Greg Bear

Infobox Writer
name = Gregory Dale Bear

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caption = Greg Bear (2005)
pseudonym =
birthdate = Birth date and age|1951|8|20|mf=y
birthplace = San Diego, California
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Novelist
genre = Science fiction, Speculative Fiction
notableworks = "Blood Music"
debut_works =
influences = Poul Anderson
influenced =
website = http://www.gregbear.com/

Gregory Dale Bear (born August 20, 1951) is an American science fiction and mainstream author. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict ("Forge of God" books), artificial universes ("Eon" series), consciousness and cultural practices ("Queen of Angels"), and accelerated evolution ("Blood Music", "Darwin's Radio", and "Darwin's Children"). Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin also wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov's famous "Foundation" trilogy with Bear credited for the middle book in the trilogy.

Biography

Bear was born in San Diego, California. From 1968 to 1973 he attended San Diego State University, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1975, he married Christina M. Nielson, but they divorced in 1981. He remarried in 1983, to Astrid Anderson, the daughter of science fiction author Poul Anderson. They have two children, Erik and Alexandra. Erik is currently a Painting and Drawing major at the University of Washington. They live outside of Seattle, Washington.

Career

Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction author, based on the scientific details in his work.

Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture with fictional solutions. For example, "The Forge of God" offers an explanation for the Fermi paradox, supposing that the galaxy is filled with potentially predatory intelligences, and that those young civilizations which survive are those which do not attract the attention of the predators — by staying quiet. In "Queen of Angels" Bear examines crime, guilt and punishment in society, framing these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly-advanced computers in communication with humans.

One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observers. In "Blood Music" reality becomes unstable as the number of observers — trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms — spirals higher and higher. Both "Anvil of Stars" — a 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". (Bear has credited the inspiration for this idea to Frederick Kantor's 1967 treatise, "Information Mechanics.") In "Moving Mars" this knowledge is used to remove Mars from the solar system and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.

"Blood Music" (first published as a short story in 1983, and expanded to a novel in 1985) has also been credited as being the first account of nanotechnology in science fiction. More certainly, the short story is the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines, and to treat DNA as a computational system, capable of being reprogrammed--that is, expanded and modified. In later works, beginning with "Queen of Angels" and continuing with its sequel, "Slant", Bear gives a detailed description of a near-future nanotechnological society. This historical sequence continues with "Heads" — which may contain the first description of a so-called "quantum logic computer" — and with "Moving Mars". This sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in AIs, with its continuing character, Jill, inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft Holmes ("High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor") in "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress".

More recent works such as the "Darwin's Radio"/"Darwin's Children" pair of novels, which deal with the impact of a strange disease which appears to drive evolutionary transitions, stick closely to the known facts of molecular biology of viruses and evolution. While some fairly speculative ideas are entertained, they are introduced in such a rigorous and disciplined way that "Darwin's Radio" gained praise in the science journal "Nature".

While most of Bear's work is science fiction, two of his early works, "The Infinity Concerto" and "The Serpent Mage", which are now published together as one novel "Songs of Earth and Power", are clearly fantasies, and "Psychlone" is horror. "Dead Lines," which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy was described by Bear as a "high-tech ghost story" ( [http://www.fwomp.com/interview_gregbear.htm interview, Fiction Writers of the Monterey Peninsula] ). He has received many accolades, including five Nebula awards and two Hugo awards for science fiction.

Bibliography

Collection of Short Stories

* "The Wind from a Burning Woman" (1983)
* "Early Harvest" (February 1988)
* "Tangents" (1989)
* "The Venging" (1992)
* "Bear's Fantasies" (1992)
* "W3 Women in deep time" (2003)
* "Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies" (November 2005)

Darwin

* "Darwin's Radio" (1999) (winner 2000 Nebula award for best novel and 2000 Endeavour Award)
* "Darwin's Children" (2003)

="The Way" Series=

* "Eon" (1985)
* "Eternity" (1988)
* "Legacy" (1995)

"The Forge of God" series

* "The Forge of God" (1987)
* "Anvil of Stars" (1992)

"Second Foundation" Series

* "Foundation and Chaos" (1998) (Second Foundation series: book 2)

"Songs of Earth and Power"

* "The Infinity Concerto" (1984)
* "The Serpent Mage" (1986)
* "Songs of Earth and Power" (1994 - combines "The Infinity Concerto" and "The Serpent Mage")

"Star Trek: The Original Series"

* "Corona" (1984)

"Man-Kzin Wars"

*"The Man Who Would Be Kzin" (with S.M. Stirling)

"Star Wars"

* "Rogue Planet (2000)

"Queen of Angels"

A group of novels featuring a shared history and some common characters.
* "Queen of Angels" (1990)
* "Heads" (1990)
* "Moving Mars" (1993) (won the 1994 Nebula award for best novel)
* "/" (aka "Slant") (1997)

Non-series Novels

* "Psychlone" (1979)
* "Hegira" (1979)
* "Beyond Heaven's River" (1980)
* "The Strength of Stones" (1981)
* "Blood Music" (1985) (won the 1984 Nebula award for best novella, and the Hugo award)
* "Sleepside Story" (1988)
* "New Legends" (1995)
* "Dinosaur Summer" (1998) (winner 1999 Endeavour Award)
* "Country of the Mind" (June 1998)
* "Vitals" (2002)
* "Dead Lines" (2004)
* "Quantico" (2005)
* "City at the End of Time" (Gollancz edition published 7/17/2008 [http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/search-list-Greg%20Bear/~SW=Y~subject=cat3] ; Del Rey Books edition August, 2008 [http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345448392] )

Awards and accolades

* Best Novelette Nebula Award (1983) and Hugo Award (1984) for Blood Music.
* Best Novel Nebula Award in 1994 for Moving Mars.
*Hayakawa Award "Heads" Best Foreign Short Story (1996).
* Best Novel Nebula Award in 2002 for Darwin's Radio.
*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." [" [http://www.dorislessing.org/boston.html Doris Lessing: Hot Dawns] ", interview by Harvey Blume in Boston Book Review]

References

External links

* [http://www.gregbear.com/ Greg Bear's Official Site]
* [http://www.epicsff.com/articles/05/04/dlrdarwinsradio/ Darwin's Radio Review]
* [http://www.sffworld.com/interview/8p0.html Interview] at [http://www.sffworld.com SFFWorld.com]
* [http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/?search_string=bear&Submit=Search&search=1 All of Greg Bear's audio interviews on the podcast "The Future And You"] (in which he describes his expectations of the future)
*isfdb name|id=Greg_Bear|name=Greg Bear
* [http://www.goodreads.ca/gregbear/autopoiesis.html An excerpt from "Slant" (1997)]
* [http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/eon/index.php The 20th challenge of the "society of digital artists", which made use of "EON".] In the "about" part it includes the chapters 1, 2, 10 and 33 [http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/eon/about_eon.php] .
* [http://www.quanticothebook.com Quantico: Official Website]
* [http://mmbooks101.blogspot.com/search?q=Greg+BEar Interview with Greg Bear] Conducted by Murder and Mystery Books 101