An expedition is sent down the seemingly infinite seventh chamber (The "Way", as it is known) where it encounters the descendants of humanity. The high technology of this civilization, known as the Hexamon, has control over genetic engineering, human augmentation, and matter itself. The Hexamon includes several alien species who have come to live with humanity's descendants. The Hexamon itself is at war with an alien race known as the Jarts from further down the corridor still. Bear died on November 19, 2022, at the age of 71, from multiple strokes, caused by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain since a surgery in 2014. [12] After being on life support for two days and not expected to recover, per his advance healthcare directive life support was withdrawn. [13] [14] Awards and accolades [ edit ] Blood Music (1985) Hugo, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1986; [24] British Science Fiction Award nominee, 1986; [24] Nebula Award nominee, 1985 [25]

Adams, John Joseph (June 6, 2012). "Sci-Fi Scribes on Ray Bradbury: "Storyteller, Showman and Alchemist" ". Wired . Retrieved October 20, 2015. Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, wrote, "I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music, by Greg Bear. He's a great writer." [20] Orthodox Naderites remained within the Thistledown for a century after the end of Jart Wars, but concerns over the safety of the Thistledown and the danger of interference with the Sixth Chamber machinery caused the Geshels to have the Naderites forcibly removed from Thistledown to prevent disaster. Violence erupted during the forced migration, and for acclimation of Naderites, forced occupation of Thistledown City (the Geshel enclave) for most Naderites took place for one year. 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. Anvil of Stars (sequel to The Forge of God) and Moving Mars postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles, capable of being altered at the "bit level." [a] In Moving Mars, that knowledge is used to remove Mars from the Solar System and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.

The story on which the novel Blood Music was based, published in the June 1983 issue of Analog, won the Best Novelette Nebula Award (1983) [15] and Hugo Award (1984). [16] Upcoming4.me. "Third novel in the Forerunner Saga by Greg Bear, Halo: Silentium revealed". Upcoming4.me. Archived from the original on July 20, 2012 . Retrieved July 18, 2012. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link) He also served on the Board of Advisors for the Museum of Science Fiction. [9] Bear was also one of the five co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con. [10] Personal life and death [ edit ] In the short story, The Way of All Ghosts, soldier Olmy ap Sennon is sent to close a lesion that formed out of a wayward gate into perfection. This story was published in 1999 in Far Horizons. Award Winners & Nominees". Locus Awards Database. Archived from the original on June 5, 2011 . Retrieved July 11, 2009.

Greg Bear: News". Greg passed away peacefully yesterday, surrounded by his loving family. [...] Greg Bear 8/20/1951–11/19/2022Greg Bear: Discussion Board". Archived from the original on August 6, 2011 . Retrieved July 14, 2011. The human inhabitants of the Thistledown come from an alternate timeline, approximately 1000 years in the future. In their timeline, human civilization was nearly destroyed by the "Death", a calamitous World War involving nuclear weapons. The Death occurred at approximately the same time as the appearance of the Thistledown in the present time. Its presence threatens to cause the Death to occur on the current timeline as well. Eon is a science fiction novel by American author Greg Bear published by Bluejay Books in 1985. Eon was nominated for an Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. [1] It is the first novel in The Way series; followed by Eternity. Gates are capped with cupolas formed from Space-time itself. As distortions in space-time geometry, their nature can be calculated by 21st century instruments laid on their 'surfaces'. The constant Pi, in particular, is most strongly affected. Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California. He attended San Diego State University (1968–1973), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. At the university, he was a teaching assistant to Elizabeth Chater in her course on science fiction writing, and in later years her friend. [ citation needed] Career [ edit ]

Funds sought for science fiction museum lift-off". USAToday.com. November 3, 2013 . Retrieved September 7, 2014.City at the End of Time ( Gollancz edition published July 17, 2008; [35] Del Rey Books edition August 2008 [36]) (Nominated for the Locus and Campbell Awards, 2009 [37]) Juno has been hollowed out along its long axis, subdivided into seven cylindrical chambers, and rotates to provide artificial gravity. The chambers are terraformed, with the second and third containing cities that have been maintained by automatic systems for centuries. This small world is dubbed "the Stone" by the Americans, "the Potato" by the Soviets, “the Whale” ( 鲸) by the Chinese and “the Thistledown” by its absent makers. Explorers of its interior discover that the end of the Stone's seventh chamber opens into “the Way”, a corridor that extends beyond the size of the asteroid. The Stone’s original inhabitants have been evacuated into the Way at some time in its past, which is the explorers’ future. The eponymous Way is an extension of the 7th Chamber, and was formed in the novels using the machinery of the 6th Chamber. This machinery is a selective inertial damper, developed by engineers within the Thistledown with twofold purpose - to permit the Thistledown to accelerate to the limit of its engines (up to 99% the speed of light) and to selectively dampen inertia within the vessel, e.g., water within waterways, high velocity train systems. The inertial dampening machinery within the 6th Chamber is anchored to the structure of the Thistledown, equally spaced around the chamber at the vertices of a regular heptagon. With the opening (and re-opening of previously Jart controlled) gates, the human migrants gained access to remarkable technologies and abilities, and made possible habitation within the Way, and on the Flaw itself, in the newly created Axis Thoreau and Axis Euclid at 1.5 ex 7 (15 million km). They developed trading client-patron relations with the Frants of Timbl, and client-client relations with the Talsit. With development of memory technologies, City Memory was created, and humans not only became immortal, but also gained the ability to be reborn. Government changed, with the formation of the Hexamon and the governing Nexus.

The Way, as formed, was described by Bear as being in vacuum and did not consist of matter within its infinite length. Due to extremely slight ambiguity involved in its creation, the synchronicity between time within the Way, and within the Thistledown, was not exact. Thus, the Engineers spend two decades working to correct these faults using the Clavicles to manipulate the junction between Way and Thistledown. During this period, ambition led Korzenowksi to use the clavicle to open the first exploratory gate within the way, leading to the universe of the Jarts. Though the gate to Jart world was closed, the advanced Jarts nevertheless successfully managed to re-open, expand, occupy, and even master the workings of the Way. Korzenowski on returning had not taken into account the time dilation effects within the Way, and the Jarts had centuries within the way to access alternate universes, such as the one to the world of the Talsit. They established a trading empire, and were very hostile to the Way's human creators who re-entered their territories having stabilised the connection to the Thistledown.

At the creation, and rejoining of the Way to the Thistledown, the character Konrad Korzenowski and his engineers designed and 'built' the Way out of the in-folded geodesics of the inertial dampening field of the 6th Chamber machinery. This is described in the books by first considering the inertial dampening field: Within the Thistledown, the field envelops the asteroid, effectively isolating it from the Einsteinian Metrical Frame, permitting relative inertia to be ignored. The Thistledown was, at the time of activation, isolated from its continuum, but only selectively. Its matter and energy anchored it to its continuum and relative time, but its geometry and quantum entanglement had been strained by the inertial dampener, thus making it susceptible to superspace distortions, and therefore it could be affected by them negatively. Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction author because of the level of scientific detail in his work. [4] Early in his career, he also published work as an artist, including illustrations for an early version of the reference book Star Trek Concordance and covers for periodicals Galaxy and F&SF. [5] He sold his first story, "Destroyers", to Famous Science Fiction in 1967. [5] Robbins, Gary (November 22, 2022). "Greg Bear, prize-winning sci-fi author and Comic-Con co-founder, dies at 71". San Diego Union-Tribune . Retrieved November 26, 2022.