'Doing Extraordinary Stuff'

 

“It's kind of a misnomer aboutscience fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It'sabout people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.” –Greg Bear

 

Born in San Diego on this date in1951, Sci-Fi writer and illustrator Bear published more than 30 novels and 5story collections, earning nearly all the top writing awards including 5 Nebulas,2 Hugos, 2 Endeavours and the Galaxy Award from China.  He was one of the original founders of SanDiego’s Comic-Con. 

 

Among the best known of his booksare the Forge of God and The Way series, andhis works on “accelerated evolution” – Blood Music, Darwin'sRadio and Darwin's Children.   Bear’s last title, published just before hisdeath in 2022, is The Unfinished Land.

 

Blood Music,first published as a short story, is the first in science fiction to describemicroscopic medical machines and treat DNA as a computational system capable ofbeing reprogrammed.  Often classified as a “hard” science fictionauthor due to the level of scientific detail in his work, his tales oftenaddressed major questions in contemporary science and culture and then proposedsolutions.   

 

 “Science fiction works best,” he said, “whenit stimulates debate.”