The Collected Stories Of Greg Bear

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The Collected Stories Of Greg Bear
pub: TOR books. 653 enlarged paperback. Price: $17.95 (US), $24.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30161-X

check out website: www.tor.com

When this book arrived in the post I was looking forward to my first experience of the much lauded Science Fiction author Greg Bear.

I thought the ideal place to start would be with this collection of his short stories and novellas taken from various periods of Bear’s long career in the techno-fable industry.

It did indeed turn out to be the best place to start. Unfortunately, it was also the best place to stop.

It’s not that I don't appreciate a bit of the old 'hard' Science Fiction every now and again. I love Clarke and Asimov - who doesn't? However, Bear’s fiction is not so much hard as it is impenetrable.

The first story 'Blood Music' started off in a promising fashion. OK, some of it did read like the author had ripped out pages of 'The New Scientist' and glued them into the book but there was an essence of characterisation there, a bit of tension and a smidgen of the unnerving body horror aesthetic that always gets me going. Ultimately though, there was something unsatisfying about the tale, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I moved on to the next story whilst nervously becoming more and more aware of the imposing thickness of the book. This feeling of apprehension proved to be justified as the next few hundred pages constituted one of the most pleasureless slogs I've had the misfortune to read in a long time. As I read story after story I was left with the same thought, nice idea, shame somebody else didn't write it.

Bear creates scores of two-dimensional unsympathetic characters that singularly fail to generate any interest in the reader. Frankly, I didn't much care after page 452 if S'iksntha Jujil turned into a marauding ten-foot tall bio-mechanical beast, I never much liked her anyway.

Rare gems like 'Sisters' are few and far between. Bear prefers to rely on convoluted and yawn-inducing politicised Science Fiction in tales such as 'The Venging' and 'Wind from a Burning Woman'.

At this point, previous Hugo and Nebula committee members are queuing up outside my door with pitchforks and flaming torches. Yes, I'm afraid it’s true. I didn't like the award-winning piece 'Tangents'.

Sure it's got some great themes, the persecution of homosexuals when they no longer comply with what their employers deem acceptable and genius emerging from poverty. If it wasn't so spectacularly dull I'd probably have given it a bit of kudos too, but alas, it is spectacularly dull.

Couple this with the way in which the pieces are interspersed with some of the most horribly self-aggrandising bits of propaganda I've seen in a book and you've got a masterpiece of mental torture. Look out for the bit where he compares himself with Shakespeare and the back-slapping Asimov anecdote. The ego has landed and is doing a tap routine.

Amusingly enough, the stories that I most enjoyed in the book were almost uniformly taken from the 'Always, Never' section of the collection. In this part of the book, the stories are more fantastical and abandon much of the technological elements he usually employs.

It is almost as if Bear suddenly realises that alternative writers are actually allowed to add characterisation and interesting narrative devices to their stories. Finding himself unable to utilise the pop science that pads out the rest of his work, Bear realises he actually has to fill that gap with something else and this is most definitely a positive development.

‘Dead Run’ is a great piece with a well-defined central character whose job it is to transport damned souls into hell. Bear treats the subject matter with a respectful irony, introducing a kind of quiet comedy to the work that is missing elsewhere.

The climax of the tale is suitably surprising and is incredibly well thought out. If only the rest of the collection could have been like this.

‘Even Hardfought’, the final story in this collection, is a disappointment. Its epic scope and epic length do not save it or this collection from the banality of Bear’s narrative. Bear himself admits that the piece is 'pretentious'. He forgot to include 'badly written'. Hard read would have been a better title.

I've got to go now. The Hugo panel have stormed the parapets and the Nebula committee have breached the main gate. Oh well, I may die but it was all in a good cause...

Paul Skevington

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