- Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (11 Nov 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857989023
- ISBN-13: 978-1857989021
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,059,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Greg Bear's SF career didn't really take off until Blood Music (1985), whose shorter 1983 version won the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella. Hegira is his first journeyman novel from 1979, already showing a fondness for colossal scale and boggling surprises, but slightly clumsy in the telling--"top-heavy with explanations", said the SF Encyclopedia--despite substantial revision in 1987.
Hegira is the overly apt name of a vast and evidently hollow artificial world moving on an immense journey to somewhere unimaginable. After countless generations in transit the inhabitants have only limited access to the knowledge of the "First-Born" builders, which is inscribed on the sides of 1,000-kilometre obelisks with elementary texts at ground level, advanced material higher up, and real secrets beyond the reach of balloon ascent. Later, in order to make more information available, an obelisk helpfully falls over and causes untold devastation. Meanwhile, brief glimpses of stars appear for the first time in the black night sky...
Driven by legends about what needs to be done when a loved one is frozen in mirror-skinned stasis, three pilgrims go seeking the Wall surrounding this segment of Hegira, beyond which lies the Land Where Night Is A River. Here the planet itself speaks and explains the very complicated history and cosmology behind the story of Hegira. Journey's end approaches, and "The stars were here to stay". It is colourful and readable, even if Bear's ambition clearly bit off more than his 1979 writing skills could chew. --David Langford
Book Description
A planetary romance by one of hard sf's great writers
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Saves the best till last,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hegira (Mass Market Paperback)
If you like Bears work then you'll like this. It has echoes of what later becomes Legacy, in the fleshing out of an alien world, of which Greg Bear excells at. The world is unique and described in detail but alot is left to the imagination, the characters are almost backward in their technology and so no hard science facts are revealled until the last quarter of the book when what I'm sure you will have pieced together about the nature of Hegira itself comes to light.Bear does grand science fiction on a grand scale and given a whole world to play with he works his usual intricate magic. Not the best Bear work by far but an enjoyable story of the far far future which kept me guessing right until the end, which is worth the price alone.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews) 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Splendid Early Novel by Greg Bear,
By John Kwok - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hegira (Paperback)
Without question, Greg Bear has been one of science fiction's best writers and prose stylists for decades. He has successfully written everything from hard core space opera to cyberpunk and fantasy. Here in "Hegira", he successfully combines elements of fantasy and space opera in a terse, riveting tale about the life-long search of the secrets behind the obelisks and the enormous world that is Hegira, inhabited by several intelligent civilizations, including humans, who have forgotten their interstellar space travel origins. Bear's prose is as finely crafted as an early Samuel Delany novel in this little gem of a novel. "Hegira" was well worth reading; without a doubt it is a splendid example of Greg Bear's early work.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good characters, good setting, but not much happening,
By Dave Deubler - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hegira (Mass Market Paperback)
This sci-fi fantasy by Greg Bear makes for good enough escapist reading, but while it's fairly entertaining and imaginative, it really has nothing else to recommend it. As the title suggests, the story follows three men on an extended trek across a vast planet, not so subtly named "Hegira". One of the main plot threads focuses on the question of what they're searching for, and what they'll do when they find it, but the payoff doesn't nearly live up to the long journey that precedes it. Bear creates an interesting geography, and a couple of mildly interesting social orders, but there really isn't much that could be called new. There's very little science, and the more creative ideas aren't really explained very well and come off as mere fantasies. Younger readers (say, mid-teens) should find this novel a quick, easy read, and may be intrigued by its imaginative setting, but it's doubtful that they'll understand the story's resolution any better than this reviewer did. This book's greatest strength is that the main characters are fairly well drawn (at least for a science fiction/fantasy) - Bar-Woten fleeing from his murderous past, Barthel worshipfully following Bar-Woten, and Kiril searching for his soul mate - but it's a pity Bear didn't find better use for them than simply journeying across this enormous planet. Another weak point is the treatment of female characters. Few as they are, they function entirely as objects of male desire, and seem to have no will or even life of their own: not exactly a useful lesson for young minds. In summary, some good characterizations and a fairly interesting setting simply aren't enough to carry this novel all by themselves; there's too little conflict, too little action, and too little plot. Perhaps no one will hate this novel, but it's hard to believe anyone will really love it, either.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An intriguing example of Bear's superb imagination,
By Mario - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Hegira (Mass Market Paperback)
This is one of my favorite Greg Bear books. It is set in a mysterious world where humans, many of whom live in barbaric medieval societies, study the texts written on huge obleisks hundreds of miles high. The higher you go, the more advanced the knowledge, so many build balloons and flying machines in order to learn more. Very interesting sci-fi concepts and as most of Bear's books, it gives us much food for thought and speculation.
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