Eon: 1

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By Journey Year 950, the Thistledown was empty, and history proceeded gently until the cataclysmic events of Journey Year 1175.

In the early 21st century, the United States and Russia are on the verge of nuclear war. In that tense political climate, an asteroid appears out of near space after an unusual supernova and settles into an extremely elliptical orbit near Earth orbit. The two nations each try to claim this mysterious object, which appears to be a virtual duplicate of Juno. It is hollow and contains seven vast terraformed chambers. Two of the chambers contain cities long abandoned by human beings who seemed to come from Earth's future. The asteroid is called the Thistledown by its builders. A startling discovery is that it is bigger inside than outside. The seventh chamber appears to stretch into infinity. In 1975, Bear married Christina M. Nielson; they divorced in 1981. In 1983, he married Astrid Anderson, the daughter of the science fiction and fantasy authors Poul and Karen Anderson. They had two children, Chloe and Alexandra, and resided near Seattle, Washington. [11] Gates are capped with cupolas formed from Space-time itself. As distortions in space-time geometry, their nature can be calculated by 21st century instruments laid on their 'surfaces'. The constant Pi, in particular, is most strongly affected.Sakers, Don (May 2015). "The Reference Library". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Vol.135, no.5. pp.104–107. Greg Bear: Discussion Board". Archived from the original on August 6, 2011 . Retrieved July 14, 2011. Bear died on November 19, 2022, at the age of 71, from multiple strokes, caused by clots that had been hiding in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain since a surgery in 2014. [12] After being on life support for two days and not expected to recover, per his advance healthcare directive life support was withdrawn. [13] [14] Awards and accolades [ edit ]

While most of Bear's work is science fiction, he has written in other fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power (fantasy) and Psychlone ( horror). Bear has described his Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, as a "high-tech ghost story". [6] He has received many accolades, including five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. [7] In a parallel Earth, known as Gaia, mathematician Patricia Vasquez (the primary protagonist of Eon), dies of old age; she never found her own Earth where the Death did not happen and her loved ones were still alive, but remained on the one she discovered (in which Alexander the Great did not die young and his empire did not fragment after his death). She passes her otherworldly artifacts of technology to her granddaughter, Rhita, who appears to have inherited her gifts. Rhita moves away from the academic institute the "Hypateion" (a reference to Hypatia) which Patricia founded and that world's version of Alexandria. Patricia's clavicle claims that a test gate has been opened onto this world of Gaia, and that it could be expanded further. Orthodox Naderites remained within the Thistledown for a century after the end of Jart Wars, but concerns over the safety of the Thistledown and the danger of interference with the Sixth Chamber machinery caused the Geshels to have the Naderites forcibly removed from Thistledown to prevent disaster. Violence erupted during the forced migration, and for acclimation of Naderites, forced occupation of Thistledown City (the Geshel enclave) for most Naderites took place for one year. This remarkable run of outstanding work continued with Eon (1985) – to which Bear added a sequel, Eternity (1988), and prequel, Legacy (1995) – concerning the discovery and exploration of a hollowed-out asteroid that contains seven vast chambers; one, The Way, is a corridor that seems to stretch to infinite length, along which exist warring alien races and humanity’s distant descendants.

His shorter works can be found in the three volumes of The Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear (2016). His last novel, The Unfinished Land (2021), was a fantasy set in Elizabethan times in which a Spanish galleon drifts into the realm of Tir Na Nog, the otherworld of Irish myth, and shortly before his death he was working on a memoir.

Bear’s admiration for Star Trek resulted in an original novel Corona (1984). Later franchise novels included Star Wars: Rogue Planet (2000); one volume of a second trilogy continuing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Foundation and Chaos (1998); and the Forerunner Saga trilogy establishing the origins of the Halo computer games universe: Cryptum (2011), Primordium (2012) and Silentium (2013). Bear was also one of a group of writers and others interested in swordplay and western martial arts who created The Mongoliad cycle (2010-12), distributed as apps developed by Neal Stephenson’s Subutai Corporation for smartphones. Bear continued to draw and paint, providing illustrations to Bjo Trimble and Dorothy Jones Heydt’s self-published Star Trek Concordance (1969) and cover paintings to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy (the latter illustrating one of his own stories). He has had his paintings exhibited at the Ray Bradbury Museum. Tangents" won both the Hugo Award for Best Short Story [17] and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story [18] Bear began constructing a loose future history with Queen of Angels (1990), commencing in 2047 in a socially stratified US and involving psychology, artificial intelligences and a murder plot. Its sequels, Slant (1997) and Heads (1990) explore further the mental and political repercussions of medical and social changes, while in Moving Mars (1993), a scientist from the planet makes a breakthrough that shifts the balance of power with Earth. Darwin’s Radio (1999) and its sequel Darwin’s Children (2003) tell of the spread of a disease that causes miscarriages, soon discovered to be an awakening of non-coding DNA that results in genetically enhanced children – the next step in human evolution.At the creation, and rejoining of the Way to the Thistledown, the character Konrad Korzenowski and his engineers designed and 'built' the Way out of the in-folded geodesics of the inertial dampening field of the 6th Chamber machinery. This is described in the books by first considering the inertial dampening field: Within the Thistledown, the field envelops the asteroid, effectively isolating it from the Einsteinian Metrical Frame, permitting relative inertia to be ignored. The Thistledown was, at the time of activation, isolated from its continuum, but only selectively. Its matter and energy anchored it to its continuum and relative time, but its geometry and quantum entanglement had been strained by the inertial dampener, thus making it susceptible to superspace distortions, and therefore it could be affected by them negatively. Blood Music (1985) Hugo, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1986; [24] British Science Fiction Award nominee, 1986; [24] Nebula Award nominee, 1985 [25] Eaton, Kit (May 26, 2010). "The Mongoliad App: Neal Stephenson's Novel of the Future?". Fast Company . Retrieved July 4, 2010.