Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Eternity (1988), a Science Fiction by Greg Bear: Summary

This is the first book by Greg Bear that I’ve read. The book picks up the story where the first book, Eon, left of. I didn’t read the first book, but had no trouble jumping right in. Not only does the author give us sufficient background about the characters, but also this book stands on its own. The 366-page book was published by Popular Books in 1989, an imprint of Warner Books, and first published in 1988. Greg Bear is American science fiction writer. The novel is a many-ingredient concoction of hard sci-fi, family, love, and friendship.


Eternity (1988), a Science Fiction by Greg Bear: Summary 

Recovered Earth, Independent Territory of New Zealand, A.D 2046
Lanier tried to look at the mourners and found only sadness and a nervous humility. The coffin leaned and creaked in the dirt. Lanier imagined Lawrence Heineman was finding his grave an uneasy bed. A priest of the New Church of Rome spoke Latin over the grave. Up there, in the sky, among orbiting precincts, the Hexamon conducted its business, yet had sent no representative from those august heavenly bodies; and indeed, considering how Larry had come to feel about the Hexamon, that gesture would have been inappropriate. Garry Lanier stood with Karen, his wife of almost four decades. Born in Hunan, China, of defected from England. She had less Western perspective. She had still had high hopes, still worked on her various projects. They had had expectations for the Recovery- how things had change- divisions, separation, and disaster. She was still of the faith, believing in future, in the Hexamon’s effort. 
Now they laid a significant part of their past in the damp earth, with no hope of second resurrection. Heineman had not expected to die by accident, but he had chosen this death nonetheless. Like Karen, their daughter Andia had carried an implant, Lanier had not protested. The Hexamon had come down to bless the child of one of their faithful servants. Then, irony had stepped in and left a permanent sorrow in their lives. Twenty years ago, Andia’s plane had crashed in the eastern Pacific and she had never been found. She was untraceable even with Hexamon technology. Most of Old Natives did not have access to implants; even the Terrestrial Hexamon could not supply everybody on earth with the necessary devices; and if they could have, Earth cultures were not ready for even proximate immortality.

Gaia, Island of Rhodos, Grater Alexandreian Oikoumene, Year of Alexandros 2331-2342 
Rhita Berenike Vaskayza was the daughter of inventor and mathematician Patricia Louisa Vasques (Patrikia). At eleven, Rhita was already aware of politics, but she was proving even more adept at numbers and the sciences. Her grandmother Patrikia told her Rhita the story of her arrival on Gaia. She had been young then, sixty years ago, when she had been given the chance to seek a gate in the Way that might take her to an Earth free of nuclear war, where Patrikia’s family might still alive. Before she died she wanted Gaia to take her grandmother back to the Way and from there might be able to go home to Earth. Rita studied physics and mathematics. That was what she carried of the sophe (shadow or ghost). Her father Rhamon, for the Hypateion’s pacifist philosophy, was a practical man, on occasion surprisingly resourceful and worldly.

Terrestrial Hexamon, Axis Euclid 
They had applied to create his son Tapi, seven years earlier, two years after Olmy’s official retirement. The algorithms showed that the Hexamon wanted to return to the Way. Olmy told his son his consent for incarnation was on record. Suli Ram Kikura had been born in city memory, incarnated much as her son Tapi would be. She had at least one more incarnation to go, her life was not hazardous, she might live for millenia before the problem become practical.

Earth 
The avatar of former Liutenant General Pavel Mirsky visited Garry Lanier and asking for Paticia Vasquez project find her way home. Garry knew Pavel as one of the Russians that invaded Thistledown. He asked Garry to take him to Thistledown and must speak to mathematician Konrad Korzenowski and Ser Olmy. Konrad Korzenowski was engineer and inventor of the Way. He had designed the Way, once attached to seventh internal chamber of asteroid starship Thistledown. Thistledown and two section of Axis City were still in a-ten thousand-kilometer orbit around Earth. 
The Way had briefly opened into empty space: it had almost immediately sealed itself, closing its infinity off from the universe forever. Those who had elected to stay within the Way-Pavel Mirsky among them-were more distant than souls of the dead, if the dead had souls. Mirsky informed there was a crisis coming to government that the Way was going to be opened again. Konrad Kozennowski was assassinated centuries before. Olmy had located those partials as boy, and later been responsible for reassembling and reincarnating Kozenowski, with the help of Patricia Vasques.

The Jarts 
The Jarts were the most formidable. Even captured, imprisoned, quiescent for centuries, somehow they could still kill. The Jarts had not been defeated, merely pushed far down the Way, and kept there by a series of powerful fortresses. The Jarts had a strong independent motivation routine. Several human were captured for their research.

Thistledown 
Thistledown orbited Earth every five hours and fifty minutes, as it had since Sundering. In some regions of the Earth, the asteroids bright star was worshiping even after decades of education and social engineering; humanity’s psychological yolk sacs could not be eliminated easily. Thistledown city had been designed and built after the asteroid’s launch, taking advantage of lessons learned the construction of Alexandreia. It was re-occupied by citizens from precincts. Some had been replanted with flora brought up from Earth. 
For sixty years, Patrikia had searched for elusive opening into a place she had called the Way. This gate had proven elusive, appearing at various times in various parts of the world only enough long enough to entice, never to be precisely located. Patrikia had died without finding it. Rhita now knew precisely where the gate was. Knowing about the gateway had robbed her of her own life. Her grandmother had imposed an almost impossible burden on young girl by setting the instrument to recognize her touch. She carried the clavicle and life-support machine in a large locked trunk, in a smaller suitcase, she also carried her grandmother slate and electric tablet for reading and writing upon. These were guarded by Logotorix, her Keltic bodyguard, in her cabin. 
Mar Kellen was an old soldier and gate police comrade, about Olmy age. He had been born during the later Jart Wars, the biggest push against the Way’s invaders before the Sundering, when beyond two ex nine-two billon kilometers down the Way. Mar Kellen studied the Jarts image. It was ugly. The terrasterial Hexamon, after decades concentrating on very different problems, was not prepared strategically or tactically to return the Way. According to Olmy’s expert advice, the Hexamon might survive its own foolishness. And all of the beings most likely to confront them were in the re-opened Way. 
Thousand of questions still danced on Ser Olmy’s mind: is Pavel Mirsky a human life or is he commanded from another concern. Mirsky was not a human and he was expediter. The Jarts found Mirsky’s presence very significant. Olmy was panic, he was a prisoner now, his personality fragmented and completely under Jart’s power. He quickly scanned his available natural memories and found most of blocked by Jarts inhibitors-could hardly understand the Jart’s last clear statement. 

Gaia 
Alexandreia was the center of culture and science in the Western World. Rhita enrolled the Mouseion, the university, research center, and library. Akademia Hypatheia  on Rhodo, Queen Kleopatra had thought she could provoke response, allowing Patrikia’s grandaughter to Mouseion. Queen sent Rhita Middle Eastern scientific expedition – a mission to open the gate. But her team was attacked by Kirghiz soldiers and the clavicle had been taken from her. They had been dragged out of beecraft, she didn’t know what happen to the gate, but darkness was coming. She was a mortal. Before the memory of capture was lost completely, blenched away by the false Rodhian sun, she hadn’t found her friends. A young Jarts asked her where she got the Objects. She has been several years in Gaia’s time. She was in the Way. 

The Way 
Rhita knew where she was now, Parikia had described it. Above the bubble stretched the wide band of the plasma tube, much fainter now, and the impossible region called the flaw, the singularity. The prism rode the flaw, like the Hexamon’s flawships.

Earth 
The Terrestrial Senate was in recess, its member scattered around Pacific Rim. One influential Terrestrial senator had lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Garry Lanier arranged for a meeting with him. Suli Ram Kikura and Karen accompanied Garry to Earth; their object was sabotage. Garry was in pain, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. A shadow crossed his face, Pavel Mirsky stood no more two meters away. Gary was dying, Mirsky was downloaded Gary into his implant. The breathing stopped. His implant was not empty, but Garry Lanier was dead. Lanier could not feel his body. He was between the Earth and Thistledown. There were no ectoplasmic bodies and souls. When a body was gone, he was truly gone- and the universe was empty, desolate, and shapeless. Unless at sometime the power decided to arrange a kind of resurrection- the Final Mind. The technician indicated the implant in Garry’s body contained female’s implant. Young woman in the implant, about twenty-one years old, was Andia. She was a Terrestrial citizen. Karen lost Garry but she found her missing daughter Andia.

Thistledown 
The man was Ry Oyu, chief gate-opener for Infinite Hexamon. The four million inhabitants of Thistledown were evacuated from the asteroids’s five populated chambers with every vehicle available in the Earth-Moon vicinity. The Way was open. Korzenowski wanted to destroy it, and prevent another way being made. He was making a sentimental journey. He wished to touch the surface of the Way before beginning the destruction. Ry Oyu located Rhita. She lent part of herself to the shadow of her grandmother. Konzenwoski believed Patricia have the strength to go home. Rhita was home with real flesh, real trees, and real father. The Way gathered in great coils and supercoils, eating itself like some ineffable burning fuse, and died. The time of avatars on Earth came to an end. Patricia Luisa Vasques was with her fiancé in California. Lanier joined Mirsky as the observer. The Final Mind needed many observers.

*****
June, 2016

Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia : Eternity (Keabadian) karya Greg Bear
Buku ini merupakan sekuel dari novel laris Eon karya Greg Bear. Penulis berkebangsaan Amerika yang telah mendapatkan sejumlah penghargaan dalam tulisan novel fiksi ilmiah. Sulit mengekspresikan kehebatan penulis, karya dan imajinasi yang sangat tinggi. Karya ini juga memopulerkan ilmu matematika dan fisika. Dibalik keseriusannya karya ini dalam menerapkan beberapa teori fisika dan matematika, penulis masih menyelipkan percakapan kelakar. Tokoh Kleopatra saja dikisahkan punya hobi Matematika. Tokoh-tokoh non manusia menganggap sepele dan lucu kelakuan mortal manusia dalam hal perselingkuhan dan masalah minum alkohol. Padahal dalam dunia non manusia mereka lebih fokus pada hal-hal besar – sains.

Didapati beraneka latar cerita, dari wilayah Asia, Afrika, Timur Tengah dan hampir mencakup wilayah bumi secara global, dan sang tokoh utama dalam menikmati hidupnya, berlayar hingga ke Borneo (Kalimantan). Sekelompok makhluk inginkan keabadian, tidak ada penuaan, kematian, perpisahan, bencana, dan perang. Sebuah proyek Recovery (Pemulihan) dan upaya proyek-proyek lainnya diciptakan untuk melawan masalah kedagingan,  tentu saja dengan pemikiran dahsyat dari para ilmuwan. Imajinasi dan fantasi dalam novel ini sangat tinggi dan fiksi ilmiah yang kuat, sehingga tidak mudah memahami novel ini; butuh tambahan waktu dari membaca normal.

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