Blood Music - Greg Bear Book Review

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"Blood Music"
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Review Summaries

"Victor Ulam is an average guy. He is tall, bespectacled, soft spoken. He is also a brilliant geneticist who, surprise, finds rules to be a hinderance to his work and therefore ignores them. Victor performs unauthorized experiments with introns, genetic material that does not code for protein synthesis. The bacteria colonies that Victor altered become very complex and well organized. Unfortunately, his employers get wind of Victor's extracurricular activities and he is summarily fired. Victor has 10 minutes to sterilize his lab under very close strutiny. In an ill-considered gambit to save his research, Victor surreptitiously injects himself with one of his bacterial specimens. In the short term, the results are positive for Victor. He loses weight, his eyesight improves, he gains confidence. He even gets laid. Ah, but the piper must be paid. These little critters are smart and now they have some trillions of cells in their small universe; cells that can be taught. In time, these sentient cells discover Victor, their god. Then they discover that Victor is not a god. Bear entertains a wonderful hypothesis that the laws of physics are influenced by the perceptions of the consciousnesses that inhabit the universe. The spreading smart microbes skew the bellcurve of perception as an unimaginable number of them come to sentience. Will the physical template of the universe change to accommodate them? This was the first of Bear's novels that I ever read and it got me hooked. He is a fantastic speculative author and Blood Music is a great read."
Greg Careaga, Resident Greg Bear Scholar

"A new kind of life is created when a scientist goes too far in messing around with DNA. This is a great, kind of creepy read that gets a little strange near the end."
Eric Terrell, Resident Greg Bear Scholar

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Overall Review

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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
Descript. of chases or violence - 10%
planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 30%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 20%
Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 40%

Tone of book - cynical or dry-wit
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - science fiction story
Lifeform altered? Yes
Kind of alteration: - Scientifically turned into another lifeform
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book

Main Character
Identity: - Male
Profession/status: - scientist
Age: - 20's-30's
Eccentric: Yes - obsessed
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events? Yes
How sensitive is this character? - sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence - Very much smarter than other characters
Physique - healthy but a geeky weakling

Main Adversary
Identity: - An "It". - an entire race
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - an above average amount - throughout most of the book.
How sensitive is this character? - hard edged
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Average intelligence
Physique - average physique

Setting
Earth setting: - 20th century - current (early 21st century)
Takes place on Earth? Yes

Style
Person? - mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death? - moderately detailed references to deaths
scientific jargon? (SF only) - a lot of techical jargon
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references only
How much dialogue? - significantly more dialog than descript - significantly more descript than dialog

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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).

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