By: Greg Bear Publisher: Orb Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Orb Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 448 Publication Date: March 04, 2008 Release Date: March 04, 2008
The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.
Now the small group of human survivors is determined to track down the criminal race who launched the planet killers. Humanity is given a starship by The Benefactors, and driven only by revenge they set out to find the unknown beings who are responsible for the destruction of Earth, and many other worlds.
Alien military encounters done right I've read hundreds of science fiction books where humans have military conflict with aliens (though not yet the Forge of God). In nearly all of them, there are World-War-II-Naval-like space battles with weapons/ships/shields at near parity. I have always thought this to be highly implausible, and I thought the most interesting aspect of this book was to consider three possible battle situations in space:
1) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly higher tech level. If they detect you before you detect them, you are dead. Period. Your only possibility to win such a battle is to detect them first and destroy them instantly - and your chances of being able to do that are slim.
2) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly lower tech level. Using the logic above, all that matters is you being able to detect them before they detect you. The technologies of stealth, electronic counter measures, detection, etc. are therefore all extremely vital in order to never be defeated by aliens with a lower tech level.
3) There is a possibility that you encounter an enemy close enough to your own tech level that the battle could last more than a split second. It is only in these instances that all the other things often written in other science fiction stories might matter - amount and type of shielding, weapons systems, quality of personnel, etc. But such battles are very unlikely, because technological progress is so fast. Consider what it would be like for any of today's industrialized nations with a substantial military to combat the most powerful nation on earth from 200 years ago - there would be no contest at all. The universe has been around for billions of years, so the chance of two races encountering each other that are within a few hundred years of each others' technology level is very low.
The above logic also applies to planetary defense as well, though with even more emphasis on not being detected.
This is the only SF book I've read that envisions future military conflict this way, and for that I give the book 4 stars. In my mind, this clearly deserves a place among the top 10 science fiction books in the military SF genre.
However, I did not care for the characters and character development and dialog which occupied the sluggish first half of the book. It wasn't until they started exploring the killers home system that I had trouble putting the book down. I did enjoy the dialog about ethical considerations of what the human ship was going to do, and the aliens they joined forces with were an interesting twist to the story and well done.
Bottom Line - the key to this book for me was an exploration of military encounters in space that struck me as vastly more plausible than the typical SF novel. Rewrite the book to remove most of the first half - and it would have been 5 stars for me.
Not in the same class as "Forge of God" While nominally a sequel to Forge of God, Anvil of Stars is very different and can probably be read without having to know too much about events in the previous book as most that apply are addressed. I was really looking forward to this sequel. I thoroughly enjoyed Forge of God. It had a great ending - the bad guys won - and it probably could have been left at that.
Anvil of Stars takes place several years after the previous book. We're now following the children of the survivors who have volunteered to serve on a "Ship of Law" provided by their Benefactors in order to track down and destroy the source of the attack on Earth.
It felt to me as though I were reading more of a half-finished outline than a full-blown book. I couldn't relate to the characters in any way. We're told that they're children and yet they act, both mentally and emotionally far advanced in their years. The self-contained world they occupy within their spaceship lends itself to a Lord of the Flies feeling, without the bloodshed, though that comes later. Perhaps part of the problem is that Bear has to introduce us to so many characters that there just isn't space in the book to know and understand them all.
The storyline veers in many directions with a few twists, but nothing terribly unexpected. The end is rather obvious and actually, the last couple of dozen pages feel as though Bear himself was tired of the book and just wanted to wrap it up.
His style of writing is different in this book too. It has an almost "artsy" feel. Verne meets Asimov and they don't hit it off. Perhaps its the setting. After all, it is years in the future and everything that is commonplace and everyday is so alien to us that it's hard to grasp. There is somewhat of "deus ex machine" feel in many places where the children survive impossible odds thanks to their technology and you really don't feel that they're in any real danger. Sure, we may lose one or two, but no one we really care about, whereas in Forge of God, you felt the anticipation - and you cared.
Now, I say all this from the point of view of an expectant sequel reader. As a sequel I don't think Anvil of Stars works terribly well. It's as different in narrative style and storyline as The Hobbit is to The Lord of the Rings. They're related but very very different.
I finished the novel more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. Overall, I'm not sure that this book needed writing. I'm not convinced that there was enough of a story to do so. It was nice to learn the fate of humanity but it just wasn't' compelling enough.
An early Bear masterpiece I just finished re-reading Forge of God, in which the earth is destroyed (literally rent asunder) by von Neuman machines sent blindly by a vastly superior and advanced civilization that makes a habit of sending off autonomously guided self-replicating machines to destroy other civilizations for reasons that are unclear. In the sequel, Anvil of Stars, some of the children of the few thousand humans who were rescued by yet another highly advanced alien civilization, "the Benefactors", just as the Earth was destroyed, are now in command of a highly advanced starship built by the Benefactors for the express intent of hunting down and killing the destroyers of Earth, according to the "Law".
This novel, like its predecessor, has many of the hallmarks that have come to characterize Greg Bear's later works. There is great character development, a fast-moving plot and plenty of science. The children (young adults really, in their late teens and early twenties) have a (presumably) self-created organizational structure named/designed after that in "Peter Pan". There is a subplot of a first contact with a third alien species that the humans are thrown together with after both of their ships are damaged by the Planet Killers that is very well done (as is usual for Bear). The science is rather subtle and I missed it completely the first time around. In many ways, the SF ideas concerning quantum mechanics and the structure of the universe are nascent images of the core SF contained in a much later Bear novel, "Moving Mars", one of his best and most popular works. The way in which this "tweaking" of quantum properties is put to use is completely different here, but is equally integral to the story which questions the rationale and purpose of revenge.
I'm glad I re-read both of books. I remembered the Forge of God but somehow not Anvil of Stars. Read them together. Anvil is the best kind of sequel, building on plot elements of the original but completely different, yet still maintaining continuity.
Must Read Book This is a brilliant book that leaves you with images, ideas and questions long after it's finished. I have read this at least twice and am sure I will read it again.
Assault on conventions Those of you who know Greg Bear need not read my accolades to appreciate his contributions to the field. Those of you who have not are in for many treats through his works. When a story continues to place the reader in the question of "what would I do in this situation?" I believe it has accomplished its goal. Think of Ender here. Ask youself about how you feel about differences between people and cultures and ethnicity and responsibility and you start to see where this story will take you. Imagine the sense of xenophobia you would experience should you encounter life from far off worlds. Would you be xenophobic? This story by Bear is a significant contribution not as much to science fiction as it is to people understanding each other on this planet.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
