[HN Gopher] Greg Bear has died
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Greg Bear has died
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 287 points
Date : 2022-11-20 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (file770.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (file770.com)
| milsorgen wrote:
| My shelves are filled with three things... Some fantasy, a bunch
| of textbooks and a whole heap of 20th century Science Fiction.
| Bear is featured prominently and will continue to live on in page
| and thought for a long time to come.
| nullc wrote:
| https://files.catbox.moe/9ljmyv.jpg
| eric4smith wrote:
| Some concepts are hard to grasp because of their scale.
|
| Greg Bear was the first person who really made me understand time
| slowing down as speed increases in Anvil of Stars.
|
| Also the destruction of earth in "The Forge of God" was so
| visceral that I was depressed in a dark place for days after
| finishing it.
|
| Not to mention one of the few authors who very well explained the
| role of bacteria and viruses in very entertaining and hard sci-fi
| believable fashion.
|
| RIP.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Forge of God and Anvil of Stars are 2 of my favourite books, as
| is Eon.
|
| He really helped me soar among the stars. Thank you Greg Bear,
| rest easy now.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| "...me understand time slowing down as speed increases in Anvil
| of Stars."
|
| For me it was _Tau Zero_ by Poul Anderson
| rootbear wrote:
| And Poul Anderson was Bear's Father-in-law! I'd loved to have
| heard a discussion of such concepts between them.
| jahnu wrote:
| Common misconception. It's important to realise that time
| doesn't slow down. Time always passes at 1 second per second.
| Here a physicist explains it:
|
| https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/1435400040072232962
| zabzonk wrote:
| Well, that is sad - one of my favourite SF authors. RIP.
| [deleted]
| hericium wrote:
| Uh. Just yesterday I was thinking about his "Blood Music"[1] when
| reading the thread on genomics[2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Music_(novel)
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33671264
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I forgot "Blood Music" was one of his. That along with "Press
| Enter" by John Varley are the two sci-fi stories that really
| freaked me out as a kid. The idea of having your body
| controlled and then rebuilt at the cellular/molecular level for
| the purposes of some emergent intelligence that arose from
| nanobots really got me.
| wrp wrote:
| Although the nanotech is indicated by the title and takes up
| much of the story, he leads the focus toward quantum physics.
| Another physicist/novelist, John G. Cramer, commented on the
| _Blood Music_ in a popular article on quantum reality.
| (https://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw140.html)
| BMc2020 wrote:
| "It's not paper." Gogarty said. He dipped it in his tea cup.
| The letter did not absorb, nor did it drip upon removal. He
| held it in both hands and made a vigorous tearing motion.
| Though he carried the motion through, the letter remained in
| one piece, in one hand, having passed through the other hand in
| some unobvious fashion.
|
| "Care to read it again?"
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| What a loss.
| tomudding wrote:
| He leaves behind a great legacy. I can highly recommend Blood
| Music, Eon, or Forge of God if you have never read one of his
| books. However, my personal favourite was actually the (Halo)
| Forerunner Saga series.
| chadlavi wrote:
| Wow, what a loss. I just read Eon a month or two ago, was about
| to start in on the The Way series.
| acranox wrote:
| I was not a reader as a kid. I just didn't ever read books. But
| around age 13, I had to read a book for school. I picked up Eon
| at the library, and I read it, and actually wanted to read the
| whole thing.
|
| After that I got my hands on every book he had written. Moving
| Mars is possibly the only book I ever read twice.
|
| Later in life reading sci-fi is no longer an interest of mine,
| however his books were transformative for me.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Moving Mars is my favorite of his works as well. His other
| book, Heads, is something of a prequel, although Moving Mars
| does a good job of standing on it's own.
| tolger wrote:
| He was one of my favorite authors. I remember reading "Eon" many
| years ago. I thought it was the best book I had ever read. Then I
| read "The Forge of God" and found it even better.
| swayvil wrote:
| Greg Bear is my first serious hard sf author. _The Wind From A
| Burning Woman_!! (Not just the story, the whole collection!) (I
| mean, sure, Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, Blood Music.. But
| still)
| mst wrote:
| The topic of the geek/social IRC channel I run is currently Greg
| Bear and Fred Brooks.
|
| I don't think I have anything useful to add beyond that
| statement.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Greg Bear, I think, may be the last of the major classic scifi
| authors. Author C Clarke is gone, so is Frank Herbert and Robert
| Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. I can't think of any who are still
| alive who belong to that club.
| morelisp wrote:
| It's weird to see Bear (1951) lumped in with Clarke (1917),
| Herbert (1920), Asimov (1920) and especially Heinlein (1907).
| Much (maybe even most?) of Bear's generation is still alive!
|
| Even in terms of "what would a 30-50yo today have found on the
| local bookstore's sf shelf as a child to whom all past is
| equally distant?", Niven, Delaney, Robinson and Silverberg (who
| actually published in the final days of the "Golden Age",
| unlike Bear) are still with us.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Also in the "Silver Age" crowd that Greg Bear is part of
|
| Joe Haldeman, William Gibson, Piers Anthony, David Brin. Lois
| McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, KW Jeter, George Lucas,
| George RR Martin, Phillip Pullman, Rudy Rucker, Dan Simmons,
| Harry Turtledove, John Varley, Connie Wilson, Timothy Zahn
| are all around
|
| Though it is sad he joins the ranks of authors from his
| generation who died earlier than expected - Pratchett, Iain
| Banks, Robert Jordan ..
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I still can't get used to not-looking-forward-to the next
| Banks novel
| mattkevan wrote:
| It really sucks. Last year I discovered I hadn't read
| Surface Detail, which came as a real shock as I was sure
| I'd read everything he'd written many times.
|
| Considered never reading it so there'd always be a new
| Ian M Banks, but the temptation was too great. Glad I did
| too as it was excellent.
| com2kid wrote:
| Piers Anthony was born in 1938, quit a bit older than the
| other authors you listed.
|
| His science fiction is much more golden age in style,
| robots and bug eyed monsters, though he often made fun of
| both tropes.
| dcminter wrote:
| He was writing a bit later. Take a look at the Wikipedia
| article[1] on the "Golden Age" writers - looks like Robert
| Silverberg is the last of that era still with us.
|
| (Edit: Not to belittle Bear if you grouped him with them on the
| quality of his writing rather than contemporaneity)
|
| [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fictio
| ...
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I don't exactly group them the way most would. I blend what
| Wikipedia calls Golden Age and New Wave together, where you
| had a ~40 year block of amazing authors cranking out most of
| today's top 100 list. Then, after that, you have this fade in
| of where cyberpunk themes start developing a new age of
| scifi. So, I consider "classic scifi" ending vaguely around
| the year 2000, and cyberpunk and modern scifi starting in the
| mid 80s, clearly these overlap.
|
| Also, I think we're transitioning into yet another new age of
| scifi that is post-cyberpunk; smaller in nature, less
| grandiose, less "living amongst the stars and living a space
| opera", less "living in a dystopia with extra steps", more
| "the AI winter will never end and we have to live with the
| promise never being delivered" and more "oops, we left
| someone behind on Mars and now he has to eat potatoes to
| survive". Whatever this new era will be called, it started
| roughly in the early 2000s, starting when the classic scifi
| era ended, overlapping with the middle of the cyberpunk era.
| morelisp wrote:
| I don't get it, I think today space opera is probably the
| most vital it's ever been. You have everything from
| Wayfarers to Teixcalaanli to Machineries of Empire to Xuya
| to Three-Body Problem.
|
| > I blend what Wikipedia calls Golden Age and New Wave
| together
|
| Well, you do you, but nobody will understand what you mean
| and I don't think there's any thematic, aesthetic,
| literary, or social basis for this.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > "oops, we left someone behind on Mars and now he has to
| eat potatoes to survive".
|
| You should read his most recent book Project Hail Mary
| then. It's a much grander concept than that, and I
| absolutely would put it up against books from the great
| sci-fi era that I read growing up.
| harshreality wrote:
| Everyone else seems to be either younger, or if not at least
| they're known for works that were published slightly later.
| However, these authors are in roughly the same generation:
|
| Brin, Bujold, Card, Cherryh, Gibson, Simmons, Vinge, Willis
| fmajid wrote:
| It's worth mentioning his widow Astrid Anderson is the daughter
| of Poul and Karen Anderson.
| geuis wrote:
| Man this hurts. He has been one of my favorite sci-fi authors
| since I was a kid in the 80s. I still have a lot of his books
| from then. Gonna miss him.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Eon was a damn fine book. He will be missed.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| No black line at the top?
| bazoom42 wrote:
| I dont know the rules, but I think the black line is only for
| computer history legends, not any notable death.
| Lio wrote:
| _" 'God is dead, God is dead' ...Perdition! When God dies you'll
| know about it."_
|
| I first came across Greg Bear reading his short story Petra in
| _Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology_ [1]. I still have the
| book and just took that quote from it.
|
| I found it mind bending when I first read it.
|
| As a kid brought up as a Catholic I was told that the world
| exists because of God never stops thinking about us. Regardless
| of if we believe in God, God believes in us and that's the
| important thing.
|
| So teenage me, obsessed with hard SciFi and Cyberpunk in
| particular, runs bang into Petra.
|
| It's a story about a world where God has died. With no supreme
| being to hold the world in its mind the rules of reality break
| down.
|
| It was such a crazy concept and it came just at the right time in
| my life. As an adult, I no longer believe in the supernatural but
| I still remember the illicit feeling of reading Petra back when I
| did and it definitely changed me.
|
| RIP Greg, you were brilliant!
|
| 1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/302702.Mirrorshades
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| To continue the homage to GB as a recommendation thread, I
| think programmers and systems engineers would enjoy GB's
| "Strength of Stones" (1981).
|
| In the story, autonomous mobile cities designed to last a very
| long time begin to fail. GB shows a profound understanding of
| human society and the bemusement of people who believe they
| have design a solution well.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| When I was in junior high school, my mom bought me Blood Music
| blind. Some of the scenes in that story still give me the chills.
| Great book.
| dctoedt wrote:
| FTA: "After a review of the possible outcomes by the medical
| team, and _following the wishes expressed in his advance
| directive,_ Bear was taken off life support and died two hours
| later. " (Emphasis added.)
|
| Advance directives are important; my wife and I have long had
| them. I've said many times to our adult kids that I want family
| resources to be put to better use than just keeping me alive on
| life support when realistically there's little hope of recovery.
|
| https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/advance-care-planning-health-...
| donatzsky wrote:
| Somehow I had never heard of him. Any recommendations for where I
| should start reading?
| flir wrote:
| My personal favourite is Queen of Angels. (The sequel was a
| disappointment).
|
| Eon is the best, but it's tied to the geopolitics of the 80s.
|
| Blood Music is, I think, almost as good as Eon but isn't quite
| so "of it's time". Slightly more accessible. I'd start there.
| He also has a fine body of short fiction, including the short
| Blood Music is based on. For that, you could try the collection
| Tangents.
| olvy0 wrote:
| I second the recommendation for Queen of Angels and Blood
| Music. Loved them both.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Forge of God and Eon. Both are excellent and both have
| excellent sequels that wrap everything up.
| knoke wrote:
| Blood Music is a quick read that escalated even quicker. I
| loved Forge of God and even more so it's successor Anvil of the
| Stars.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I'd say Eon, Blood Music or Queen of Angels. Also Songs of
| Earth and Power.
| mikelevins wrote:
| All great suggestions. I'd add Moving Mars.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The area beyond the white line is littered with the deranged and
| abandoned equipment of dozens of fruitless investigations. I have
| gone there to pray, to indulge in my own apostasy against
| rationalism, to hope that my words can reach into the transformed
| matter and information
|
| Trying to reconcile my own feeling that I sinned against Fiona
| Task- Felder, as Thierry had sinned against so many... I cannot
| make it sensible.
|
| No one will understand, not even myself, but when I die, I want
| to be placed in the Ice Pit with my sister and William. God
| forgive me, even with Thierry, Robert and Emilia, and the rest of
| the heads...
|
| In the Quiet.
|
| Man I'm sad he won't write more but I appreciate how much he gave
| us.
| mrlambchop wrote:
| I'm visiting my parents this weekend and what with all the
| nostalgia of that, seeing this pop up on HN really felt like a
| punch to the gut.
|
| Whenever I see his name, I'm transported back to a small town
| public library in the UK where his novel, Eon and its Arthur C.
| Clarke nomination took me from a young boy reading more
| popularist Sci-Fi authors straight into a much harder world of
| sci-fi authors and it left a huge impression.
|
| Another big loss to the Sci-Fi literary community.
| goldenshale wrote:
| Yes, Eon! Amazing book. Darwin's Radio is a really fun idea
| too. Definitely recommend that if you enjoyed Eon. Very
| different, but equally creative and fascinating.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| The only Greg Bear books I've read are Forge of God and Anvil
| of Stars.. they were well-written, but the story sucked IMO.
| It was just so dark, and full of vengeance. A whole universe
| burning in the fires of vengeful rage, haha.
|
| Are his other books like that too? Or is the tone a little
| less murderous?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| So many sci-fi books come across as basically the same, I
| like _Forge of God_ precisely because it is so dark and
| uncompromising and is like works like _Gateway_ and
| _Worlds_ or Ballard's works that read more as literature
| than genre sci-fi.
|
| Also from the view point of SETI there is the awful truth
| that we really shouldn't be trying to communicate w/ other
| life because the most practical meaningful form of
| interstellar communication is bombing with relativistic or
| sub-relativistic projectiles. See _The Killing Star_ where
| aliens watched _Star Trek: The Original Series_ and thought
| we might be dangerous, then saw _Star Trek: The Next
| Generation_ and realized they could take us.
| qubyte wrote:
| Same. Eon blew my mind when I first read it, coming from
| coffee-table sci-fi (which I still love too). Eon is my
| favourite of his books.
| danparsonson wrote:
| +1 for Eon - such an epic conception and an incredibly
| coherent world; one of my all time favourite novels.
| nullc wrote:
| > one of my all time favourite novels.
|
| Likewise. I've used it to introduce many people to more
| serious sci-fi.
| Eliezer wrote:
| "Queen of Angels" is one of few books that made me cry in two
| separate parts, for two different reasons, and I think it may
| have been the point at which I reflected and understood
| explicitly the rule for taking expected darkness and turning it
| to unexpected light.
|
| Goodbye, Greg Bear. May there be a hand held out in darkness for
| you.
| pfdietz wrote:
| He had an aortic dissection in 2014. They repaired that (and put
| in a new heart valve) but apparently there was a complication, a
| "false lumen". This (as I understand it) is a sack of low
| circulation velocity in the artery where blood can clot. And
| apparently here it released into the arterial flow during surgery
| a week ago (in a desperate attempt to repair it?) and caused
| massive embolism across his brain.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Perhaps I'm morbid, or just interested in medicine, but I
| really appreciate when some detail about the cause of death is
| provided in an obituary. Not only is it a useful memento mori,
| but it also reflects the conscientious planning by the author.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You're not morbid. In the case here, let's just note that
| many famous people haved died as a result of aortic
| dissection (immediately or not). It's worth knowing how
| common it is so it can be avoided or detected. Keeping your
| blood pressure under control helps reduce its incidence, for
| example.
|
| https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.0.
| ..
|
| "Ideal blood pressure targets to reduce risk of aortic
| dissection may be even lower than the threshold of
| hypertension."
| julianz wrote:
| That's very sad. I was reading Darwin's Radio while travelling in
| Cambodia in 2001 when the WTC attacks occurred. In the aftermath,
| with the anthrax scare and the CDC response it was sometimes hard
| to tell the difference between what was happening in the book and
| in real life. Amazing writer.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| A sad loss. His books meant a lot to me at a particular time in
| my life, and I still re-read them sometimes. Queen of Angels and
| Moving Mars are probably my favourites, along with Eon and Blood
| Music. His works always delivered thoughtful depth and satisfying
| stories.
| [deleted]
| HyperSane wrote:
| His book Anvil of Stars is one of the few Sci-Fi books that
| really gives a sense of truly alien and powerful technology and
| cultures.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I loved the forge of god and anvil of the stars. He wrote life
| into his books, impossible decisions, moral conundrums and still,
| one day feasible technology, he dreamed ever onwards.
|
| May the great simulation resurrect him other heat death.
| causality0 wrote:
| Damn. "Anvil of Stars" blew my mind as a kid with its concepts of
| information physics.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > information physics
|
| Agree - this was a refreshingly novel SF concept that he
| developed. He re-used the concept somewhat in Moving Mars
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