Anvil of stars
I’ve just finished reading Greg Bear’s Anvil of Stars, the sequel to Forge of God. In Forge of God, Bear has the Earth destroyed by alien machines – but a small portion of humanity is fortuitously rescued by a second group of alien machines called the Benefactors. Anvil of Stars is concerned with what happens after, which is that groups of humans travel to the stars in Benefactor ships to enforce the Law. The Law is simply that intelligent beings that create self-replicating machines that destroy worlds are themselves to be destroyed. We follow one group of children as they grow into young adults and encounter the Killers and other aliens. So far, so good (if you like that sort of thing!), and it’s not a bad book, if not his best work. However, I was surprised to read on the back cover a puff quotation “Greg Bear has majored in vastness. Infinity is his playground”, and the cover blurb claimed that the novel is “driven by a godly sense of wonder”. I can see how people get this impression – his novels always deal with events and objects on huge scales of space and (often) time.
The thing is, this isn’t what Bear actually writes about. What he seems to be more concerned with is human smallness. His characters are crushed on the wheels of forces that they cannot understand. Even where they can act purposefully, they are usually acting in ignorance or fear. There is little greatness in his characters, only inevitability; little love, only passion; little wisdom, only thirst for knowledge.
And that is why I don’t always enjoy reading Bear’s novels as much as those of other authors. He seems to think that the sheer size of the universe makes us insignificant and unworthy somehow, as though physical size possessed moral or ethical significance. For a sense of wonder at the disparity between the size of the universe and humanity, I prefer authors like Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan, even though they can also be depressing, or (for a more optimistic view) David Brin.
pax et bonum
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