It was somewhat serendipitous that I came to read "Eon". I found myself away from home with no reading plans. I visited a comic book store that had some used books for sale. This book "Eon" appeared to be the best of the available sci-fi and the price was only [amount]. I am now very pleased that I happened up on this bargain.

In "Eon", after some interesting fireworks just outside our solar system, an asteroid with some very strange characteristics mysteriously settles into a neat orbit around the Earth and its moon. The surface of the asteroid indicates intelligent activity in its past and investigators find some very interesting things inside. Because I greatly enjoyed Greg Bear's slow revelation of it in the story, I will say no more about the contents of the asteroid.

I enjoyed the technical descriptions of interesting space (and other) technology in this novel, and I found the strong and romantic personalities of the several main characters refreshing. However, the characteristic of this novel that I found most interesting and thought-provoking was the tension in the story that was brought about by the Cold War context.

In 1985, when this novel was written, I was 20 years old - old enough to have experienced the Cold War and participated in "the mindset" associated with it. Reading "Eon" was quite a flashback experience for me. It was fascinating to me to realize how much my mindset has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Even writing those names here evokes strong memories and strange emotions.

Reading the novel now, nearly 20 years later, I think I realize much of what the author was trying to convey. The context difference offered by science fiction stories often helps authors to make something seem obvious that would not seem obvious in the normal real context. I think the author was trying to indicate to Cold War participants of the time how difficult it is for individuals and collectives to correctly prioritize ideas and activities with regard to their self-interest. In other words, compare the priorities of the participants of the Cold War with that of human survival. I don't know that I would have fully realized those things had I read the book when it was first published.

Reading "Eon" was, for the reasons stated above, a very interesting experience for me. If you are old enough to have experienced even a portion of the Cold War, reading "Eon" will likely be an interesting experience for you, too.


Fantastic ideas spoiled by awful writing   August 4, 2004
 16 out of 26 found this review helpful

EON, a 1985 novel by Greg Bear, is one of the science fiction writer's most fantastic displays of imaginative thinking and worldbuilding. However, I found the work rather disappointing due to Bear's poor writing skills.

The plot of EON is complicated, both in its science and in the political relationships between characters. Everything starts as a mysterious asteroid enters Earth orbit, and an expedition sent by the west discovers that it was built by humans of the future and somehow sent back in time unintentionally. Museums on the asteroid chronicle a future war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The most awe-inspiring facet of the book, however, is where the inhabitants of the asteroid disappeared to, leaving the cities there abandoned.

Bear's writing is atrocious. Dialogue is clunky and unrealistic, there are some really absurdly penned sex scenes, and his description of the characters is formulaic. The portrayal of the Russians is incredibly stereotypical, and Bear never misses a chance to beat the reader over the head with the message that communism was wrong and the U.S. right during the Cold War. With the non-English characters he makes numerous mistakes. Kiev (i.e. Kyiv) is called a Russian city (it's Ukrainian). The author writes a traditional ideogram to describe a Chinese character's shirt when the PRC has used simplified forms for fifty years. The Hellenic rulers of Egypt are confused with the indigenous Egyptians. Apparently, the author did little research outside of the hard sciences.

It is really a shame that the writing is so poor, because the concepts introduced here are fantastic. Alternate geometries, new forms of human society in the far-future, aliens some familiar and others inherently unknowable. The author's portrayal of a nuclear holocaust is harrowing but thought-provoking.

In short, I would not recommend Eon unless you are a heavy reader of science fiction and can look past the poor writing--unfortunately quite common in this genre--and enjoy Bear's imaginative ideas.


A fantastic journey!   November 14, 1997
 11 out of 12 found this review helpful

This extraordinary well-written book is probably one of the best in its genre. Here, the author Greg Bear, describes absolute impossible situations and possibilities in a such a detailed and convincing way that even a skeptic would believe it. Science-fiction books are often too imaginative to an extent that they border to total fiasco. However, this book succeeds in containing both imagination and fantasy without loosing its credibility. In fact, as you read, you will not question the secrets nor the tecniques being exposed to you. And this in a fully normal world, like the one you and I live in right now. The story may seem tame - a steroid is beeing discovered and later examined by a selected group of scientists and technicians. While exploring the "Potato", as they refer to it, the group slowly finds evidence that witness of an earlier population. And the mysteriouses keep growing. Who were they? Where are they now? Do we live in somebodys elses future and is our destiny already predestined? This book awakes your curiosity and will not leave you satisfied until you have read it all. And even after the book is finished, you will still be left with the erge to know more. Only one little detail makes this fabolous book annoying - you will have to read it over and over again to fully understand all the technical details described in it. Time-consuming, but definitely worth it!


The Eon Enigma. Great SF or complete bollocks?   November 17, 2003
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

Something inbetween perhaps. The ideas in Eon earn 9/10, however Bear's writing style gets a 4. For starters, he describes the different locations in overtechnical geometric language. Sentences like "Patricia stood parallel to the vortex so that she formed a toroid at 90 degrees to its summit" tells the average reader nothing. I made this sentence up but its not an overexageration. The book is full of these sort of descriptions. Great for a hard geometry test, terrible for anything but. In my opinion Larry Niven's geometric descriptions in Ringworld are about as far as a writer should go. Its a shame because if Bear had used simpler language I probably would have been amazed by the pictures my imagination formed. I think Bear's characterisation is ok. I disagree with other reviews in that I didn't find his characters akin to carboard. Neither does the book fall apart at the half way mark. The story develops nicely. The problem is that Bear spends too much time describing some things and not enough entertaining. I am not asking for a shorter book or for his characters to do a tap dance. I was simply hoping that Bear's characters would play more of a key role in the events that shape the 2nd half of the book rather than just being the unwitting cause of what unfolds. If you think about it, only Patricia actually does anyhing, and only right at the end. More involvement, less babble is required. It could have been a 5 star earner. This is the first book I have read by Bear and it is worth reading. I will check out Blood Music as I have heard its pretty good.


Too many notes   June 29, 2000
 10 out of 15 found this review helpful

Well, I can't fault Greg Bear for his imagination. He clearly has tons of ideas, many of which are wild and intriguing. His mistake was cramming them all into one novel, producing a hopelessly cluttered work in which so many threads are competing for attention that none of them is allowed any real development or substance. Early on, the book drops hints about the far-out ideas it contains, but devotes way too much attention to Cold-War squabbling which is boring and mundane in comparison, and hopelessly dated in retrospect. When it finally gets into the far-future stuff, the culture and technology are exotic to the point of caricature, more silly than awe-inspiring. It feels a bit like "Gulliver's Travels," but without a trace of Swift's satirical purpose. In fact, it's hard to see any real purpose underlying this story, other than to let Greg Bear unload his wild speculations. I read this book because I was interested in the physical concept of the Way and the technology of sculpting with spacetime; but this, like every other aspect of the story, is never explored with the detail it deserves. The characters have the same problem as the concepts: there are simply too many of them, and none is really given depth.