Greg Bear, City at the End of Time

I finished listening to "City at the End of Time" by Greg Bear on CD. I enjoyed listening to 16 CDs (and one CD, not so much).

Disclaimer: The below is merely my opinion. I just listened to the book.

Categories: SciFi

You have to love any book that begins an early chapter with "For the first 100 Billion years ..."

The outline of the plot is one we have seen again and again. Something is threating to destroy everything. A group of heros, separately and together, begin a long journey. They travel, through great hardships, to the place where they can save or lose it all. (I don't think I'm telling to much to tell you that they end up winning.) In this book, each hero spends most of their time alone and confused.



Interestingly, one motivating factor of the whole story is that some of the characters can see the lines and branchings in space and time created by human decisions. In essence, this is a view into a dimension beyond. (It's sort of the way "Paul" could see these permutations in "Dune" but described less like there were drugs involved.) So, these characters can move sideways between these lines to pick an outcome they prefer. Or you can say they choose even very unlikely options to get what they want. These lines are called fates as well.

Then there is the uncharacter, called the Typhon. It appears somewhere and sometime an begins attacking the universe/multiverse. But, really, it doesn't really make sense to say that because it "eats" time and space and even the fates so they disappear and become no time and nowhere. Its a tricky concept to write about but Greg Bear makes it work.

How the 'humans' win is the mystery here and you may be surprised at how it works out. I may be wrong but I can't see a sequel coming out ever.

And that points to another wonderful feature of this book. You start out knowing nothing. The author does explain it to you but lets you see what the characters are doing so you figure out each little mystery bit by bit. It's excruciating and amazing. I really like the way it is done. (Well, there is that one CDs worth where the revelations come way too slow and the descriptions of the chaos are way too long.)

I was just looking at some other reviews for this book. Google books has about 30% giving it ONE star and only 11% give it the top 4 or 5 stars. I'm in the minority. Maybe its the math and physics stuff that bothers most people ... its not real math or physics but its just believable enough to pass (and this is Science Fiction). Maybe its the length or the lack of fast moving action or the slow way the mysteries are revealed.

It has: dead gods, true love, five dimensions (at least), several forms of matter, bible quotes and continuous creation, a half-million year experiment, libraries and cats against the chaos, reality changes when observed

What did I like: a different view of the universe, the occasional great word phrase, people now and 100 trillion years from now dreaming of each other, an "evil" opponent that neither cares nor really exists, description of being in the chaos, a hill that became a valley when you got to the top, a 1200 year old man

What didn't I like: As they approached the climax, very near the end of the book, the story slowed way down and described and redescribed things over and over. You can only stand the word "bloated" so many times.

Rating: 5 of 5, One of the best