Learning from the Other Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and Ethical Possibilities in Education Book

I believe the only other Greg Bear books I’ve read are “Eon” and “Eternity”. I read both a very long time ago. I enjoyed both, especially Eon, but I remember having a few problems with the stories and was disappointed in the overall ending. Well, my neighbor picks up sci-fi at a used book story on occasion and passes on ones that he liked, as we have similar tastes. So, despite this being first published in 1985, I decided to give it a read.

Overall, it was a similar experience to “Eon” and “Eternity”, I enjoyed the read, but found myself let down at the end. The story starts with Vergil Ulam, a slightly overweight, nerdy, goalless, but brilliant scientist. He works at a biochip company where he is secretly performing research on his own. He’s building intelligent cells, highly intelligent cells. I mean they can navigate mazes better than lab rats. Well, he’s found out, and rashly decides to preserve his creations the only way he can get them out of the lab – by injecting them into his bloodstream. This kicks off a series of events, beginning with positive improvements to his body (improved eyesight, weight loss, increased strength, etc.) but leading to much more disturbing and ultimately cataclysmic events.

I found the book to be a page turner, as I was intrigued, first by what would happen to Vergil, and then by the broader events. Along the way, I experienced some disappointments, such as wondering who the main character was, and finding frustration that we never seemed to stay with a character enough to development an interest in them. But it’s not really a character driven story, it’s a series of transformations that are well described and fascinating. Bear occasionally dips deeply into biochemistry and later physics adding support to the events. There were some interesting ideas about the make-up of the universe in the final third of the book. If those ideas were used at the end as a climatic ending with some characters we cared about, I think this could have been excellent. But in all honest, by the end, I didn’t really care about the remaining characters and the thought-provoking ideas had already been spent as we approached the final ending. I was left feeling like some very cool ideas and creative scenes were wasted.

A borderline hard sci-fi novel, which contains an escalating series of creepy, captivating, and skillfully described events, that disappoints due to a lack of strong characters and an anti-climactic finale.