Greg Bear Obituary, Death – Greg Bear’s birthplace is the Golden State. From 1968 until 1973, he studied at San Diego State University, where he earned a BA in liberal arts. He worked as a TA for Elizabeth Chater’s SF writing class at the university and became friends with her later on. Because of the extensive use of scientific terms and concepts in his stories, Bear is frequently categorized as a hard science fiction author. Earlier in his career, he also published artwork, like as illustrations for the Star Trek Concordance and covers for Galaxy and F&SF. [4] In 1967, he had his first tale published in Famous Science Fiction with the title “Destroyers.”
Bear typically provides answers to pressing scientific and cultural concerns in his stories. If we assume that the galaxy is teeming with potentially predatory intelligences and that the only nascent civilizations that survive are the ones that don’t draw their attention but instead stay silent, The Forge of God provides an answer for the Fermi paradox. Bear investigates crime, guilt, and retribution in Queen of Angels. Questions of consciousness and awareness, especially the developing self-awareness of technologically advanced computers in dialogue with humans, provide the framework within which he explores these issues. His solution to the overcrowding crisis is to introduce a mutation into the human genome, creating essentially a new series of humans, in the novels Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children. The issue of how to adapt to something novel and inescapable is also raised.
Reality as a result of observation is a topic that Bear is particularly interested in. As the number of listeners to Blood Music grows exponentially (to trillions of intelligent single-cell organisms), the fabric of reality begins to fray. The physics of the sequel, Anvil of Stars, and its predecessor, The Forge of God, Moving Mars, are founded on the idea that information is transferred between particles and that this information may be changed on a “bit level.” (Bear has said that Frederick Kantor’s 1967 book “Information Mechanics” (see Digital physics) is the source of the idea.) With this information, the protagonists of Moving Mars are able to move Mars out of the Solar System and into a new orbit around a distant star.
Short story “Blood Music” (1983) was later expanded into the novel “Blood Music” (1985). Furthermore, it is considered the first fictional treatment of nanotechnology. [quote missing] In addition, the short story is unquestionably the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines and to view DNA as a programmable computational system with room for growth and improvement. Bear describes a nanotechnological society in great detail in his later works, starting with Queen of Angels and continuing with its sequel, Slant. Heads, which may contain the first description of a so-called “quantum logic computer,” as well as Moving Mars, continue the historical sequence. The episodes also provide a timeline of AI’s increasing level of self-awareness.
Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress features a self-aware computer named Mycroft HOLMES (High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor), who served as inspiration for the series’ ongoing character Jill (1966). A trilogy of prequel novels to Isaac Asimov’s seminal Foundation trilogy was written by Bear, Gregory Benford, and David Brin. The second to third books were written by Bear. While much of Bear’s writing is science fiction, he has worked in various fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power (fantasy) and Psychlone (horror) (horror). Bear has described his Dead Lines, which straddles the border between science fiction and fantasy, as a “high-tech ghost story”.
Ray Bradbury was Bear’s all-time favorite author, he said. In 1967, he met Bradbury, and they maintained a lifetime correspondence. When Bear was a young adult, he frequently visited Southern California to hear Ray Bradbury speak. For the Museum of Science Fiction, he was a member of the Board of Advisors. After marrying Christina M. Nielson in 1975, Bear and his wife split up in 1981. Astrid Anderson, the daughter of SF/F authors Poul and Karen Anderson, was his bride in 1983. Both Chloe and Alexandra were born to them, and the family eventually settled in Seattle. At the age of 71, Bear passed away on November 19, 2022, due to several strokes brought on by clots that had been lying in a false lumen of the anterior artery to the brain since surgery in 2014. When his condition deteriorated to the point that he was no longer expected to survive, his family followed the instructions in his living will and turned off life support after two days.
