Eon (The Way, #1)

by Greg Bear

Robert Smith, tall and bird-boned with red hair and down-angled eyes that made him seem sad, an expert on asteroid formation; Hua Ling, the slender and intense senior member of the Chinese team and a plasma physicist who spent most of his time at the south polar bore hole; and Lenore Carrolson, a round-faced woman of fifty with gray-blond hair and a permanently friendly, sensual expression, heavy-lidded eyes surrounded by smile lines.

Hua Ling, the slender and intense senior member of the Chinese team and a plasma physicist who spent most of his time at the south polar bore hole;

Lenore Carrolson, a round-faced woman of fifty with gray-blond hair and a permanently friendly, sensual expression, heavy-lid...

The asteroid was longer on the inside than it was on the outside. The seventh chamber went on forever.

"Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status."

Once again, human history proved that the worst mistake possible in politics was underestimating one's opponents.

For Olmy, the notion of sleeping for eight hours at a time was at once peculiar and attractive. To have a long, blank period in one's life, every day; to have that time free of thinking and immersed in a kind of other-world nothingness. . . Talsit cleansing was much more effective, but he was amused to find a primitive part of himself still longing for simple sleep.