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| City at the End of Time | 
 enlarge | Author: Greg Bear
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $16.09
You Save: $10.91 (40%)
New (34) Used (15) Collectible (4) from $11.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 7373
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0345448391
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345448392
ASIN: 0345448391
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20080925221651H
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Product Description
Multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winning author, Greg Bear is one of science fiction’s most accomplished writers. Bold scientific speculation, riveting plots, and a fierce humanism reflected in characters who dare to dream of better worlds distinguish his work. Now Bear has written a mind-bendingly epic novel that may well be his masterpiece.
Do you dream of a city at the end of time?
In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young people–Ginny, Jack, and Daniel–dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginny’s and Jack’s dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bodies behind while carrying their consciousnesses forward, into the minds of two inhabitants of the Kalpa–a would-be warrior, Jebrassy, and an inquisitive explorer, Tiadba–who have been genetically retro-engineered to possess qualities of ancient humanity. As for Daniel: He dreams of an empty darkness–all that his future holds.
But more than dreams link Ginny, Jack, and Daniel. They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves. And each guards an object whose origin and purpose are unknown: gnarled, stony artifacts called sum-runners that persist unchanged through all versions of time.
Hunted by others with similar powers who seek the sum-runners on behalf of a terrifying, goddess-like entity known as the Chalk Princess, Ginny, Jack, and Daniel are drawn, despite themselves, into an all but hopeless mission to rescue the future–and complete the greatest achievement in human history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 well written cerebral sci fi August 7, 2008
16 out of 33 found this review helpful
In Seattle, three people (Ginny, Jack, and Max) separately and with no seeming connection see a newspaper ad that stuns them. The advertisement states: "Do you dream of a city at the end of time?" Each can answer in the affirmative as they have had visions of a dark desolate landscape of a devastated wasteland; they also share in common a form of amnesia in which none of them know anything important from their respective pasts. They only have just flashes of urban desolation.
They respond and soon learn they are the Protectors of time. An enigmatic, at one time seemingly omnipotent race has created a million-year sentient species experiment. Now after a hundred trillion years the ancient Kalpa is the last vestige of true knowledge and is rapidly deteriorating as the universe dies. The insanity of chaos fills the vacuum. The trio understands their mission is to save any form of awareness of being to pass on to the rebirth and know the danger they face in attempting this, but consider the alternative nothingness.
THE CITY AT THE END OF TIME is not an easy or fast-paced read but worth the time for those science fiction fans who appreciate a very complex story line that increasingly turns even more complicated as Greg Bear explores an ontological theme. The key characters especially the threesome, the ad taker, and those at the Kalpa discussing the end of times seem real enough to have the audience feel the countdown to the big crunch has begun. The hope is that the trio will save a flicker of light that survives into the universe reincarnation that the Kalpa inhabitants believe will occur. Mr. Bear provides a well written cerebral sci fi tale.
Harriet Klausner
weird mixture of SF and fantasy August 11, 2008
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
Bear is renowned for his hard science fiction; most famously "Blood Music" in the 80s. He has produced numerous well regarded SF novels. His most recent book, "Quantico", would scarcely qualify as science fiction. Being perhaps better seen as a technothriller.
Well to me this latest book also is dubiously within science fiction. For quite different reasons. He has taken a grand scheme, the long death of the universe, as a conceptual framework for the novel. But the smatterings of the latest physical understandings of the universe and of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics really only apply to half the book.
Because the text alternates between 2 times. The present and that of the city at the end of time. For the scenes in the present, yes this is surely science fiction, by most reasonable measures. The problem is the events in that far away city. Very mystical, with a medieval cadence, or should I say a magical fantasy ambience. The combination of the two is neither fish nor fowl.
Reading this novel had one side effect. It caused me to re-evaluate my assessment of Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void (The Void Trilogy, Book 1). I thought Hamilton was getting carried away into the perimeter of high fantasy. But compared to Bear's book, Hamilton has stayed firmly in the SF camp.
 The End of Everything August 25, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
In some ways, this book harks back to some works like Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, dealing as it does with an incredibly vast sweep of time and across the bounds of the entire cosmos (and beyond). At the same time, embedded within it are some of the latest thoughts and theories about just what makes universe be what it is, from quantum entanglement, the many universes concept, to observer based determination of what the world is and will be.
It starts in the incredibly far future, and the described situation at this starting point is intriguing as we see what's left of humanity (or human-like beings) confined to a small area and fighting a losing battle with Chaos. This early section may be the best part of this book, as everything is weird and new, and hints at the history and genesis of the current situation are dropped into the descriptions of this very odd environ, making for an absorbing interaction between reader and words.
Interspersed with this far-future world is the second major thread of this novel, as we return to the world of today and follow three very unique individuals as they try to figure out just where they fit in the world, why they are being hunted (and by what), what they can do with their special abilities, and just what the connection is between these people and those of the far future.
Up to this point, all very good. But as we proceed deeper into this work, problems appear. First is the language used to describe the Chaos. In the hands of someone like Delany or Zelazny, this could have been a treat, but Bear's descriptions have two deadly faults: a lack of definition, a haziness, no scintillating concrete images that you can wrap your mind around; and constant use of the same words and language to describe this non-image - everything is dry, cracked, melted, crushed, twisted, crazed, dim, and dark. As this type of material occupies a large portion of the second half of the novel, it becomes a definite slog to continue reading these same non-descriptions of hazy somethings again and again.
The problem of lack of definition also applies to the major characters, as I found little to make these people stand out as living, breathing things, or why I should care about their ultimate fate. Part of this due to the fact that all of them are manipulated by various `higher powers' to fix the paths and decisions they will make, and the basic motivations of these higher powers are themselves not well delineated till very near the end of the book.
Then there is the final resolution of the two major threads of this work. I found it to be totally predictable both in terms of the decisions of the major characters and the ultimate conclusion of the entire story arc, not good for a work whose major premise deals with choice, unpredictability, and the infinite possibilities of all possible universe world-lines.
This work needed some severe pruning of most of the descriptive sections, and deeper, more fleshed out looks at the internals of its characters. As it is, I found it hard to finish this work, and was left with quite a feeling of disappointment.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
A Bit Zelazny-ish August 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Greg Bear's "City at the End of Time" is an interesting book (perhaps "weird" (in a good way) might be a better word). The way Bear writes in this novel and his cosmological (almost theistic) theme reminds me somewhat of Roger Zelazny's old work. The only quibble I have with the book is that there's a bit too much "slogging through the wilderness" type of activity in it. Of course, Bear needs that slogging time to finish up the linkage between his two groups of people in the present and the future. Overall, I rate this book at a Very Good four stars out of five.
 Several hundred pages too long. August 21, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I try to read every book written by Greg Bear and have been a fan for some time. However, this book just did not do it for me. It felt like I wasted several days waiting for something to happen that never does. It is about 250 pages too long. It will not stop me from continuing to read books by Mr. Bear, but I will not have the same expectations that I have had in the past.
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