Greg Bear was born in 1951 and published his first short story sixteen years later. His first novel was published in 1979, and his most famous novels, Blood Music and Eon, emerged during the eighties and have now become established classics.
"SHEVA," a long-dormant mechanism inside human DNA, is modifying human evolution in a short, fast burst instead of on a long, slow trajectory. Politicians and scientists struggle for understanding amid the tension of civil unrest, political anarchy, abortion, choice, and mutation. There is even romance: a clumsy love triangle involving the three principal characters, all scientists of one stripe or another. This tale is as compelling as Richard Preston's The Cobra Event or Robin Cook's best work but with markedly better, often graceful, writing. Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Bear paces the plot well, offering ample excitement as well as good character development. Listeners who have forgotten their high school biology may tire of the techology-heavy language (quick, what's a ribosome?) but will endure and complete this intriguing "hard sf" story. George Guidall narrates fluidly, and his typically clear characterizations and subtle voice tactics navigate biotechnological tongue twisters with aplomb. Recommended for sf collections.DDouglas C. Lord, Hartford P.L., CT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
In the medical/SF tradition of Robin Cook, Bear (Blood Music) spins an outlandish tale of evolutionary apocalypse. In an ice cave in the Swiss Alps, Mitch Rafelson, a renegade paleontologist, discovers a frozen Neanderthal family, including an oddly evolved infant. Meantime, in Soviet Georgia, Kaye Lang, a microbiologist, is investigating a massacre site, where pregnant women were exterminated. These events relateÄby way of elliptical scientific reasoningÄto a retrovirus being hunted by U.S. government scientist Christopher Dicken. Called SHEVA, it causes genetic mutations in embryos and may also be an agent of evolution, ushering into being a new race of humans. Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Or, more sinister, is it a God-sent means of delivering up a new Adam for the millennium? When Mitch and Kaye fall in love, then decide to bring their own SHEVA baby to full term, they are about to find out the truth firsthand. This complicated tale is read somberly by the deep-voiced Rudnicki, who works hard to keep the sense of drama high through all the mumbo jumbo. Simultaneous release with the Ballantine hardcover. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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