“Not With a Bang”: A Writer’s Look at Greg Bear’s 1987 novel Forge of God

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper"

• T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"
  

One lovely July evening, a scientist named Arthur sets up the telescope for his son Marty to view the stars. Before he has the chance to take a look, he gets a call from an astronomer friend, Chris Riley, who says Jupiter is missing a moon. His son tells him the same thing. He looks for himself, sees the hole where Europa belongs, unmistakable. Later that evening, Arthur's wife Francine asks him if the disappearance of Europa frightens him. He says it doesn't, though he is sympathetic about Francine's obvious fear. She compares it to a mountain suddenly missing, which Arthur says would scare him (because it is close to home).

That is the opening of Bear's apocalyptic story of alien judgment and subsequent destruction of Planet Earth. Arthur Gordon, the main protagonist, is the President's Science Advisor, but that is not his primary role. He is first and foremost a family man. His friend Henry, another renowned scientist, is a cancer patient who loves his wife and is heartbroken that she must watch him die. The geologist who finds the desert cone is with friends; they spend their time together, from initial adventure to forced confinement by government agents to staying with Stella when they could have gone their separate ways. Trevor Hicks, a former science writer turned novelist, starts his journey alone, but becomes involved with groups of scientists and government officials when he learns about the Guest (dying alien construct). Reuben, the 'spider aliens' representative, is also alone, but has strong ties to his family (he is grieving for his dead mother).

The only loner is the 'mad' President of the United States, who loses his advisors, his friends, and his wife when he succumbs to despair far too soon. In fact, it plays out like ritual shunning, in that he is only left alone after interventions by the people who leave him.

There are no riots, no screaming to the Heavens, no global anarchy. People try to figure out what it means that two alien objects, each containing a communicating life form, land less than three months after Europa disappears; they do this by talking it out with each other.

There are no right or wrong answers. Some people accept their fate with dignity, while others seek revenge. Both reactions are human.

We never find out why aliens who had no difficulties destroying a planet-sized moon in less than one week draw out Earth's destruction. The reader can only speculate as to the motives for designing biological machines to create a diversion while the planet-destroying fuse burns. Bear creates a mystery without solving it.

Yet, when I finished reading, I did not care about unanswered questions. I cared about the pacifists facing their doom in Yosemite. I cared about Marty's helpless rage, when he vowed to give Earth's destroyers a reason to fear humanity's children. The story starts with a father and son looking at the stars with unaccustomed fear and ends with a boy looking closer at the stars with a familiar fear. The world has ended, not with a bang but a whimper. Earth is gone, but humanity will never forget.

Bear jumps from viewpoint character to viewpoint character, yet he forges a strong emotional connection with each one. This way, he creates a global story that is also personal. I will remember this when I write.

This Is Not an Alien Love Story: a Writer Looks at Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris

Solaris is the story of humans attempting to understand a being so alien as to have no common frame of reference. Scientists attempt to understand its nature, only to fall victim to their own inner flaws.

Lem does not give the reader the alien's point of view at any point in the novel. The alien is the ocean of Solaris. At various times, it creates wave formations; they do not initiate contact, nor do they refuse. The alien is also responsible for the creation of the visitors to the Solaris station. These visitors are solid recreations of people who engendered the strongest feelings within the scientists assigned to study the entity. None of these alien outgrowths or byproducts reveals initial motivation of any kind. Physically, they are the creations of the alien entity, but their content is generated by the humans with whom they interact. Alien characters are a staple of science fiction, but the readers know they are alien through use of language and movement that demonstrate their confusion when faced with humans and hint at their motivation. Do they ask too many questions about table manners and troop movements? Do they smile when they should frown, or tilt their heads too far to one side? Does touch repel or fascinate them? These cues are all missing from the story and I think it is deliberate.

The viewpoint character Kris Kelvin is a psychologist, the latest in a long line and wide variety of scientists to study the living ocean of the planet Solaris. He represents humanity's values, the need to understand, to label and quantify, to solve mysteries because the unanswered question is far too threatening. He reads and refers to research done by others in the century since discovering a planet that defies the laws of physics. Solaris was uninteresting until it defied human reasoning by acting contrary to previous human observations, challenging scientists to find answers that explained this contradiction. The unusual orbit was explained by the living ocean, but the living ocean could not be quantified. It behaved neither as a wise spiritual being nor as an idiot savant, defying category. It could not be studied outside of its native habitat, confounding the biologists, ecologists, and others representing the hard sciences. Frustrated in their attempts to study its body, scientists turned to its mind.

Kelvin is the only character with an alien visitor who explains their mutual history and why this person was important. The other characters, driven to alcoholism, madness, and suicide through exposure to their visitors, kept their secrets. Kelvin faces his demons, confronts the reasons why his former lover's appearance causes him so much pain. This confrontation seems to change the nature of his visitor from someone who is a lesser reflection of the lover he remembers to his ideal of the person she would be had she lived to face this situation. Her content is still a creation of his mind, as her solution to her problem is suicide, the same solution his lover chose when faced with the pain of his rejection. There is nothing alien in her reaction; it is still his psychodrama.

Lem shows us the alien through negative spaces in the text, by showing us what it is not. He leaves us with the mystery.