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University > Library > EKSCursions > City at the End of Time |
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City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (Ballantine Books/DelRey 2008) [B&T Books] PS3552.E157 C58 2008. The past is no predictor of future results when it comes to Greg Bear's work, save that he is consistently intriguing. Bear has picked through just about every sub-genre there is in science fiction and while always distinctive, the writing is never the same. City and the End of Time may be his most daring and daunting work to date. There are rewards for the reader, but one must descend some very deep mine-shafts to extract those rich gems. The story itself is straight-forward enough. There are two cities whose fates are bound up to each other. One is the Seattle of our roughly our time and the other is The Kalpa. The Kalpa is at the end of time—at least one-hundred trillion years hence. Yes, yes, that time span is many orders of magnitude greater than the universe is suppose to endure, and Bear addresses that. What Bear does not address is the name itself. Kalpa is a very flexible Sanskrit word meaning (among other things) an aeon. Aeons (or eons) are grand epochs of time marking ages as a whole. In Hindu mythology aeons are long indeed. These two cities (The Kalpha and Seattle) and their times are about to collide (as it were) and the fate of the universe is in balance. That is the universe may well erase itself so throughly that it never have existed. In its “place” would be something called the the Typhon (those versed in Greek Mythology will understand what this is) that is emerging from the Chaos that has engulfed all the universe, except The Kalpa. The fate of the universe rests on five (well, six, but that complicates things) individuals. From our time (sort of) the unlikely heroes are a carnie named Jack, a run-away named Ginny and a complete mystery called Daniel. Each possesses the odd ability to move from one possible world-line to another. That is, when states of affairs are in flux and have not yet collapsed into a decided reality, they can choose with possible line to take. These are the fate-shifters. In The Kalpa are two unlikely heroes, Jebrassy and Tiabda. These two are about to embark into the Chaos to find a lost city. This quest is somehow suppose to save The Kalpa or at least the universe--though it is never clear to them just how this is to be accomplished. These are known as Marchers. It is also worth noting that Jack and Jebrassy on the one hand and Ginny and Tiabda on the other stray into each others' existences, if only dimly (at first anyway). The word you want for this is “entanglement.” The Typhon is not taking this sitting down. On one hand there have been countless Marches and they have all ended in utter failure. There have been the corresponding Fate-shifters and they have all been captured in their turn by servants of the Livid Queen. Who this Livid Queen is, is something of a mystery even to her most devoted servants. One wonders for a long stretch whether she is simply a female counterpart to the Typhon, the Typhon itself or something else entirely. The servant of the Livid Queen are also something of a mystery, especially one called the Moth. As the story progresses, most of the forces begin to cancel each other out so that we are left with only these heroes in a very small universe. That's the easy part. Herein lies the challenge: City at the End of Time is filled with these oblique and folded references to Greek, Egyptian, Buddhist and Hindu mythologies (along with those to Christian scriptures). Wrapped within all of this is a fair bit of quantum physics as well. Some obvious points are that our four (OK, six) protagonists really are entangled in the way one describes quarks. There are a few instances where Ginny must spin around twice to arrive at the same place (incidents like this go on). The reader must be prepared to see the most fundamental aspects of nature as personalities and not brute forces, fields or particles. What Bear is doing is taking the essence of myth as a cosmic story with a face (where the animistic forces of nature are both brought to human dimensions and where human beings somehow are eternal significance) and works it out in our current cosmology. Where it becomes difficult is that very few of the characters can express themselves in terms we moderns can readily grasp and those who can don't remain for very long. After a few billion (or trillion years) it would seem that the best and the brightest must return to expressing the greatest truths as stories. jimm wetherbee If City at the End of Time looks good, here are some other interesting Baker and Taylor Books. . .
Updated October 30, 2008 |
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