Greg Bear

Forge and Anvil

In his fiction, Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture and proposes solutions. The Forge of God offers an explanation for the Fermi paradox, supposing that the galaxy is filled with potentially predatory intelligences and that young civilizations that survive are those that do not attract their attention but stay quiet. Its sequel, Anvil of Stars, postulates a physics based on information exchange between particles capable of being altered at the "bit level."^[a]

Blood Music, Moving Mars, and Darwin's Children

One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observation. In Blood Music, reality becomes unstable as the number of observers (trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms) spirals higher and higher. In Moving Mars such knowledge is used to remove Mars from the Solar System and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star. Blood Music was first published as a short story (1983) and then expanded to a novel (1985) features nanotechnology.

In a short series compromising Darwin's Children and Darwin's Radio Bear addresses the problem of overpopulation by considering a mutation event that allows for a new series of human beings. The question of cultural acceptance of something new and unavoidable is a prevalent theme. The books follow a family over a decade as they deal with the fallout from virus event.

The Way and Queen of Angels

The The Way novel series is composed of a trilogy and a prequel written from 1985 to 1999. Bear explores the idea of "constructors" visiting Earth through a mysterious artifact, the Thistledown. Bear uses Cold War politics as a backdrop. In later works, beginning with Queen of Angels and its sequel Slant, Bear gives a detailed description of a near-future nanotechnological society. This historical sequence continues with Heads—which may contain the first description of a so-called "quantum logic computer"—and with Moving Mars. The sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in artificial intelligence. In the series, Bear examines crime, guilt, and punishment in society. He frames these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly advanced computers in communication with humans.

Other works

Queen and Slant's continuing character, Jill, was inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft HOLMES in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Bear wrote the middle book named Foundation and Chaos.

While most of Bear's work is science fiction, he wrote in other fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power (fantasy) and Psychlone (horror). Bear described his Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, as a "high-tech ghost story".^[10] He received many accolades, including five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards.^[11] Bear cited Ray Bradbury as the most influential writer in his life. He met Bradbury in 1967 and had a lifelong correspondence. As a teenager, Bear attended Bradbury lectures and events in Southern California.^[12]