Is Greg Bear's Eon the Ultimate Sci-Fi Masterpiece?

Not for me. Way too wacky and the ending was completely out of left field.

I want to like Authors like Bear, but honestly, it's just too dense for me to keep track of.

It would be, if he could had been a better writer honestly. Eon is glacial in its pacing where it doesn't have to, and skims over parts that needed far more interaction and/or exposition. I've read it a couple of times and find myself skipping many parts where the characters interact at the social pace of molasses. It's a fault he had in general, he is simply bad at pacing and writing meaningful character arcs and relationships. In Eon, he somehow manages to stretch even a grand concept too far in page length. On the opposite end, his novel War Dogs had a pretty cool concept that could have made for a complex story, but he builds up things with some characters only to just cut it off, as well as being obtuse about the deeper workings and meaning of the heart of the story.

Greg Bear was a great sci-fi writer, but like most of the older classical sci-fi writers he was flawed as a writer .

I liked these books a lot when I read them a couple years ago, they hold up really well--even with the Cold War plot elements.

yeah it was a pretty good book. was def worth the read and reread. been years though. was thinking about it a few months ago. need to try and find it again.

Did not expect such a good book review video!

It's a good book. Regards this video. you have a good idea but please, no AI art.

I read this book, it was good at least for me.

I really enjoyed the follow-up book Legacy, which explored Lamarckian evolution in a believable way, as well as "landmass organisms".

Greg Bear is an excellent author.
His Forerunner trilogy is one of the best out there.

The avatar is annoying and distracts. It has no purpose.

The initial hook of the book, which this review left out, is that the first of the seven chambers is chock-full of current-era military technology and hardware. Because it was installed twenty years in the characters’ personal futures, after a devastating nuclear war, and has fallen backward in time from even further ahead to a bare week before the war, with a full record of the war and its aftermath. The Way was actually “dug” by humans who had been living in the Stone for several centuries at that point, and whose civilization had been founded by the selfsame scientists who had been assembled to investigate the Stone (creating a time loop).

Using the information in the Stone, the scientists are able to convince the world leaders to modify their plans—the nuclear war still happens, but it is limited instead of general. Much more of Earth survives to send researchers to the Stone, and presumably the Stone never develops a native civilization.

I read it last year and I disagree. No, it's not a "masterpiece." Far from it.
The key problem is that The Stone arrives at Earth in a prelude. Then the first chapter opens something like 5 years later. The exploration is mostly done. Patricia Vasquez arrives but then there is chapter after chapter of: "Let me show you this. Now I'll show you this. And this. And this. And this... Oh, and here's a computer library where you can learn anything you want to know..." She actually adds very little of anything new. The whole asteroid is abandoned so initially there's no confrontation with aliens or advanced people. That only happens in the last third of the book.

Yeah, sure, there are 7 chambers. Only 3 or 4 are described in any detail. The Way is intriguing but I kept wondering how it is powered, or held up or works. It's never explained. Despite knowing about the coming war the humans fail to prevent it which saddened me. There's a battle, then The Way is explored and the future humans met. I wanted to know more about them but we're giving a cursory glimpse at best.

I think Bear missed the far more interesting story, that of the initial exploration of The Stone. That would have been far, far more interesting than what we got. Eon should have been a second in a series, not the first.

The best Sci-Fi book I’ve ever read. Why this hasn’t been translated into a big screen movie is a mystery to me. Sadly Hollywood is so focused on low quality franchise films it ignores the MANY science fiction books that beg to be made into high quality original films.

yes. that is the answer.

Is this just an AI channel?

I first read Eon in 2000 and hugely enjoyed it, as well as its sequel Eternity.

Good review. I have read it twice since 97. Time for a reread.

A series that's somewhat vaguely hazily similar to this is the "Long Earth" series, co-written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. It's 5 books, and it is absolutely the smartest, moth scientifically-sound Sci-Fi exploration into multiverse theory I've ever personally seen. This is partially thanks to the fact that Baxter actually does have a genuine background in Mathematics. Very highly recommend.

ya know that adobe puppet you;re using can move its arms too right? lazy

Love this book. The sequels were a little too much though.

I read half of this book thinking is was reading "Rendezvous with Rama", need to finish it.

i recognize James from the Google Notebooklm’s latent space podcast “Deep Dive” anywhere

I've read this book many times since I first got it in the 90s. It's so well thought through and very realistic amidst the flood of surrealism you get when trying to grasp all new concepts. A very good sci-fi novel. Still today.

This was a good review, thanks! Eon is one of my favorite scifi novels. Highly recommend reading Eternity because it is the second part of the story arc. Eon/Eternity I think is some of the best of science fiction!

A favorite.

It's one of my top 4 favorite books. Its exploration of what humanity could reach and become is enlightening, and not only because of the technical possibilities (which are a pure speculation) but also because GB explores how humanity would get there.
40 years later, it still helps me understand what I observe every day in our modern society, where values are being vastly redefined and transhumanism is becoming reality.

I read this book years ago, but I was only about 10 or so, and it was a bit over my head at the time.
I've always thought about going back and rereading it.
Time to revisit "The Potato"?

Thanks for your reviews. I am really thrilled by your choice of books. What makes Eon so great it that the story transcends the original settings and ends in a way not to be expected at the beginning. Bear went on to write other remarkable works like Blood Music (and one of my secret favorites: Anvil of Stars), but he never managed to pull off this 'transcendence' trick again in quite the same way. Other books that I could recommend: We are Bob (1) by Dennis Taylor, Old Man's War by John Scalzi (for his original humor), some novel by Peter F. Hamilton (for his grand world building), Ender's Game, Destination Void by Frank Herbert (for his prophetic insight into AI and SGI in 1966)

Greg Baer is amazing, and Eon captivated me.

Its been years since i read it. But im atarting with Anvil of Stars first, thats a great read as well.

Thoroughly recommend this and Darwin’s Radio.

It's a great book.

Hey! Drop the cartoon man. He's too distracting.

Feels like it was written by someone with autism. Craziest things happen and the main characters don’t seem to care. No one is blown away by the things they see