The Forge of God (Greg Bear)

The Forge of God
by Greg Bear

***
The Forge of God is a novel about the end of the world—more specifically, the destruction of the human race by an extraterrestrial species. It's a subject that's been approached before, in books like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and in movies like Independence Day and Mars Attacks!, but never before with the same kind of depth and impact achieved here by Greg Bear.

And that's part of the problem. The novel is awesomely realistic, but it's a realism that often overshadows content. There are long pages where seemingly nothing important happens, which is of course an imitation of real life but nevertheless an annoying distraction. Obviously Bear tried to take elements that would be normally seem unbelievable and make them appear plausible, and he succeeds, but at the expense of what might be generally termed ‘pleasurable reading.'

I won't describe the plot in detail, simply because I think the story is so minimal anything related to it will giving something away. All I will say is that there are moments in this novel that will leave you trembling, and other moments that will give you nightmares—or at least insomnia. (This happened to me, after reading a particularly chilling passage. I lay awake for hours that night...) Bear paints such a vivid and spine-tingling portrait of what it would be like to await death that it's a wonder he didn't experience it himself. He is especially good at capturing the claustrophobia of helplessness, of the knowledge that escape is impossible, by infusing these emotions with the primary cause of fear: hope. Like real people who have just been a part of a tragedy (or, in the case of the book, are awaiting tragedy) Bear endows his characters with feelings of despair combined with disbelief, wishful thinking, and final hysteria. The depth of his characters' thoughts transcend that of those in most other novels, and it's a pity that Bear was so obsessed with them that he neglected crucial elements he should have considered.

For one thing, the novel is too long. Cutting out a good hundred pages would considerably reduce the many uninteresting moments in the novel; it might even raise the story to new dramatic heights. This, combined with an array of bizarre events that remain inexplicable even at the novel's conclusion, is a weakness that prevented me from giving The Forge of God a higher rating.

This is still a recommended book. Special mention goes to the novel's ending. Bear has a way with endings that leave the reader with a powerful, lasting impression, and The Forge of God is no exception. I shut the book, closed my eyes, and hoped that what happened in this book would never happen in real life.