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4.0
Far Thoughts and Pale Gods is one of three books released to collect some of Greg Bear’s short stories, be they part of established narratives or standalones. I’ve never read Mr. Bear before, only seen his books on a great many shelves at the book store and library so I thought a short story collection would be a great introduction. I have to say I enjoyed it! I’ve been easing my way back into science fiction this year, and perhaps this is one that more threw me in kicking in screaming, but it was a great addition on my ladder. Mr. Bear seems to specialize in hard science fiction, but his work also carries a lot of the undertones that work for me. Things affecting human mentality, culture, or religion make the flesh around the Science Fiction backbone on these.
Even though I stumbled a bit through the first story in the collection, I managed to get my feet under me before it ended and wound up really happy with it. It was grim, but incredibly fascinating. The same can be said for the rest of these. They weren’t what I would call happy stories, but they were challenging and did make you think. The additional ‘context’ that Mr. Bear added to the stories at the beginning really helped. I wish more collections did this, it adds a lot to the story getting where it was coming from.
The stories managed, even if they were riddled with science and the ins and outs of the technical, to take a deeper look and I really appreciated that. I think Greg Bear has definitely made his way to my ‘to read’ list with these stories – I would call them smart science fiction. I’ll be picking up the rest of these to read for myself, I really recommend them if you’re ready to tackle some harder science fiction.
Even though I stumbled a bit through the first story in the collection, I managed to get my feet under me before it ended and wound up really happy with it. It was grim, but incredibly fascinating. The same can be said for the rest of these. They weren’t what I would call happy stories, but they were challenging and did make you think. The additional ‘context’ that Mr. Bear added to the stories at the beginning really helped. I wish more collections did this, it adds a lot to the story getting where it was coming from.
The stories managed, even if they were riddled with science and the ins and outs of the technical, to take a deeper look and I really appreciated that. I think Greg Bear has definitely made his way to my ‘to read’ list with these stories – I would call them smart science fiction. I’ll be picking up the rest of these to read for myself, I really recommend them if you’re ready to tackle some harder science fiction.
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