Greg Bear


Gregory Dale Bear was an American science fiction writer. His work covered themes of galactic conflict, parallel universes, consciousness and cultural practices, and accelerated evolution. His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
He was one of the five co-founders of San Diego Comic-Con.

Early life

Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California. He attended San Diego State University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. At the university, he was a teaching assistant to Elizabeth Chater in her course on science fiction writing; in later years, they were friends.

Career

Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction author because of the level of scientific detail in his work. Early in his career, he also published work as an artist, including illustrations for an early version of the reference book Star Trek Concordance and covers for periodicals Galaxy and F&SF. He sold his first story, "Destroyers", to Famous Science Fiction in 1967.
In his fiction, Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture and proposes 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 young civilizations that survive are those that do not attract their attention but stay quiet. In Queen of Angels, Bear examines crime, guilt, and punishment in society. He frames these questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness, including the emergent self-awareness of highly advanced computers in communication with humans. In Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, he addresses the problem of overpopulation with a mutation in the human genome making, basically, a new series of humans. The question of cultural acceptance of something new and unavoidable is also indicated.
One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observation. In Blood Music, reality becomes unstable as the number of observers spirals higher and higher. Anvil of Stars and Moving Mars postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles, capable of being altered at the "bit level." In Moving Mars, that knowledge is used to remove Mars from the Solar System and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.
Blood Music was first published as a short story and then expanded to a novel features nanotechnology. 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. The sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in artificial intelligence. Its continuing character Jill was inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft HOLMES in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin wrote a trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Bear wrote the middle book named Foundation and Chaos.
While most of Bear's work is science fiction, he wrote in other fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power and Psychlone. Bear described his Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, as a "high-tech ghost story". He received many accolades, including five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards.
Bear cited Ray Bradbury as the most influential writer in his life. He met Bradbury in 1967 and had a lifelong correspondence. As a teenager, Bear attended Bradbury lectures and events in Southern California.
He also served on the Board of Advisors for the Museum of Science Fiction. Bear was one of the five co-founders of San Diego Comic-Con.

Personal life and death

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.
Bear died on November 19, 2022, at the age of 71, from multiple strokes, caused by clots that had been concealed in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain since a surgery in 2014. After he had been on life support for two days and was not expected to recover, per his advance healthcare directive, life support was withdrawn.

Awards and accolades

In addition, Bear was also a singular award winner of the 1984 Inkpot Award, the 2006 Robert A. Heinlein Award, the 2017 "Forry Award" for lifetime achievement & the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association's 2022 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award.
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." The 2024 novel Halo: Epitaph, a continuation of Bear's Forerunner Saga, was dedicated to Bear's memory by author Kelly Gay.

Novels

Series

; Darwin
  • Darwin's Radio
  • Darwin's Children
; The Forge of God
  • The Forge of God
  • Anvil of Stars
; Songs of Earth and Power
  • The Infinity Concerto
  • The Serpent Mage
  • Songs of Earth and Power
; Quantico
  • Quantico
  • Mariposa
; Quantum Logic
Novels in internal chronology:
  • Queen of Angels
  • Slant
  • Heads
  • Moving Mars
; War dogs
; The Way
  • Eon
  • Eternity
  • Legacy
  • ''The Way of All Ghosts''

    Series (non-originating author)

; The Foundation Series
  • Foundation and Chaos
; Man-Kzin Wars
; Halo
  • Forerunner Saga
  • * Halo: Cryptum
  • * Halo: Primordium
  • * Halo: Silentium
; Star Trek: The Original Series
  • Corona
; Star Wars
  • Rogue Planet
; Foreworld Saga
  • ''The Mongoliad''

    Non-series

  • Hegira
  • Psychlone
  • Beyond Heaven's River
  • Strength of Stones
  • Blood Music
  • Dinosaur Summer
  • Dead Lines
  • City at the End of Time
  • Hull Zero Three
  • ''The Unfinished Land''

    Short fiction

; Uncollected short fiction
  • Destroyers
  • Sun Planet
  • If I Die Before I Wake
  • Eucharist
  • RAM Shift Phase 2
  • Object 00922UU
  • The Machine Starts
; Collections
  • The Wind from a Burning Woman
  • Early Harvest
  • Tangents
  • Bear's Fantasies
  • The White Horse Child
  • The Collected Stories of Greg Bear
  • W3: Women in Deep Time
  • ''Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies''

    Anthologies edited

  • New Legends
  • Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds
  • ''Nebula Awards Showcase 2015''

    Critical studies and reviews of Bear's work

; War Dogs

  • Explanatory notes