RIP Greg Bear

[stevebowers]

Greg Bear, who passed away recently, influenced me greatly (especially in the early years of Orion's Arm. I believe he may have influenced some, or many, other contributors as well, as he influenced numerous professional SF writers.

Orion's Arm has numerous examples of ideas which show the influence of Bear's work.  Various elements of the advanced future technocracy known as the Hexamon (described in Eon, Eternity and Legacy) can be seen in OA, for instance virtual and augmented citizens, translation protocols and partial emulations used as messengers and proxies. Eon also has a useful description of space warfare and space colonies which can still inspire.

The many large habitable structures found inside the Hexamon environment of the Way inspired this image from OA;



Also found in Legacy is a sentient (but entirely alien) ecology, which influenced my description of the naturally-evolved envome on Kammerer.
Bear also produced some SF illustrations in the past, which may have contributed to his acute sense of visual impact and drama.

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Here's another image of mine which draws inspiration from the planet Sleep in Bear's novel Anvil of Stars.


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The descriptions of artificial minds and swarm sentiences in Queen of Angels and Blood Music are also very useful as inspirational material, and are very, very weird.

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We do have a page with many different authors listed that have been influences on OA; Greg Bear isn't on there, but I think I'll put that right in the next couple of days.

[Drashner1]

Greg Bear was one of the first 'modern' SF authors I got into (before that I had read authors like Niven, Clarke and Asimov, who were still alive at the time but whose heyday preceded me in many respects). Agreed his ideas were both very cool and likely had an impact of the development of OA in many respects.

Completely agree with adding him to our list of influential authors.

Todd

[DarrenRyding]

Greg Bear was one of my all-time favourite authors, with a huge influence on the way I wrote and imagined.  Blood Music and Anvil of Stars are still my top 2 favourite science fiction novels.

RIP Greg.  I hope you now know the secrets of the universe.