Bearing the Weight of Our Ancestors and Our Descendants
Written: Aug 02 '01
Product Rating:
Pros: complex and unusual plot, insight into how creative thinkers think, compelling characters
Cons: you have to put pieces together and make leaps of understanding to get the ending
The Bottom Line: Eon draws on the standard building blocks of science fiction but grows beyond the expected to become a truly complex unique book every science or sciece fiction fan should read.
Have you ever had to stretch your brain just beyond its normal capacity for thought? Been presented with mysteries unfathomable that swirl around inside your head until suddenly they almost but don't quite make sense? Have you ever made that leap of faith, of intuition, of understanding that come when all of the pieces finally fit together and make sense, moving you to the next plateau of knowledge and understanding?
Some of you probably have not. There are two types of thinkers. Some people plod along gathering facts and knowledge, steadily adding to their understanding of the world around them. Every book, every conversation, every action adds just a tiny bit to their comprehension of the world around them. These are the studiers among us, those who spend hours on each homework problem, reading each book to garner the maximum from the experience. Slow. Plodding. Consistent. Dependable.
Then there are the intuitive, creative thinkers. Those people who learn in fits and starts, making giant leaps of understanding. They may read and absorb what they read, they may remember the details of conversations long past, they may understand the consequences of their actions. But they use this knowledge differently. It sloshes around their brains, trying desperately to fit together in a cohesive way that is more than the sum of its parts. Most of the great advances in understanding and knowledge originate from this type of thinker, from just this process of fitting together experiences and knowledge until somehow, in an instantaneous burst of comprehension, it becomes more.
There is nothing wrong with falling into the first group. Most people do. Methodical thinkers are often the most successful in life, make the most of their abilities, fit in better with society as a whole. Eon by Greg Bear is a book for the jumpers.
I am a jumper. There is nothing so incredible as that leap of understanding, that jump to the place where all of a sudden it all makes sense. I cannot describle the sensations, how it feels to think this way. Completely and totally alive is probably the best description I can give, but unless you think this way, unless you've experienced this for yourself you can't understand.
You can read Eon and a get a sense of what it's like, though. On the surface, it fits a common pattern for science fiction books - a mysterious object is heading for Earth orbit. The government is trying to cover it up, suspecting an alien invasion. They get more than they bargained for, both on the orbiting rock and politically back on Earth.
If you dig a little deeper, you will find so much more. There is no one main character; the story moves with many characters, alternately concentrating on each one's place in the story and his or her perspective of the events and goals for the future. Most of our time is spent on the Stone, concentrating on various scientists and military personnel who live and work there. Of particular interest is Patricia Luisa Vasquez, a 23 year old theoretical mathematician whose work on general relativity and the curvature of space-time could only be fully appreciated by gods or extraterrestrials. We struggle with her need to fit in, her attempts to feed her brain the information it needs to process and learn, her incredible leaps of understanding and impatience with those who aren't quite so quick to follow. The jumpers among us will identify. The plodders will get a sense of how the other half thinks.
Inside the stone are seven levels, excavated and formed from the asteroid Juno. We learn fairly early on that the Stone comes from the Earth future, a distant future portrayed in the extensive libraries of Alexandria and Thistledown, the two cities in the Stone. The two libraries illustrate the differences between the two groups that occupied the cities. Alexandria was a city of simplicity, of belief in keeping things simple and holding on to the past. It houses paper books, books printed in the 22nd and 23rd Centuries. Old books.
Thistledown was the technological center, a place where people stored digitized imprints of their knowledge and memory, separating the soul, or Mystery as they called it, from the knowledge, memories, and physical being. Books here are digital, the library here is digital and aware. It responds to requests and can teach history, languages, and more very very rapidly. It also holds the horrible truth about the distant past, a past now the near future to all of our characters. Very few people know the secrets of the Thistledown library; none fully understand them.
These libraries are central, but they are not the most incredible discovery made about the Stone. Access is very restricted to the seventh level, the innermost level. Eventually we get a glimpse of the seventh level and discover why. The seventh level leads to The Way, a geometrical construction that goes on forever. Those of you not versed in general relativity are probably totally lost now, and will not understand Patricia's attempts to explain The Way or understand how it works. But these sections of the book are the finest description of how jumpers think, how they feel, how it all works I've ever read.
Did Thistledown, as the whole Stone was known, come from the same universe as the one it now inhabits? Are we destined to live out the terrible tragedies it records as history? Is anyone living in The Way? Are our descendants still alive? Patricia and the others on the Stone are desperately trying to figure it out, trying to change the future, change the past. Just as the terrible events described in the library come to pass, Patricia makes a leap and understands, leading us to the third section of the book, a section that is somewhat hard to follow, a section that asks you to be a jumper and put all the pieces together to understand how it all works, how it all fits together.
I concentrate on Patricia because she is an important character, but also because she is the one I most closely identify with. We have a lot in common - an interest in general relativity, a some time feeling of distance from people around us, and the blessing and curse of being jumpers. There are many other compelling characters in this book. Garry Lanier is the Stone administrator, the one ultimately responsible for reporting back to Earth and Patricia's boss. He is one of the very few who knows about looming disaster, and his reactions to the events back on the planet are very powerful. Pavel Mirsky is a Russian soldier who dreamed of being a Cosmonaut (and finally gets his wish). He brings some insight into the mentality of an intelligent but restrictively educated Cold War Russian. I don't know how accurate this portrayal is, but Bear makes Mirsky a compelling and sympathetic character. Lenore Carrolson is a Nobel Laureate physicist and mother hen to the female scientists on the Rock. She is perhaps the one character I wish had been better developed. She just sort of becomes background person half way through the book, someone who is there to be there.
The politics surrounding missions to a visiting orbiting body are mindblowing; they are only partially explored in Eon. The Stone adds a lot of tension to the relationship between the United States and Russia (and China to a lesser degree). Scientists of many nationalities live and work on the Stone, but Russians can only work on the peripherals. Few Chinese get any real access either. That said Karen Larson, a Chinese woman born of immigrant parents, is a central character who does get quite a bit of access to the Stone and the secrets therein. Although the political implications could have been explored further, they do play a large role in the happenings on the Stone and reinforce the common theme of many science fiction books - politics often interferes with science.
Politics between countries are not the only politics in Eon. The ever complex relations between those who believe in simplicity and feel that technology has not made life better and those who feel that technology has greatly improved life are explored here as well. In many ways these two groups are as fundamentally different and apart in their beliefs as the Russians and Americans are. It is an interesting debate, one that comes into the mainstream periodically. Bear goes to great pains not to take sides, just as he tries hard not to take sides between different nations (and does a reasonable job considering he is an American). He presents the views of both sides as a complex puzzle, daring you to find ways to let all of these people live together in peace.
I have read Eon at least a dozen times. Each time I still have to make the struggle to put the pieces together at the end, to try to understand the leaps that Patricia makes, to understand the world Bear envisions and how it all fits together, even with a background in general relativity and cosmology. Most of the time I am successful, but the interesting thing about this type of thought process is that it's hard to control what initiates the leaps of understanding, just what information is needed to trigger that jump. This time I was left swirling around with a pseudo-understanding of the physics of The Way. My brain is a frustrated active searching thing right now, still desperately trying to piece everything together and make it fit. I am almost there, I was almost there in the book. I have been there before. I have been enlightened in the past and felt that ultimate rush of comprehension. I know I can do it. I am in that state of heightened thought and concentration, of trying to grasp that last little thing needed to make the leap. I haven't felt this alive in a long time.
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