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Jasper Reviews: Tangents by Greg Bear

So this isn't an in-depth review, but rather a summary of the short stories collected in this book and my thoughts on each of them. This book is primarily categorized as sci-fi, but there are a handful of stories that are more fantasy/fairy tale-esque. The summary for each is provided by the inner flap of the book and/or the author's notes in the introduction, applicable content warnings, a slightly more specific summary if I feel like it's needed, and finally my thoughts and a rating for the individual story.

It is also important to stress that this book was published in 1989 and many of these stories were written before then. Greg Bear died in November of 2022 after multiple strokes. His last book, published in 2021, was The Unfinished Land. Regardless of my feelings on the stories themselves, I respect and thank this author for his work in science fiction through the years. (He even wrote for Halo, Star Trek, and Star Wars, which is fascinating to me.)

Mind the content warnings for each individual story.

Blood Music

"Blood Music," winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Perhaps no man is an island; but one man is about to become a galaxy. In this visionary masterpiece, cybernetics and bio-technology combine to produce a medical horror...

Perhaps the most famous story collected here is "Blood Music," first published in 1983. The idea occurred to me within ten minutes of reading an article in New Scientist on biochips, theoretical organic computers that might be as small as a single cell. Even before the story won its share of awards, I realized that it needed expansion, and was working on a novel-length version of the same name. The novel departs substantiallyl from the short story. Both have been reprinted and translated all over the world; I remain a faithful reader of New Scientist.

Applicable Content Warnings: biological body modification, death/murder, mentions of non-graphic rape and pregnancy in a dream, body horror, racism against Chinese people

Despite the list of content warnings, only the body modification, death/murder, and body horror are explicit and throughlines. This story was... It very much front-loaded the scientific explanation so that it could double down on the body horror in the rest of the story. Regardless, I came out of it wondering why some details were included because they didn't seem to be necessary. It took a different route than I thought it would given the summary/description I was offered by the book itself. The ending was very strange and maintains the dark tone.

As for what happens, our first person POV narrator, Edward, finds out that one of his friends, Vergil, has done some sketchy biology stuff and decides to investigate what's going on. Naturally this turns out horribly for everyone involved, and we meet new characters regularly through the 24 pages this story is made of.

Overall, I'll give this story a 6 out of 10.

Sleepside Story

"Sleepside Story." What happens to fairy tales in a city where roles are reversed...where Beauty is tainted...where Beasts are everywhere?

I'm very fond of "Sleepside Story," perhaps because it differs so greatly from most of my writing. Quite often, between my science fiction novels, I feel the urge to explore a different territory, something I've never done before... In this case, an urban fairy tale.

Applicable Content Warnings: derogatory language towards and abuse towards sex workers, explicit sexual content

This story is a third person POV following Oliver Jones, somewhere around the middle child of his family (with two older brothers, a younger sister, and two baby siblings) as he goes to rescue his mom from a rich sex worker known as Miss Belle Parkhurst who took her in after she got lost. Oliver is set up as the only reliable person in his family capable of doing this. There are self-driving cars, bull-headed train conductors, and spooky ambience galore.

To be entirely honest, most of my reading of this story involved me slowly hating Oliver because he was being just...the densest fucking cod about everything going on. Out of my way straight Catholic Victorian boy (I shit you not, he sees her ankles and gets flustered), I'm not even attracted to women and I'm on board with a free magic house and hanging out with an old lady. This man's only redeeming quality is that he loves his mother. He pissed me off and his older brothers pissed me off more. I might write my own spin on this idea just because of how much he pissed me off.

It ultimately ended well, but the story very much pissed me off the entire time. 4 out of 10 reading experience. At least it had a happy ending and fascinating worldbuilding.

Webster

"Webster" does not have a summary provided.

"Webster" [...was] first printed earlier in my career, and still, I think, [has its] charms.

Applicable Content Warnings: explicit nudity, non-explicit sexual content

This story is essentially a 50-year-old woman being depressed that she's single. She loves her Bible and her Webster dictionary and uses the dictionary to magically create a man for herself whom she names Webster after said dictionary. She is incredibly down bad for this man who only exists for her. Then becomes more possessive and weird about it and buys a gun. And then she kills him with a finger gun after they have a mild argument about how she can't get a "real man" and how he was "needed".

Honestly I kind of just cringed or was baffled while reading this. So many disparate pieces just didn't seem to work. It was very rushed and things weren't allowed to linger or settle. 3 out of 10.

A Martian Ricorso

"A Martian Ricorso." In this tale explorers on a dead planet find life. Too much life. Much too much life...

[...] "A Martian Ricorso" [was] first printed earlier in my career, and still, I think, [has its] charms.

Applicable Content Warnings: death

This book is a first-person POV of Mission Specialist Mercer recording digital entries of what he and his fellow astronauts are experiencing on Mars. This is the third expedition and the first that has dealt with a small stampede of Martians coming through. Much of this story is wondering about the Martians and if they're dangerous.

I found it interesting, but then found that it just fizzled out at the end. The aliens remained alien, our POV character was the only survivor, things changed yet that change felt hollow. Overall I'll give it an 7 out of 10 just because it was the most pleasant reading experience so far.

Dead Run

"Dead Run." The men who ferry the souls of the damned now belong to the Teamsters' Union, and one desperate trucker must confront both Judgment Day and good intentions...because that's just how the road to Hell is paved.

"Dead Run," another fantasy, was turned into a Twilight Zone television episode, brilliantly scripted by Alan Brennert. Because Alan and I are good friends, a rare opportunity arose. For a period of several weeks, Alan called me with updates on his script, advising me on the limitations he had to work around and the changes necessary for filming. (Interestingly, CBS was not at all reluctant to air the subject matter.) I was able to throw in more than two cents' worth of my own advice, and so in a way, without reducing Alan's role one whit, the screenplay became a kind of collaboration. Alan worked out an ending that was better than the ending in the original, I think; so in revising the story for this collection, I've made some changes. In a way, without reducing my role one whit, Alan has now collaborated on this printed version.

Applicable Content Warnings: stereotypical portrayals of Black men

So this not-yet-dead dude hitchhikes in Hell to try and find his now-dead girlfriend and the trucker hauling dead souls that picks him up then decides to screw up his own life and job to try and find the dead girlfriend. Then he makes it back from another haul and finds out that the dude did, in fact, find his now-dead girlfriend and stole her out of Hell. Then he decides to quit but enough things happen around him that he ends up meeting the person actually in charge who is not God. So he decides to change things going on himself in a quieter way inside of what all is actually happening.

Honestly this was a far better reading experience than the others, even though I did find myself annoyed by parts of it. I do find this one more satisfying as a short story than if it had been longer, unlike some other stories in this collection. I'll give it an 8 out of 10.

Schroedinger's Plague

"Schroedinger's Plague." Wherein it is shown that a simple logic exercise can't possibly destroy the Earth, because it already may be destroying human life...

"Schrodinger's Plague" is a jape on physics, something of an in-joke. In fact, the situation described therein—or at least the outcome—is not possible, so several physicists whom I trust have informed me. But finding out why it's not possible could involve the reader in a solid undergraduate course in quantum mechanics. To my delight, science (and science fiction) writer John Gribbin cited the story as one of the several that motivated him to write his book, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat.

Applicable Content Warnings: animal cruelty (in-depth discussion of Schrodinger's Cat which I guess counts? it's upsetting to someone sensitive to animal dealth so I'm counting it), extreme unethical science, lots of death

This is an epistolary story portrayed by department memos and a journal entry. I can't give a better summary of what happens than the author's notes did. I found it fascinating regardless. The lack of wrap-up fit this story rather than serving solely to piss me off. 8 out of 10.

Through Road No Whither

"Through Road No Whither" does not have a summary provided.

Applicable Content Warnings: usage of the g-slur in regards to Romany people, antisemitism form a character

Two German dudes are on a road trip in the middle of nowhere in 1984 and get lost. They pull over for directions and wind up getting some kind of divination reading from an old lady. One of the characters acts like a blatant Nazi towards her, slurs and all. The other guy has more sense and drags him away before he can threaten her further. The old lady warps time and sends a plane to carry out a return threat and bomb their city for what their Nazi fathers did? And then it ends on the implication of it doing that.

Honestly I have no actual idea what was going on here. 3 out of 10.

Tangents

"Tangents," winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Here two lonely geniuses—an exiled, fugitive scientist and a young war refugee—discover the twin forces needed to breach the walls between dimensions are music—and love...

"Tangents" was originally written for a computer magazine that decided not to run fiction. I thought of it as an homage to the mathematical fantasies collected by Clifton Fadiman in the 1950s, in particular Martin Gardner's "The No-Sided Professor," which introduced me to Mobius strips when I was eleven or twelve. Rudy Rucker's The Fourth Dimension provided additional fuel. The story gathered more awards, perhaps because, behind the mathematics, there is an angry parable based on the life of the English mathematician Alan Turing... Or perhaps because science fiction readers truly appreciate mathetmatical fantasies.

Applicable Content Warnings: homophobia, implied war crimes

The opening of this story follows an adopted Korean boy who meets two neighbors, one of whom is a scientist. The kid winds up being really, really good at seeing 4D stuff. So this takes a wild turn to 4D accidental destruction later in the story. Overall, it ends well, better than I had expected it to.

Somehow this story is easy to follow despite going into details about the 4D stuff and works well together. I didn't get a headache trying to follow this, and it was a very interesting read. Also 8 out of 10.

Sisters

"Sisters." A stunning, heartrending, unforgettable drama of growth and crisis, this new story unveils a near-future world where perfection can be genetically programmed for a price—and reveals what happens to the lives of the young when the price proves too high.

"Sisters" is hard SF with a strong social slant. It's also a preliminary working out of themes and ideas I'll be developing more fully in my novel, Queen of Angels. "Sisters" appears for the first time in this collection.

Applicable Content Warnings: death, unethical science, racist terminology used for both Black and Asian people

This story follows a teenaged girl who is notably not altered by genetic programming and "design" for children pre-birth. There is a lot of analysis of what it's like to actually live in this kind of world despite this being a short story. And when a giant issue comes forward with the designed children...

I was proud of the main character. There was a lot, and it was given the weight it was due by the narrative. The title of sisters was carried in several ways in the story, all of which was surprising. 9 out of 10.

The Machineries Of Joy

"The Machineries of Joy" does not have a summary provided.

Throughout my career, I've done occasional articles with a scientific slant for newspapers and magazines. I've covered all of the Voyager I and II flybys, and written about them for the San Diego Union. Fiction writing takes up most of my career now, but I still write nonfiction now and then. In October of 1983, I traveled from San Diego to Los Angeles and San Francisco, researching a proposed article for Omni Magazine. What I saw astonished me...and influended me heavily when I went on to write Eon and the novel-length Blood Music. Here was not the beginning of the computer graphics revolution, which had occurred decades earlier, but the beginning of the flowering of that revolution. I could hardly constrain my enthusiasm. I suspect the last few pages of this piece will date badly as time goes by, but they still show my frame of mind. And the frame of mind of dozens of other authors, as well; the information age has taken science fiction by storm. Omni never used this piece, although they paid me for it. Nor did they use the hundreds of pictures I gathered, a selection from which would have accompanied it. Many people gave generously of their time, yet never saw their names or ideas in print. I hope this publication pays them back in some small measure. The circumstances described below have, of course, changed considerably. Digital Productions has changed hands and management; Robert Abel and Associates is no longer an independent company. The revolution has become even more stimulating and promising. Its effects are everywhere. This article was completed in early 1984.

Applicable Content Warnings:

Unlike the others, this is a nonfiction piece. It is also deeply fucking thorough and a delightful look at how computer advancement at the time was explained even five years before the overall short story collection was published. It's very fun to read if you have a basic understanding of modern digital art so you can point at the page and go "I KNOW THAT ONE WORD" a few times.

Man this guy really did just give us a blueprint for how pervasive advertising technology would become and how little privacy you would have with it.

I'll give this one and 8 out of 10 because even the author acknowledges that it may have aged poorly. Though personally, I am not looking forward to seeing if any company keeps following through with some of the ideas in here.

Blood Music: 6

Sleepside Story: 4

Webster: 3

A Martian Ricorso: 7

Dead Run: 8

Schroedinger's Plague: 8

Through Road No Whither: 3

Tangents: 8

Sisters: 9

The Machineries Of Joy: 8

This gives us a total score of 64, which we will divide by the number of stories and round down to our...

Final Rating: 6 out of 10