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So, for instance, Rama in Arthur Clarke's Rama books is one, the Ringworld in Ringworld by Larry Niven is another, the house in House of Leaves is one, apparently there's a giant black hole known as the Unicron singularity in Transformers: Cybertron so that's another, and it goes on and on. Luke isn’t sure why he thought Greg Bear writing in the 80’s would hold up as well as Ursula K LeGuin writing in the 70’s. For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future-but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown.

We can’t fault authors for working within the zeitgeist of their times and attempting to explore the ramifications of our ability to use and misuse advanced technology. At the opening of the novel, in 2005, Judith Hoffmann, head of the commission that coordinates the exploration of the Stone, recruits a theoretical physicist. I might be mistaken of course, but as I have only so much time and an ever growing TBR, I’m glad to cut some corners and be judgemental based on a too small sample rate. Since the Stone appears prior to the recorded date of the Death, and there is no record of the Stone’s appearance in its libraries, the scientists reason that the Stone may come from an alternate future, but it turns out the Death is indeed imminent even with the Stone. The fate of Earth and humanity also become involved as the USA claim prior right to manage the exploration and studies of The Stone on account of being the first nation to discover its appearance.It is presided over by a governing body, the Nexus, loosely divided into two social groups: Progressive Geshels, who embrace body-swapping and life-extending technologies, and conservative Naderites.

The first part was, of course, getting past the Soviet-era antagonism and accepting it as what it was: a convenient antagonist at the time. I will stop there, all this is obvious in the first few chapters of the book, I shall not spoil your anticipation of what is to come. The characters were a little too obvious, a little to "best-seller" shallow for my taste, but they fit their environment and had plausible motivations and actions. Computers seem able to communicate "subliminally" with humans, but Bear never goes into the nuts and bolts. An amazingly complicated tale by "Master of Disaster" Greg Bear, that I somehow missed reading, back in the day.Finally, I found the political intrigue in Axis City to be labyrinthine: too complex, and not adequately explained. Non posso dire di più per non rovinare la sorpresa, ma mi piacerebbe tanto avere uno di quei marchingegni per l'apprendimento veloce disponibili in biblioteca. Instead, the more pertinent question is what does Greg Bear want to say about politics and human nature? She acts like a spoiled kid who occasionally goes into a trance-like stance and emerges with a breakthrough mathematical solution.