City at the End of Time [Hardcover]

This is a work of 'quantum' fantasy, as cutting edge science on the nature of matter and the linkage between observer and observed blurs into a traditional fantasy quest. A party of beings from the city of Kalpa, at the end of time (in sections dated 14 zeroes) journey out into its surrounding nullity, and, in parallel, a group of quirky individuals (in sections dated 10 zeroes) from our time and before, all bearing potent talismen, end up in a Seattle in a universe shrunk into the environs of a bookshop. Of course, all these creatures/people are the same beings, at different points in time.

One of the quaint things about this book is how much books are valued in it. Alongside all the physics meets fantasy extravaganza, books get worshipped for their role in preserving experience. Borges and his idea of the infinite Library of Babel, in which all possible texts are present, get subborned into an important role in the stew of ideas floating around.

Yet somehow it all fails to catch fire. The writing is excellent and the ideas are certainly there, but the story just takes too long. There are too many switchbacks in the plot and the science/fantasy setting starts to wear thin as the same old mysteries and truths keep coming around again and again

Okay, only four and a half stars, but i opted for five not four because this is a truly magnificent, tho' difficult, book. Greg Bear has written some great SF; but i, at least, have found his recent work less exciting. This is Bear returning with a huge metaphysical vision, greater in its depth than even his 'The Way' series ('Eon', 'Eternity', and 'Legacy'). The story takes place in two time zones, now, and one hundred trillion years in the future in the eponymous city at the end of time; there is also a third arena, somewhere where there is no time, or, perhaps, all times - the chaos.
Bear has tried to imagine a universe where the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is given its most literal reading: "All the possible pathways a particle can take - or a human - an infinite number, spread out through all space and time, weak where improbable, strong where probable - all, in the end, collapsing into a single, energy-efficient path, the most resourceful and simplest world-line." I'm not sure what he means by "in the end collapsing into a single [...] path" because three of the important characters from our time have the ability to jump to alternate realities in an attempt to improve their lot. But one can't blame Bear for a bit of fuzziness here, no-one can make sense of quantum mechanics when it comes to what it means (that's according to Richard Feynman in his 'QED' - and who are we to argue with him?).
At the end of time reality as we know it has almost been destroyed by the chaos - an empty horrific meaningless force which subverts all that we know as sanity and order. Indeed, it has devoured all bar the final city - the city at the end of time. Time, within such quantum multiverse, is not fixed - start in the middle of a story, go back to the beginning, return to where you started but you'll find it's no longer the same. The essence of this story is how one of the mighty beings at the end of time - the sort of being Bear imagines a person who had had tens of trillions of years in control of their own nature might turn into - is struggling against the chaos. It's giving nothing important away to say that the alternative world jumping characters in our time are, unbeknownst to them, part of his struggle.
Any hack can tell a story with `amazing' beings in it: "His mind was godlike - as beyond ours as ours is to a beetle's." Bear is a truly great SF writer because he goes so much further, giving us the feeling that we really have glimpsed something of the incomprehensible. I was worried, as the story progressed, that there were going to be too many loose ends - beings and objects named but not described. It's true that not everything is tied up by the end, but nearly everything is. What i would have liked, tho', is a lengthy appendix with a more detailed break down of the metaphysics and ontology of this great created world.
Apart from that little quibble, this is a wonderful wonderful work of hard SF from one of our greatest living visionaries.

I have started and stopped reading this book several times! I just can't get into it!! I love Greg Bear, but this book just drags on with nothing happening for chapter after chapter. I can see how clever the story is and the amazing science and metaphysics the author is conveying, but I found myself completely uninterested in the characters and story. By the time of "terminus" in the book, I was wishing the universe would end in reality; just so I would not have to read any more of this book! I have never given up on a book before, and for it to be a Greg Bear books seems such a shame!!! Maybe I am a "fate shifter" and this book is "gobbledy gook" to me because I am in the wrong universe?