Eon by Greg Bear

This is a science-fiction mosaic novel, written in 1985, about the people that visit a mysterious asteroid that suddenly appears near Earth. It occurs in an alternate history of 2005.

THE GOOD:

• Eon was interesting and well-written enough that I made it through the whole thing, so that's already pretty good.
• I like sociological/mosaic books that provide perspectives from different characters.
• I thought for a little while we were going to get another Seveneves (indeed, the Earth gets destroyed in this one too), but the story fortunately veered off in a different direction.
• He had some creative sci-fi ideas. The infinite corridor with portals along the way is pretty cool, and his ideas on a post-scarcity future society are compelling. It's got a very Star Trek-like hopeful look at the future.
• Bear wrote the book in 1985, and it was fun/weird to see what he guessed right and what he guessed wrong. He guessed we'd be using tablets/laptops, but thought they would have 10-key keyboards (a simple consumer Blackberry phone had a full hardware keyboard decades ago). Like many early sci-fi writers, he expected giant leaps in fundamental physics, but totally didn't see the computer revolution and miniaturization coming. Bear thought we'd still be using mainframes! Also, his thought that the Soviet Union would still exist, with a still-separate East and West Germany, was pretty funny. Although his argument that the Soviets were reacting to falling behind the US/West were surprisingly insightful and spot-on, it's just that in our reality the Soviet Union fell as a result rather than starting a nuclear war. The idea that China and the US would be besties was also funny. His timeline for us having colonies on the Moon was kind of absurd. The book's story takes place in 2005!!

THE BAD:

• The author's character dialogue was generally fine, but whenever it got emotionally charged the way people spoke and acted became very weird. Greg Bear obviously doesn't understand the emotions of human relations at all. The book could have used some strong editing in this area.
• I could have lived without the details of Lanier's awkward sexcapades. We didn't see any other characters' sex lives, only Lanier. Why?
• The book is billed as hard sci-fi, and indeed Greg Bear is famous for being one of the 3 Bs of hard sci-fi: Bear, Benford, and Brin. However, I'd hardly classify this book as hard sci-fi. Technologies like the infinite corridor and the inertial dampers with no moving parts are pretty ridiculously unrealistic—things that will never exist. I'd classify the book as, at best, medium-soft sci-fi. By comparison, Seveneves is real hard sci-fi.
• Bear would describe most things in the story once only, in an ambiguous giant data dump, and then just refer to them by name forever afterward. Worse, he often had 2 or 3 names for the same thing or the same person. The flaw ship moved along the flaw... the flaw? What's that again? Huh? I totally had no idea what the Geshels were anymore, radical or otherwise.
• Patricia Vasquez, the "fragile" intellectual, had a pretty typical Heroes Journey but it felt a bit contrived to me. I found it hard to believe that she could understand all the physics so well and go from 0 to hero in time to create a new portal on her own in an area nobody else had ever done it before.

THE UGLY:

• Despite the general lack of description, the author made sure to repeatedly mention that the main character looked Amerindian without actually being native...
• The one important Chinese character is of European ethnicity, with blond hair, something that is also brought up repeatedly.
• Naderites, really? I can't tell if Bear likes Ralph Nader or is mocking him.
• I thought he portrayed the Soviets in a pretty hostile and stereotypical way.