Greg Bear (1951–2022)

review of
Greg Bear's The Infinity Concerto
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 3, 2017


This is the 18th bk I've read by Bear & I admit that I didn't particularly expect to be surprised by him but, Lo & Behold!, I was. This is not only a Fantasy bk instead of the usual Hard Science Fiction it's a dagnabbit-all-to-heck'n'tarnation excellent one!

Fantasy writers often write epics, usually in the form of trilogies. The Infinity Concerto is so epic it's practically a trilogy all by its show more lonesome. Instead, it's part of a diptych. The 2nd part's called The Serpent Mage, I haven't read that one yet.

I read on the back cover "and it is not good to be human in the Realm of the Sidhe" & that was exciting enuf b/c, thx to having done a piece inspired by Yeats (sortof) called "The Only Jealousy of Cascando McKenna" ( https://youtu.be/1YQI5IBEA0A?t=29m24s ), I knew that the Sidhe are part of Irish mythology & that it's pronounced "she" (or something close to that).

""The Shee sound like they—" Michael began, but Savarin interrupted.

""Pronounce it correctly. It's spelled S-I-D-H-E, from the ancient Gaelic—or rather, the ancient Gaels heard hem calling themselves by that name. They pronounce it as a cross between 'Shee' and 'Sthee.'" - p 35

THEN, on p 1: "He rolled out of bed, kicking a book of Yeats' poems across the floor with one bare foot.": a sort of foreshadowing that's only recognizable as such if you understand that Yeats referred to the aforesaid myths. This led to my feeling like a Mr. Smartypants b/c not only did I immediately get it, I'd already done a piece about it. n'at

The world must be full of children who thrill to secret adventures in alternate universes entered thru strange passages. I was certainly one of them. To this day, I love secret doorways behind bkshelves & the like.

"It was a silly decision. The world was sane; such opportunities didn't present themselves. he withdrew the paper and read it for the hundredth time:

""Use the key to enter the front door. Do not linger. Pass through the house, through the back door and through the side gate to the front door of the neighboring house on the left, as you face the houses. The door to that house will be open. Enter. Do not stop to look at anything. Surely, quickly, make your way to the back of the house, through the back door again, and across the rear yard to the wrought-iron gate. Go through the gate and turn to your left. The alley behind the house will take you past many gates on both sides. Enter the sixth gate on your left."" - p 3

I'm hooked. Those instructions had been given to him by an old man friend of his known as Arno Waltiri who had been a film music composer:

"Two months before, on a hot, airless August day, Waltiri had taken Michael up to the attic to look through papers and memorabilia. Michael had exulted over letters from Clark Gable, correspondence with Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a manuscript copy of a Stravinsky oratorio." - p 7

I found the reference to Korngold particularly engaging - not b/c I like his music that much but just b/c I even know who he is & b/c he was one of the composers condemned by the Nazis as "degenerate" who was lucky enuf to escape to the US. To quote from the liner notes of a CD entitled "The Music Survives! Degenerate Music":

"Another pre-war progressive was Ernst Krenek. His opera Jonny spielt auf, more than any other, embodied the concept of 'Entartete Musik'. An offensive half-ape, half-Negro playing a saxophone and with the star of David on the lapel of his tuxedo, named Jonny, became the logo for music they didn't like. The opera was an enormous hit all over Europe and was the first to confront audiences with sights and sounds familiar through the modern world around them: cars, whistles, jazz bands, sirens, electric bells — with the final jubilant chorus suddenly interrupted by an air raid siren: a frightening premonition, making its place at the end of our sampler all too appropriate.

"Jonny spielt auf was used to launch the 'Entartete Musik' series alongside another, contrasting, opera — Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane. Both operas were premiered in 1927, though Korngold's father, Vienna's most important critic, tried to collaborate with the National Socialists to prevent Jonny detracting from Heliane's success. Korngold's opera took music to levels of expressiveness not even reached by Strauss or Puccini. The aria 'Ich ging zu ihm' is one of the more reflective moments in this work. During his exile in Hollywood, Korngold created a cinematic style which would shape the future of film music, as can be heard in the excerpt from his soundtrack Between Two Worlds.

"The irony of the Jonny vs Heliane 'fight' is that the progressive, subversive Jonny was written by the monarchist, Roman Catholic Krenek, whereas the author of Heliane — a whirlpool of noble Germanic sentiment — was the Jewish Korngold. Both composers were Viennese of Czech extraction, roughly the same age, established in Berlin and exiled in Southern California where they died, probably having never met one another."

As such, the reference to Korngold in The Infinity Concerto, while completely casual & one-time-only had a similar poignant foreshadowing resonance as did the reference to Yeats. Waltiri is a fictional composer but Bear adds the extra nice touch of providing an appendix of "The Film Scores of Arno Waltiri (Highlights)" on p 342 that includes Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, & Henry Roth's Call It Sleep.

I found this list to be tantalizing. Roth's story of a Jewish immigrant family in NYC has never been made into a film as far as I know. Perhaps Bear's hinting that he'd like to see it be. Austen's Northanger Abbey is Austen's parody of Gothic novels & has been made into TV versions by both the BBC & PBS but is that good enuf? Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was a bk made w/ photographer Walker Evans & documented the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Depression. As far as I know that hasn't been made into a movie either. Another hint from Bear? Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King was made into a movie by the great director John Huston in 1975 starring Sean Connery - that was 9 yrs before this bk was published so it seems reasonable to assume that Bear knew about it since the movie wd've been a high profile release. As such, it seems to be an anomaly in the 4 choices I picked as a sampling.

""I submit to you, perhaps Waltiri knew the answer to an age-old question, namely. 'What song did the sirens sing?"

"Michael closed the book. "It's not all nonsense," Waltiri said, returning it to the shelf. "That is roughly what happened. And then, months later, twenty people disappear. The only thing they have in common is, they were in the audience for our music."" - p 11

I'm hooked even more. Waltiri dies.

""Two days later, a tiny brown sparrow flew into Arno's study, where the library is now. It sat on the piano and plucked at pieces of sheet music. Arno had once made a joke about a bird being a spirit inside an animal body. I tried to shoo it out the window, but it wouldn't go. It perched on the music stand and stayed there for an hour, twisting its head to stare at me. Then it flew away." She began to cry. "I would dearly love for Arno to visit me now and then, even as a sparrow. He is such a fine man."" - p 13

So he goes.

"Walking straight in the darkness was difficult. He brushed against a wall with his shoulder. The touch set off an unexpected bong, as if he were inside a giant bell." - p 13

Into another world.

"He left Clarkham's house. A flagstone path curved around the outside of the side gate. When he had gone through the front door there had been no moon, but now a sullen green orb rose over the silhouettes of the houses on the opposite side of the street. It didn't cast much light. (And yet, the moonlight through the French doors had been bright. . . .) The streetlights were also strangely dim, and yellowish-green in color." - p 14

""Why the alarm?" Michael asked.

"Risky tossed her lank hair and spat in a corner. "The riding of the noble Sidhe against the race of man," she said, her voice thick with sarcasm. She appraised Michael with a cool eye. "You're new," she said." - p 26

As a fantasy writer, Bear distinguishes himself by referring to few or none of the standard template character types. Contrast that to James P. Blaylock's The Elfin Ship (& my review thereof):

"In addition to the afore-mentioned standard fare of elves n'at there're also trolls:

""The two trolls waiting on the riverside, however, were anything but laughable. As Jonathan stood watching the trolls which were watching him, the one atop the roots reached down in among them. came up with a tone, and began to gnaw at it." - p 44

"Apparently the secrets of strong teeth are known to trolls. They must not use US dentists. & then there's that "evil creeping over the land"" - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421036.The_Elfin_Ship

Instead we have things like animated mannikins:

"He assumed a stance before the mannikin, imitating Coom and feeling foolish—

"And it promptly swing up its stick and knocked his to the ground. The mannikin vibrated gleefully, twisted on its stake and became limp again." - p 73

As if all this weren't excellent enuf, Bear goes into another favorite territory of mine: language:

"["]I'd say the resemblances between Sidhe and human languages are strong, but the syntax and methods of understanding are quite different. For example, the Sidhe use a meta-language . . . a language of contexts. And Cascar is like a hundred languages thrown together. They never run out of words that mean the same thing, or very nearly. I can't speak it well. I can sometimes make myself understood, but . . ."

""I understood it for a time," Michael said. "During the Kaeli. One of the Crane Women touched my head, and I understood everything they said."

""And what was that like?"

"Michael thought back, "Like listening to music. Each word seemed to be the equivalent of a note. Notes are always the same in music, but place them next to each other and they sound different . . . or lengthen the notes, shorten them. Use the same word in a different context, and it means something else . . . sounds different."" - pp 141-142

"["]There is a section in 'Hudibras' by Samuel Butler—if I can remember . . ." He screwed up his face in concentration and peered at the ceiling, "'But when he pleased to shew't, his speech/ In loftiness of sound was rich;

"A Baylonish dialect
Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a party coloured dress
Of patch'd and py-ball'd languages;
'Twas (Irish) cut on Greek and Latin
Like fustian heretofore on sattin.
It had an odd promiscuous tone,
As if h' had talk'd three parts in one;['"]" - p 143

Wch is quite similar to language as I envision it.

Bear throws in another spinner:

""Human sex is dangerous here."

""Why?"

""Such things are closely regulated. We do not want children. The Sidhe and Breeds can have young—we cannot."

"Michael just looked at him.

""The people who have been here longest, and the Breeds, say it is because there are no seedling souls in the Realm. A human child is born empty. A Sidhe or Breed child is expected to be that way, and already has an internal . . . how would we say . . . compensation. But human children are vessels waiting to be filled. They are filled by creatures from the Blasted Plain—Adonna's own aborted children, some say." He set his lips and waved off further inquiry. "Talk about it is considered obscene. No more."" - p 144

A sample child:

""Ishmael," Helena said, kneeling on the walkway. The pit was as deep as it was wide, and the walls were made of slick, hard tile. The figure was naked and the pit was bare except for three bowls, receptacles for food, water and waste, all arranged neatly against one wall.

""Yes."

"Michael's eyes had adjusted well enough that he could make out the details of Ismael's face. It was small, round, disproportionate to such a tall body. The hands were large and hung from arms which began thin at the shoulders and widened to grotesque forearms and wrists.

""We have some questions to ask," Helena said.

""I'm not otherwise occupied."

""Has he been here since he was born?" Michael whispered.

""Almost," Helena said. "He was one of the first that we know of. He's been here since the War."

""Time passes," Ishmael said. "Questions." He sat down leaning against the tiles and stretching his pale legs out on the floor.

""Who are you?"

"A sideshow for the guilty. A product of lust. Something so evil it must be evilly confined through all its endless life. An abortion walking. Victim."" - p 177

Oi! That's rough.

"["]I can't love you, not like I should. Today you've seen why."

""I have?"

"The Yard. To love you properly, I'd want to give myself to you completely . . . and I can't." She searched his face and reached out to touch his cheek. "Don't you see? They've taken love away from us here. We might make a mistake, a slip. I couldn't stand the thought of having a Child."" - p 182

& I thought I had problems.

Michael finds himself in a world where a new god is revered.

""I'm an atheist," Michael said. "I don't believe there's a God on Earth."

""Do you believe Adonna exists?"

"That took him aback. He hadn't really questioned the idea. This was a fantasy world, however grim, so of course gods could exist here. Earth was real, practical; no gods there. "I've never met him." Michael said.

""It," Eleuth corrected. "Adonna boasts of no gender.["]" - pp 159-160

Interesting theological question, eh? If a god exists in an imaginary world is it imaginary? Or something like that. Then there's always love & confusion:

"["]Why are you confused?"

""I told you," he said.

""Not really. You don't love me? That confuses you?"

"He said nothing, but finally nodded. "I like you. I'm grateful . . ."

"Euleuth smiled. "Does it matter, your not loving me?"

""It doesn't feel right, making love and not reciprocating everything. Feeling everything."

""Yet for all time, Sidhe males have not loved their geen. And we have survived. It is the way."

"Her resignation didn't help at all. It twisted the perverse knot a little tighter, however, and the only way he could see to forestall the discussion was to kiss her. Soon they were making love and his confusion intensified everything, made everything worse . . . and better." - p 161

Michael gets his training:

"Spart schooled Michael on how to throw a shadow while asleep, and how to sleep like the dead, his heart barely beating, while at the same time his mind was alert. He controlled his breath until he seemed not to breathe at all. He explored his inner thoughts, paring them down to the ones most essential to his exercises." - p 184

That all seemed worthwhile so I decided to try doing the same. Every time I threw my shadow in my sleep I fell out of bed. Every time I slept like the dead I actually died (don't ask me how I came back). Every time I controlled my breath I farted too much. I guess I just don't have it in me.

Michael's life never has a dull moment.

"He half-ran, half-stumbled crab-wise, trying to find the center of impulse again. But he had no clear way to throw another shadow. The guardian, dress flapping and pressing back against her distorted frame, had risen a foot or so above the path and was accelerating toward him like a piece of fabric on a spinning clothesline. She pitched head-forward in her flight until the hat pointed directly at him and the dress fanned out, a deadly trailing blossom." - p 203

"For a moment, the dim lighting and the folds of her skin had concealed the fact that she was unclothed. She sat naked and still in the large chair. Michael was convinced she waited for him to come close enough to reach out and grab. But nothing moved. She didn't even appear to breath. Was she dead?

"He reached out to touch her shoulder. His finger curled back involuntarily into his palm and he forced it to straighten.

"The skin gave way beneath his finger, first an inch, then two. Repelled, unable to stop, he continued pressing. She hissed faintly and her head folded in like a collapsing souffle. Her arm and chest began to collapse and she fell into a pile of white translucent folds, sliding from the chair to the floor." - p 205

Have you ever had a day like that? It's horrible visiting yr old mom. About the best that you can hope for is that some Sidhe will smear some paste on yr forehead while you sleep.

"The paste had evaporated. The visions swirled and Michael opened his eyes slowly. He had never dreamed in the Realm, and he didn't believe what he had seen was actually a dream. It had a certain quality, a stamp, which indicated he had once again had a message from Death's Radio . . . this time, without the use of words." - p 226

Bear's vision of reaaaaalllllly Old School War is practically appealing after the nightmares of the 20th century.

""It was not entirely a bad thing, that war. Nobody died . . . not forever. We were like young gods then and injuries of combat, while distressing, were remediable. But gradually we learned the desperate arts of tact, and lying, and deceit, of gamesmanship and honour. Then we learned distrust and our magic grew stronger. The war became earnest. Enemies found it necessary to either be polite or to attempt to destroy each other. There was no middle ground." - 234

""No swords, no baubles. Those are all human misunderstandings of magic, human preoccupation with technology. Magic lies purely in the mind. The Sidhe are among the most dishonorable, unreliable creatures on all the faces of Creation, but they have one thing—concentration. What they want, they focus on completely."" - p 299

That cd be dangerous if you happen to be walking at the time in an earthquake zone or something. Then again, Sidhe are more or less immortal so why worry?

All in all, this was great. Bear's at least as good a fantasy writer as he is a hard science SF one & that's a pleasant surprise. Also, what the heck, he acknowledges doing linguistics research wch puts him in a category similar to Tolkein. Wdn't fault him for that!

"please refer to a marvelous book by Robert A. Stewart Macalister, The Secret Languages of Ireland, first published in 1937 by the Cambridge University Press. It's still in print from Armorica Book Company/Philo Press. A good university or public library should also have it. Lovers of languaes—or dabblers, such as myself—will find it fascinating." - p 341 show less

As a long-time uber-fan of Greg Bear back in the day, I'm constantly mystified with myself that I have mostly avoided him since the mid-2000's. WHY? Well, let's put it this way: I expected him to throw mind-blowing fantastic SF at me on every level, messing with my head and showering me with brilliant ideas and smart stories.

So I shrugged and enjoyed it when he did a Hari Seldon prequel. I shrugged and tried to pray that a Star Wars novel was not selling out. And then I grew despondent when show more a novelist of his caliber started writing Halo novels and other for-market stuff. Thrillers? They were okay, but not great. Where's his out-there stuff? So I took a break.

I'm trying to do him justice. I loved his writing soooo much! So when I saw this new Mil-SF trilogy I sat back in my chair and said to myself, "So, is this more writing to the market instead of writing to his sense of great story?"

And then I saw the reviews, the ratings, and the corners of my mouth turned down.

And then I FINALLY read it.

This requires a little readjusting for our expectations.

Bear's done military stuff before but never to this degree. Don't get me wrong, it's pure mil-SF and Bear seems to go all out with making it as freaking accurate and PSTD-ridden and stacked with all the right terminology and even the claustrophobic sense of a life thrown to the wolves.

I was impressed! This is a genre I know fairly well and Bear writes for it damn well.

And then it hit me. This was designed to be popcorn fiction. Fun and smart and fast-paced military action that comes full of massive angst and battle on Mars against aliens and even better reveals about what they're even doing there.

It's not Moving Mars by a long shot. It's pure popcorn, and while there are a lot of great books similar to this, Bear is far from being simply average at it. He has the writing chops to amaze and put us in the hot seat. :)

And while there isn't quite as much groundbreaking stuff as his early stuff, it IS full of tech and is great at exploring all its uses. Terminology is hardcore, as is the stiff-upper-lip, but it's the claustrophobia that really made the novel shine. Single viewpoint, never knowing what's going on, and so much hostility everywhere. :)

I had to put away my expectations. This really wasn't a bad novel. It's a pure popcorn ride. :) show less

Nice sequel. Good writing, pacing & plot development. Interesting and understandable science. Excellent human drama. All the things I love about Greg Bear. Reading this makes me want to bring about some kind of change in our species right now. It’s fascinating and wonderful to peek in on Bear’s imagination of our future.

One of the things that’s funny and patently obvious in this novel, is how caught up in the right now humanity is. Our life spans are so short, that we cannot see show more anything in perspective. Biological time has almost no meaning and geological none. The inevitability of the Sheva virus is inescapable. Try as we might to put it down and eradicate it, evolution will win out in the end. Our emotional attachment to the earth as it is at this minute is really very funny, but also has some interesting ironies. We lament the fact that humanity is ostensibly the cause of “global warming”, but I haven’t heard one person say we should actually make less people. Funny. And so what if the earth is warming (it’s done so before and quite without human intervention). Things will not end, they will only change. And that’s what we fear so much. Darwin’s Radio & Darwin’s Children are about exactly that; change, our fear of it, and what results because of that fear. show less

Greg Bear’s novel Quantico was a long time coming to the U.S. market, his publisher evidently thinking that it was too real for tender American sensibilities in the wake of events in late 2001.

Finally released in the U.S., the novel is more startling now than when it was first published in the U.K. in 2006, especially in the wake of the recent suicide of Bruce Ivins, the federal biodefense scientist who was being investigated for the 2001 anthrax mailings in the FBI case known as show more Amerithrax. The mailings resulted in the death of five people and the infection of 17 others.

Using Amerithrax as a jumping-off point, Bear has constructed a gripping thriller in which the anthrax mailer (based on Ivins, perhaps, but more likely on Steven Hatfill, the scientist originally indicted in the case but who was recently exonerated and given a nearly $6 million settlement) is himself a pawn in an even more nefarious plot.

The novel opens with the FBI under a political cloud, just as it was post-9/11: the Bureau is threatened with extinction for having bungled its chance to apprehend the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and other atrocities. (The Dome of the Rock, for instance, has been blown to bits.) Evidence that something even worse in the words is being ignored by top officials in the intelligence community. It looks like a new plague is set to be unleashed, and this one targets specific ethnicities – Muslims, Jews, maybe both.

Novice agent Bill Griffin goes to work with bioterror investigator Rebecca Rose. Large quantities of a weird hybrid yeast are discovered at a defunct winery in Temecula, California, and the same spores turn up at the compound of a religious fanatic in backwoods Washington State. Thing is, the yeast spores aren’t lethal or even dangerous; after all, yeast is yeast, right? So the FBI agents are taken off the case and redeployed as, basically, floor moppers.

But then there’s a strange outbreak of memory loss in middle America. Rose and Griffin finagle their way back onto the case and learn that the situation isn’t one of typical bioterror but something much, much more dire.

As ever, Bear spins a great, tightly plotted tale full of speculative but plausible scenarios and gadgets. Although this isn’t Bear’s best novel, a middling effort from this writer is better than the best from almost any other writer of high-tech thrillers. Bear is smart and imaginative and manages, novel after novel, to harness his talents to produce thought-provoking, spine-tingling goodness. show less