City at the End of Time | ||||||||
Greg Bear | ||||||||
Del Rey, 476 pages | ||||||||
|
A review by Paul Kincaid
I can admire it because it is ambitious, intellectually satisfying (it panders to the self-regard of all us book readers),
complex and rich.
Yet I cannot love it because the pacing is erratic though generally slow, the characterisation is not distinctive
enough for me to be sure I can always tell even the main characters apart, it builds to far too many false climaxes,
and it consistently withholds information from the reader even if that information would not significantly spoil any
twists or surprises.
Anyone who can lumber his books with titles like Eon and Eternity is not exactly short of ambition, at
least of scale.
But City at the End of Time shows Bear stretching for something more. This is not about the grandeur of size
(grandeur is hardly a word to use about a novel most of which is set in a colourless, ashen void, or, in those
sections set in contemporary Seattle, in a grey, sullen and seemingly permanent rainstorm), but is really an attempt
to say something about the nature of reality. If, in the end, what it does manage to say is rather incoherent, it
still has a larger and more daring theme than we have become used to in science fiction.
The novel opens with three new arrivals in present-day Seattle. All are young, disconnected, marginalized. They are
also running away from something, indeed they have spent their entire lives running away, though what it is that is
after them neither they nor we have any clear idea. All three carry with them a stone, which is called a "sum-runner,"
and which seems like an arbitrary plot coupon that has wandered in from a routine fantasy quest. Actually, despite
the fact that this is clearly a hard science fiction novel, much of the plotting and language seem to have been
borrowed wholesale from fantasy.
One of the three stone bearers, Ginny, is directed to a strange warehouse, where she finds accommodation and a
sort of job helping a strange old man, Bidewell, sort through an immense collection of old books in search of
anomalies. For most of the first part of the novel, Ginny's role is to be restless, to bond with the warehouse
cats (as in any fantasy novel, the cats are important), and to fail to understand Bidewell or his curious quest (no
full explanation is ever offered).
The second stone bearer, Jack, earns a precarious living as a busker juggling live rats, shares an apartment with
someone we never meet and who seems to keep forgetting Jack's existence, and generally has even less to do than
Ginny for large swathes of the novel.
Jack and Ginny have fled ceaselessly across the USA, but the third stone bearer, Daniel, has travelled even
further: he has learned to move from parallel reality to parallel reality. Once, it seems, he simply took over
other versions of himself, but when we meet him now he has taken over someone else, a down-and-out who spends his
days begging at a rain-swept intersection. Apart from seeking out a book on cryptozoology, Daniel doesn't have much
more to do than Jack and Ginny at this stage, but he is the more interesting character, in part because of his
amorality, and in part because he has a more developed sense of who and what he is and what he is getting away from.
The enemy is represented by Glaucous, who was recruited some time in the 18th century by the dark and unseen forces
known as the Moth and the Chalk Princess (again we are in the realm of fantasy). His employers have granted him
immortality and the ability, like Daniel, to flit between dimensions. He spends the centuries hunting down stone
bearers, and if, at first, he appears brutish, as events unwind he displays a wily intelligence. He is, in other
words, the best delineated and most engaging character in the book.
At one point, Jack nearly falls into Glaucous's trap, and it is only then, getting on for half-way through the
novel, that the plot finally acquires a sense of urgency.
The trap is quite ludicrously simple: Glaucous places an advert in the local paper asking "Do you dream of a city
at the end of time?" This is the other thing that unites the stone bearers; except, of course, it's not a
dream. Ginny and Jack find themselves looking through the eyes of Tiadba and Jebrassy respectively, two "breeds" (reconstructed
humans) in Kalpa, the last city on Earth, perhaps in the entire universe. Around Kalpa the Chaos has gathered,
the reality generators are starting to fail, the end times are upon us. Again there is an intrusion of fantasy
into this science fictional scenario. It should be chilling enough that here we have the last redoubt of humanity
grimly holding on to reality as the dissolution of chaos gathers all around it, but Bear has to make the end of time
the deliberate work of a supernatural entity known as the Typhon, as if we can no longer trust the inexorable and
impersonal force of nature to make a sufficient antagonist. In fact, Bear does next to nothing with the Typhon,
and the science fictional aspects of the end of time that he presents are far more scary, far more gripping,
than any supernatural intervention.
The elite of Kalpa, under the leadership of a character known as The Librarian, are described as Eidolons and
they are, as we learn quite late in the novel, tied to Kalpa, unable to leave the city. They are, we may assume
though it is carefully not made explicit, inhabitants of a computer programme. In response to the enclosing
Chaos, however, they have recreated a version of old humanity, the breeds, for the purpose of leaving the
city and crossing the wasteland in the hope of finding another surviving city which may offer a chance for survival.
None have yet returned, or managed to send any message back. For the first half of the novel, alternating
with the stories of Ginny, Jack and Daniel, we follow the oddly undirected and formless training that Tiadba
and Jebrassy undergo in preparation for their own march. This training seems to consist primarily of
discovering ancient books that tell the story of a legendary spacefaring hero of Kalpa.
So we have it; for most of the first half of the book the two strands that make up City at the End of
Time are really little more than set-up for the story to come. There's enough to hold your
interest, Bear's writing is, at times, among the best I've seen from him, but it's a slow plod and you
keep waiting for something, anything to happen.
Then, within the space of surprisingly few pages, Jack is caught by Glaucous but manages to escape, is
assisted by a group of women who call themselves the Witches of Eastlake (one of far too many literary
allusions to possibly list here), and joins Ginny in Bidewell's warehouse. Meanwhile Daniel is found by
another agent of the Chalk Princess, tries to flee into parallel realities but cannot because he is right
up against the end of time (the most powerful science fictional moment in this entire book), escapes
nonetheless, joins up with Glaucous and eventually gets to the warehouse. At the same point, Jebrassy is
swept away by agents of the Eidolons and taken to the Librarian, but Tiadba and a group of others set out
on their march into the Chaos.
There's almost too much going on at once, but then this tremendous dramatic tension is allowed to lapse. In
the warehouse, Bidewell promises revelations, but what he tells us is incomplete and resolves nothing. Ginny,
Jack and Daniel are set up for a carefully choreographed encounter with some supernatural force, but there
seems no reason to the ritual and the encounters fail to move the plot forward one inch. Indeed, considering
that the end of time is tearing away everything outside the warehouse and their feeble defences may collapse
at any moment, the group gathered here spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around, drinking cheap
wine and sleeping. If the characters have no sense of urgency, why should the readers?
Meanwhile Tiadba and her colleagues trudge through the colourless, featureless wasteland of Chaos, encountering
a series of threats that turn out not to be all that threatening. It is as if every time a climax seems to be
arriving, Bear adds some other piece of business that doesn't move us forward, just delays things. It is curious,
for instance, that when Jebrassy finally sets out in Tiadba's wake, he reaches the same destination in
considerably less time.
Then, abruptly, Bear gets the whole story moving again. In a move that more or less renders the previous 100
pages of rituals and revelations meaningless, Ginny abruptly leaves the safety of the warehouse and is
instantly in the Chaos following after Tiadba. Jack, Daniel and Glaucous follow after her (Bidewell and
the Witches are abandoned) and so (I'd say by coincidence, but that is probably not the right word when all
of time has come down to one point) we get all the main characters in the same place at the same time, and
Bear can tie off his story with an ease and brevity that doesn't seem to fit with the slowness and complexity
of all that has gone before.
Don't get me wrong, there is a great deal to admire about this book.
For a start there is a bravura notion and a richness of detail that leave you wanting to like it. It is an
intelligent book, and also one that is littered with literary references (particularly to Jorge Luis Borges),
which is appropriate given that the novel suggests that what keeps the world real is what we read. The
writing, at times, is excellent, especially when Bear comes to describe the dissolution of time. And yet,
somehow the whole feels less than the sum of its parts.
Paul Kincaid is the recipient of the SFRA's Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service for 2006. His collection of essays and reviews, What it is we do when we read science fiction is published by Beccon Publications. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide