First novel syndrome alert.Bear has a cool idea: an entire planet's culture is based around what they can read of massive obelisks on which is written the complete history and sum of humanity's knowledge.Interesting questions arise.What are the obelisks? Where are the human beings that placed them there? Will anyone ever find a way to read the whole text (the obelisks are thousands of miles high).To answer these questions, an ex military general, a psudeo-Islamic servant, and a pseudo-Christianf...

The Book Genie picked an old paperback that I found at a Friends of the Library sale, and I can see why it was a giveaway. I could not last even my usual minimum 50 pages before giving up on this 40 year old Sci-Fi snoozer. NEXT!

Hegira (Kindle Edition) by Greg Bear A quick novella with a lot of suspense.Tighjtly written, and neatly woven. The characters are each quite well layered and have their own individual quirks and foibles. Our not so merry band of heroes set on a quest, but soon discover that the journey changed them each. The very end is, however, a bit contrived, but still does well.

review of Gred Bear's Hegira by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 15-17, 2018 This occupies that netherworld of bks that seem like fantasy at 1st but then prove to have an SF subtext. I've read Bear's fantasy entitled The Infinity Concerto (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) & declared it "dagnabbit-all-to-heck'n'tarnation excellent". I wasn't quite so fired up about this one but there's never a Bear bk that doesn't have substance. The epigraph beginning the bk consists of thi...

I read this a long time ago, probably in the early 80s, and I had forgotten what a good story it is. (Reading it has also solved one of those odd questions which has been plaguing me for some time now - which sci fi book had "fire doves" in it!). Having recently read Hull Zero Three by the same author, I can see similarities in the themes - a group of people in strange circumstances on a journey to find out the truth about their world. But Hegira is on a much grander scale somehow. The plot ratt...

A good, solid work, although very early for Greg Bear. I'm not sure he had quite found his footing yet as influences from Dune and the Riverworld novels was pretty obvious. Written in 1979, it tells of 3 mens journey/quest/hegira (meaning flight or migration) from their current areas to the ends of the earth, literally. The main character Kiril is a writer who has lost his beloved and there is a prophecy that our loved ones can be returned to those who make this journey. What they find on their

Not bad for 1979 (revised in 1987). I like the way Bear forces the reader to piece together the story. There is no elaborate description of the environment to interfere with the imagination. I'm not done with it yet.Some things I like:-The columns are tall and by inference, so is the environment. I imagine a Jupiter sized sphere entirely man-made with an encapsulated atmosphere.-The variety of societal mores. Some areas are very libertine, others conservative.-The way knowledge progresses geogra...

While mystery can be a good thing in science fiction, I feel like Greg Bear withheld a bit too much in this one. Too much is revealed too late, and the particulars of an otherwise intriguing futurescape feel rushed-- I didn't have time to really enjoy absorbing them, coming as late in the book as they did. I liked the characters enough to stick with it, though. All in all, it's an enjoyable read, even if it isn't one of Bear's best.

An all-time favorite (and I'm overdue for a re-read!). The story of an alien world colonized by humans whose origins are lost in myth and legend, except for the stratospheric monuments dotting the landscape. The higher you are capable of getting into the sky, the more you'll learn from the writings on the monuments. Fantastic sci-fi.

The story had a great premise and wonderful characters, but it felt too stretched out in the middle and too compressed at the end.

Strange novel indeed. It begins as a quest, owing a small debt to the likes of Conan stories, LoTR, and other similar sword/wanderer tales, but then it veres off into more metaphysical/philosophical terrain and ends up feeling like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The end reveal is somewhat perplexing and one that definitely benefits from being able to discuss its ramifications with other readers. To add to the overall strangeness, much of the novel is clouded in mystery, which is confusing and frustratin...

I went into this book with low to zero expectations. That proved to be a good strategy because the rather slow start and getting to know the people and world took a little patience. This is a very early novel, possibly the first for Greg Bear. My copy of the book shows it was originally written in 1979 and revised in 1987. I read quite a bit of Greg Bear in the 1980's and a smattering in later years but never this one. I was quite satisfied with the book by the end. This is not a book to reveal

A well-written, entertaining adventure. If you read a lot of sci-fi there won't be anything new, but I appreciate an author who can take familiar ideas and build an engrossing novel out of them (kinda like the same author did with Eon). I read it all in a couple days as it was paced perfectly so that there weren't any boring stretches; something interesting was always happening to the three main characters.It was a good book, definitely worth reading. It won't blow your mind or anything, but you...

This is an interesting and rather early work by Greg Bear. The story revolves around a pilgrimage (the Hegira is the name for the journey taken by Prophet Mohammad) and ends with a rather esoteric explanation of things. The ending seems somewhat hurried though the book as whole is a good and enjoyable read.

An enjoyable early SF novel from Greg Bear. Not perfect by any means, it comes across all too obviously for what it is, a short story/novella based around a fun concept that has been expanded to novel length with a lot of added ideas that don't always improve the result. Not the first SF novelist to do this...

This is a wondering story about a wondering journey. The cool sci fi stuff gets interesting at the end. I wanted there to be more at the end. He could have made the ending more fullfilling. I know that this is early work for Bear. It's got some good story telling but not the best. Still a fun mistical thriller. Bear's latter stuff, the talent in writting gets better. This was an easy fast read.

This is one of those novels where I appreciated the craftsmanship, but ended up not liking the story or the characters. Every sentence on every page felt like it was beautifully crafted, but it was like eating a vegetable you don't like, cooked perfectly.

This was the first Bear book I read and it was so long ago I need to re-read it to refresh my memory!

The third worst book I have ever read (Dreamweaver and Cloud Atlas are the other two). Perhaps I just had higher expectations for this author given how much I have loved his later works.

confusing as hell !

Since Greg Bear is one of my usual authors, it was interesting to see one of his early works. Not a bad book, with glimpses at the future B dispersed within.