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Blood music [short story]
Vergil Ulam is a brilliant but unorthodox researcher working to develop biochips — the next quantum leap in computer technology, using the complexities of cellular structure (notably DNA) as a means of information processing. But Vergil goes several steps further, and soon has produced intelligent clumps of cellular material, able to outperform rats in laboratory tests. In doing so, he has exceeded, without authorization, guidelines laid down for genetic research, and when he is found out he loses his job and is told to destroy his experimental material. Determined to salvage something, he injects himself with part of the culture — intending to retrieve it later — and walks out of the laboratory carrying within him the seed that will develop far beyond the limits of his brilliant but blinkered imagination...
Blood Music is a short story originally published in the June 1983 issue of Analog and the winner of both the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo awards for Best Novelette.
Blood Music is a short story originally published in the June 1983 issue of Analog and the winner of both the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo awards for Best Novelette.
25 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 1983
1 person is currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Greg Bear
232 books2,111 followersGreg Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), parallel universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin’s Radio, and Darwin’s Children). His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 27, 2025
Pretty good sci-fi shorty. The messaging shifts near the end, which is my only real gripe, but I guess that's because this gets adapted into a full novel later.
June 4, 2022
An interesting short novelette, that Bear later expanded into a novel of the same name. I'd be quite interested in reading that novel, I think. I find the basic idea compelling, although the short story sagged in the middle for me as it tried to explain the science behind the human body being taking over by programmable biochips - an early nanotech story, if you like. When it comes to the human body, though, I'll admit that I'm more interested in the microbiome than I am nanotech, although there's a certain crossover potential here that's not entirely fully exploited. I say that knowing that the current research on the microbiome simply wasn't available to Bear at time of writing, back in the 1980s, so he certainly can't be blamed for that.
It makes me wonder, though, if anyone's done a study in speculative fiction on how nanotech engages over time with the microbiome. Honestly, I doubt it. It might be up to me... I'll add it to the list of papers I want to write!
It makes me wonder, though, if anyone's done a study in speculative fiction on how nanotech engages over time with the microbiome. Honestly, I doubt it. It might be up to me... I'll add it to the list of papers I want to write!
November 23, 2022
5 Stars! After hearing of Greg’s passing, I decided to try one of his stories. I chose this one and am very pleased. It is extremely well written and I enjoyed it very much. Looking forward to reading more of his work.
Quotes:
- “Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn’t possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you’re ready for mature love—leaving you afraid you’ll forever blow that chance, lose the prize.”
- “There is only so much change anyone can stand: innovation, yes, but slow application. Don’t force. Everyone has the right to stay the same until they decide otherwise.”
- “The great shall mimic the small.”
Read:
11/21/22
Quotes:
- “Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn’t possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you’re ready for mature love—leaving you afraid you’ll forever blow that chance, lose the prize.”
- “There is only so much change anyone can stand: innovation, yes, but slow application. Don’t force. Everyone has the right to stay the same until they decide otherwise.”
- “The great shall mimic the small.”
Read:
11/21/22
July 18, 2024
(This review is for the short story)
Great little piece about the wonders and dangers of biohacking. Starts out fairly hopeful, showing of all the good that can be done, but then ends with
Great little piece about the wonders and dangers of biohacking. Starts out fairly hopeful, showing of all the good that can be done, but then ends with
December 28, 2025
Review for novella Blood music
by Greg Bear
Read Dec 2025
Excellent, short novella.
Micro-spoiler:
It can be read as an analogy or a very different take on
Summery and opinion:
by Greg Bear
Read Dec 2025
Excellent, short novella.
Micro-spoiler:
It can be read as an analogy or a very different take on
Summery and opinion:
January 4, 2026
A short science fiction contemporary story from 1983, back when handling medical instrumentation and scientific research was still a highly manual effort.
Written from the perspective of obstetrician Edward Milligan, who examines his friend Virgil Ulam at his own insistence. The character of Virgil Ulam is possibly inspired by the scientist Stanisław Ulam, known from his work on thermonuclear explosions, and this is also the thematic background of the story: weapon design. The tension is built up from the perspective of the possibility of the human body being neorophysiologically captured by a "galaxy" of cells showing emergent conscious behaviour and (mis)directing the host body.
Written from the perspective of obstetrician Edward Milligan, who examines his friend Virgil Ulam at his own insistence. The character of Virgil Ulam is possibly inspired by the scientist Stanisław Ulam, known from his work on thermonuclear explosions, and this is also the thematic background of the story: weapon design. The tension is built up from the perspective of the possibility of the human body being neorophysiologically captured by a "galaxy" of cells showing emergent conscious behaviour and (mis)directing the host body.
September 23, 2025
4.25 stars
Didn't feel like taking notes this time around. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of the short story. I found it on YouTube. The story is well written and perfectly builds up the dread of the inevitable. My only complaint is the use of rape as a metaphor of the nanobots taking over. Use your big brain and think of another way to describe what's happening. It feels lazy to me when that's the method used as a description.
Didn't feel like taking notes this time around. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of the short story. I found it on YouTube. The story is well written and perfectly builds up the dread of the inevitable. My only complaint is the use of rape as a metaphor of the nanobots taking over. Use your big brain and think of another way to describe what's happening. It feels lazy to me when that's the method used as a description.
November 3, 2025
So much fun. Horror tinted Sci-fi is my favorite.
Meek nerd injects himself with what would be proto-type Nanobots (first use in Sci-fi).
Sounds like the Origin of a classic superhero. What could go wrong ... apparently everything.
Now to hunt down the novel..
Meek nerd injects himself with what would be proto-type Nanobots (first use in Sci-fi).
Sounds like the Origin of a classic superhero. What could go wrong ... apparently everything.
Now to hunt down the novel..
November 22, 2025
Won the 1983 Nebula and 1984 Hugo award for best novelette.
Impressive and thought provoking. Left me with the same wonder I felt at the end of the film The Incredible Shrinking Man.
I listened to the audiobook available on YouTube.
Impressive and thought provoking. Left me with the same wonder I felt at the end of the film The Incredible Shrinking Man.
I listened to the audiobook available on YouTube.
January 14, 2022
http://nicholaswhyte.info/sf/bmu.htm
A friend of mine gave me a copy of the novel length expansion of “Blood Music” shortly after it was published. I did not really get it; the plot seemed to me to start from a very good idea and degenerate into silliness. The original short story, however, is excellent. Brian Aldiss once characterised good sf as not so much “What if...” as “My God! What if...” [actually it was Philip K. Dick] and “Blood Music” is firmly in that category.
The story begins with a classic first sentence, “There is a principle in nature I don't think anyone has pointed out before”. This leads to a couple of paragraphs of exposition of the prinicple that micro-organisms die all the time and it doesn't really matter, followed by the couplet: “That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.”
Our narrator, Edward Milligan, unexpectedly meets up with his old friend Vergil Ulam, who has succeeded in developing intelligence in bacteria by unlocking the information processing potential of RNA molecules. He transfers the intelligent RNA into his own white blood cells, and now finds his body being changed from within as the cells take over. Terrified by the potential dangers of Vergil's research, Edward kills his friend.
But it is too late. Vergil has managed to infect Edward with his geneticially modified microbiota, and Edward in turn infects his wife Gail. The story ends as the couple find their bodies completely under the control of the newly evolved intelligences, now expanding to take over the rest of the human world, and come to terms with a new mode of existence.
Basically Bear has taken two very ancient sf themes, the story of man's creation gone wrong (which dates back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and the evolutionary transcendence theme which is surprisingly common among hard sf writers, most notably in Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End; and he has united them with his own biological speculations (slightly foreshadowed, in typically gloomy style, by Brian Aldiss' short story “Gene Hive” aka “Journey to the Interior”) to create a cracking piece of narrative.
And the quality of the narrative is one reason I can't easily place “Blood Music” in the nanotechnology or cyberpunk traditions which it is said to have kicked off. Other novels I have read dealing with the theme of nanotechnology include Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Ian McDonald's Necroville, Kathleen Anne Goonan's Crescent City Rhapsody. Not one of these books has a really satisfying ending, and since I know that McDonald and Stephenson at least can write real endings in their other books, it would seem that the gosh-wow factor of describing nanotechnology has a tendency to distract the author from conventional narrative guidelines - my fading memory of the novel version of Blood Music bears this out.
Orson Scott Card, in his introduction to the story in Future on Ice, argues that Bear cannot be a cyberpunk writer because he is an “all-around nice guy”, the implication being that real “cyberpunk” authors are not. Card's antipathy to cyberpunk is well known, so this is not a hugely convincing argument. However, given that no less than Bruce Sterling hailed “Blood Music” as one of the founding texts of cyberpunk, there is a case to answer. It seems to me though that true cyberpunk, when it deals with biological engineering, is exhilarated by the possibilities of a new technology under human control. The moral of “Blood Music” is ambiguous; in so far as Vergil Ulam's invention of molecular nanotechnology leads to new possibilities of human existence, this can only come about through an awful compromise with what used to be the components of our own bodies.
“Blood Music” gets it just right in terms of characterisation, pace and an ending which raises even further questions about the universe. Strongly recommended.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3835938.html
Coming back to it twenty years later, I was again impressed with the pace and skill of the story-telling, and the convincing portrait of what is frankly a rather stereotypical character in Vergil Ulam. I am a bit less annoyed by cyberpunk and stories about nanotechnology now - I must have got out of bed on the wrong side that morning.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of the novel length expansion of “Blood Music” shortly after it was published. I did not really get it; the plot seemed to me to start from a very good idea and degenerate into silliness. The original short story, however, is excellent. Brian Aldiss once characterised good sf as not so much “What if...” as “My God! What if...” [actually it was Philip K. Dick] and “Blood Music” is firmly in that category.
The story begins with a classic first sentence, “There is a principle in nature I don't think anyone has pointed out before”. This leads to a couple of paragraphs of exposition of the prinicple that micro-organisms die all the time and it doesn't really matter, followed by the couplet: “That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.”
Our narrator, Edward Milligan, unexpectedly meets up with his old friend Vergil Ulam, who has succeeded in developing intelligence in bacteria by unlocking the information processing potential of RNA molecules. He transfers the intelligent RNA into his own white blood cells, and now finds his body being changed from within as the cells take over. Terrified by the potential dangers of Vergil's research, Edward kills his friend.
But it is too late. Vergil has managed to infect Edward with his geneticially modified microbiota, and Edward in turn infects his wife Gail. The story ends as the couple find their bodies completely under the control of the newly evolved intelligences, now expanding to take over the rest of the human world, and come to terms with a new mode of existence.
Basically Bear has taken two very ancient sf themes, the story of man's creation gone wrong (which dates back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) and the evolutionary transcendence theme which is surprisingly common among hard sf writers, most notably in Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End; and he has united them with his own biological speculations (slightly foreshadowed, in typically gloomy style, by Brian Aldiss' short story “Gene Hive” aka “Journey to the Interior”) to create a cracking piece of narrative.
And the quality of the narrative is one reason I can't easily place “Blood Music” in the nanotechnology or cyberpunk traditions which it is said to have kicked off. Other novels I have read dealing with the theme of nanotechnology include Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Ian McDonald's Necroville, Kathleen Anne Goonan's Crescent City Rhapsody. Not one of these books has a really satisfying ending, and since I know that McDonald and Stephenson at least can write real endings in their other books, it would seem that the gosh-wow factor of describing nanotechnology has a tendency to distract the author from conventional narrative guidelines - my fading memory of the novel version of Blood Music bears this out.
Orson Scott Card, in his introduction to the story in Future on Ice, argues that Bear cannot be a cyberpunk writer because he is an “all-around nice guy”, the implication being that real “cyberpunk” authors are not. Card's antipathy to cyberpunk is well known, so this is not a hugely convincing argument. However, given that no less than Bruce Sterling hailed “Blood Music” as one of the founding texts of cyberpunk, there is a case to answer. It seems to me though that true cyberpunk, when it deals with biological engineering, is exhilarated by the possibilities of a new technology under human control. The moral of “Blood Music” is ambiguous; in so far as Vergil Ulam's invention of molecular nanotechnology leads to new possibilities of human existence, this can only come about through an awful compromise with what used to be the components of our own bodies.
“Blood Music” gets it just right in terms of characterisation, pace and an ending which raises even further questions about the universe. Strongly recommended.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3835938.html
Coming back to it twenty years later, I was again impressed with the pace and skill of the story-telling, and the convincing portrait of what is frankly a rather stereotypical character in Vergil Ulam. I am a bit less annoyed by cyberpunk and stories about nanotechnology now - I must have got out of bed on the wrong side that morning.
February 6, 2025
I have End of Evangelion to thank for finding this gem. Prowling through the wiki, Blood Music was referenced as being quite similar to that famous shitshow of a film. Finally, Evangelion is good for something - helping me find genuinely good stories.
And this story, boy, this one was something. Creepy but fascinating. A story that hooks you in from the moment we discover that Vergil(silly Virgil, he doesn't know the definition of 'consequences') injected himself with computer chip-like cells. What follows on from that is the distastours consequences of experimenting on yourself with superintelligent cells.
The ending of the story is reminiscient of EoE: in EoE they turned to LCL in a collective conciousness. Something similar happens in Blood Music: not just humanity but rivers and oceans become 'infected' through the blood.
The idea of our own cells taking control of our body, over what makes us 'us' is terrifying and makes for bloody good sci fi. This will make an excellent pick for Paper Wings :)
And this story, boy, this one was something. Creepy but fascinating. A story that hooks you in from the moment we discover that Vergil(silly Virgil, he doesn't know the definition of 'consequences') injected himself with computer chip-like cells. What follows on from that is the distastours consequences of experimenting on yourself with superintelligent cells.
The ending of the story is reminiscient of EoE: in EoE they turned to LCL in a collective conciousness. Something similar happens in Blood Music: not just humanity but rivers and oceans become 'infected' through the blood.
The idea of our own cells taking control of our body, over what makes us 'us' is terrifying and makes for bloody good sci fi. This will make an excellent pick for Paper Wings :)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 23, 2024
This is a review of the story, not of the book of the same name!
A mad scientist is able to make smart beings at the level of molecules. Obviously, it ends up destroying our world.
A very different story from Hardfought, by the same author published on the same year: instead of a battle at the scale of the universe, we have battles within the human body (worse than the Phagocyte vs viruses battles.)
Fast paced, short, interesting, smartly written and with a safe dosage of crackpotery. A quick and enjoyable read.
A mad scientist is able to make smart beings at the level of molecules. Obviously, it ends up destroying our world.
A very different story from Hardfought, by the same author published on the same year: instead of a battle at the scale of the universe, we have battles within the human body (worse than the Phagocyte vs viruses battles.)
Fast paced, short, interesting, smartly written and with a safe dosage of crackpotery. A quick and enjoyable read.
October 24, 2024
“Blood Music” is a short story by Greg Bear which won a Nebula and Hugo Award.
It was later expanded into a novel with the same title.
Genetic scientist Vergil Ulam thought outside the box once too often and, when the company he worked for closed his research down, is paying a heavy price.
The story was written before nanotechnology was a thing but, essentially, this is about creating new life without considering the consequences.
It's solidly written and very interesting but lacks any real empathy.
3 Stars.
It was later expanded into a novel with the same title.
Genetic scientist Vergil Ulam thought outside the box once too often and, when the company he worked for closed his research down, is paying a heavy price.
The story was written before nanotechnology was a thing but, essentially, this is about creating new life without considering the consequences.
It's solidly written and very interesting but lacks any real empathy.
3 Stars.
July 16, 2024
The original short story is better, has the fantastic line: "Every square inch of this planet will teem with thought." The novel is kinda meh but bumped up for importance, the first gray goo scenario.
August 3, 2022
Wow, what a ride. This was absolute gripping.
February 26, 2023
Very short story referenced by Vernor Vinge in his Singularity paper. Nice idea, nicely executed.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews