An excellent sciece fiction end of the Earth novel. Unknown aliens have decided that it is time for the Earth to come to an end, and all humans with it. What can we do about it? ( )

well. excuses: early book (1987), read out of order. plenty of characters, none of them interesting, stiffly written and played like all of Bear's early work, and all of them present oddly as 1950s types in a fifties world pretending to be near-future. now, though, that future has passed. which usually dates this kind of thing - except that we have seen a couple of similar presidents since, of course, and that whole paranoia mislabelled security thing with specifically American governments is now well-attested.*g* there's hardly any attention given, though, to the environment as a prime example of how specifically we have managed to screw up the planet, and that does date the book. all that being said, though, it's still a terrific set of ideas, and the notion of just rolling over and surrendering to alien judgment, letting everything go, that's a terrific notion carried to its what-if set of conclusions. though i could argue about how human it is to just give over, capitulate, whether or not religion is a factor, i can't argue even now that it's a book that has nothing interesting to say. ( )

A very interesting apocalyptic book. I loved the way the aliens were presented. The technology is extremely dated and detracts somewhat from the book, but I cared for the characters. The end is stunningly well written. Can't say more, can't even say what about the ending is well written, but if you read it you'll be able to figure out what I'm talking about.

I'm going to track down the sequel and read it too. ( )

It is the end of the world. Are the aliens the good or bad guys? Does humanity survive? These are the central questions of Greg Bear's, "The Forge of God."

In general, I found the characters likable, believable and interesting. I thought the plot moved like a snowball going downhill. At first the movement was slow, but it picked up midway ending with an avalanche! The science fiction element was quite interesting and I thought the geology sections were quite well-done.

I highly recommend this book. ( )

It looks like I'm in the minority here. I really enjoy Greg Bear, but was having trouble picking this one up to finish it. It was interesting enough that I couldn't not read it, but I was endlessly bored by details. The only way I got through it was to start skipping anything but dialogue after the first couple hundred pages. I kept thinking, "this SHOULD be riveting", but it just wasn't. I've read many books with a lot of technical detail, but this seems to have continuously unimportant details thrown in. If it were condensed to 250 pages, it probably would have been excellent.

Oh well, judging from the other reviews, you'll like it just fine - I guess it's just me! ( )