more of an impression. Maybe I will have to go back and reread it.

By: jeligula

jeligula — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:57:00 +0000

I think Kevin wanted to give us his reaction to the novel instead of a comprehensive synopsis. Cover blurbs are not all that great in the first place, as they cannot convey the beauty and impact of the prose contained in the covers, or lack of the same. Someone’s gut reaction to it? That could get people to read it more than a blurb ever could.