Review of Tangents by Greg Bear

Science fiction in the late 70s and through the 80s was a semi-confused time. Post-New Wave, writers and readers were trying to find a new direction—a difficult thing considering the major nodes in the genre sphere had already been mapped. And while writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling established cyberpunk (perhaps more a motif than sub-genre), most other authors fell back on what had been successful prior to New Wave. Writers like David Brin, Gregory Benford, Kim Stanley Robinson, James Patrick Kelly, and Lois McMaster Bujold came to the forefront writing tried and true tales but with up to date knowledge and modern sentiment. Their concepts extrapolated on scientific revelations, prose was more straight-forward than experimental, and characters received the same attention as the -isms. Greg Bear was also a central figure, and as a result his 1989 collection Tangents provides a mini-cross section of the 80s.

The novelette that spawned the novel, “Blood Music” kicks off Tangents. It tells of nanotechnology gone wild, and while an interesting idea, execution leaves something to be desired given how easily it descends into hand-waving mediocrity. To be fair, the novelization is poorer. Something of a ghost story bildungsroman, in “Sleepside Story” a young man from a poor, broken family finds himself being asked to pay the debts of his mother's Dayside debts at an ethereal bordello on Sleepside. Better scene setting would have drawn more mood from this story, and more mood is what it needed, as it stands as a failry straight-forward ghost story.

The reader hopes that the inspiration for “Webster” was not Bear's wife making too many self-improvement requests. In the story, a lonely woman decides to purchase an android companion for conversation and sexual purposes. While a dynamo in bed and possessing a massive vocabulary, Webster eventually learns the limits of his capabilities, much to the chagrin of the woman. A great-great grandchild of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, “A Martian Ricorso” finds the first manned expedition to the red planet encountering not only technological problems but a first contact quandary: to parley with the large group of aliens they meet, or assume the worst and defend against an attack that hasn't happened? It's shit or get off the pot with Marvin the Martian.

Greek theology meets a Christian worldview, “Dead Run” tells of a modern day Charon who drives truckloads of souls down the low road to hell. The driver himself doing his best to live a good life such that someday he might get the high road, things take a turn when a revolt of souls shows him what hell is really like, and subsequently, god. While the final quarter of this story is not as concise as it could be, it remains the most intriguing story in the collection. Moving to one of the most forced sf stories I've ever read (and I've read thousands), “Schroedinger's Plague” takes the idea of Schroedinger's cat and jams it onto a villainous scientist out to release a disease upon the entire world, a disease whose incubation period is 300+ days and dispersal dependent on a is it or isn't it scenario like unto Schroedinger's cat. Yeah... D-list Hollywood material.

A tribute to Alan Turing, “Tangents” posits an alternate history in which the famous mathematician escapes homophobic Britain and befriends a young musician who can see other dimensions. I'm not sure I will remember this story tomorrow, so mundane is it. And closing the collection is “Sisters”. Contrasting cosmetic beauty with natural beauty, Bear utilizes a high school social scene wherein almost everyone is genetically modified toward beauty. Its central conflict is in a young woman who is unmodified yet attractive. Bear's method is a bit ham-fisted, but the message remains perennial—at least as long as humans exist in human bodies, natch. The film Gattaca does a better job with the topic, however.

In the end, Greg Bear was an average writer of novel-length fiction, and the short fiction in Tangents is the same caliber. There is a large slice of science fiction fandom, however, which consider his brand of core genre to be on target. Perhaps that is you? The positive side of the collection is that each piece is distinct. The reader goes from story to story not truly knowing what the next premise or motif or plot will be. The collection now more than thirty years old, it stands the test of time... on one leg. I imagine another couple of decades will knock that out from under it, as well.

The following are the nine stories contained in Tangents:

Blood Music

Sleepside Story

Webster

A Martian Ricorso

Dead Run

Schrödinger's Plague

Through Road, No Whither

Tangents

Sisters