City at the end of time

In a post-human future, one city, guarded by reality generators and surrounded by the terrible maelstrom of Chaos, is the sole bastion of order. In our time, three people who can alter the course of fate, a murky past, and the dreams of a decaying city at the end of time are brought together by a newspaper ad and into the hands of collectors of their kind. Back in the future, the strange characters include keepers and the Librarian, who seek to protect history, and others who welcome Chaos. As the lines of fate and possibility collapse toward inevitability, the three fateshifters resort to the tenuous protection of a Seattle warehouse full of books as a storm that threatens to destroy everything approaches. If the trio survives and holds onto memory through the disaster, memory will begin again, the long decay of reality will end, and mysteries will be solved in the eye of the storm. Fascinating.--Schroeder, Regina Copyright 2008 Booklist

Starred Review. In his triumphant return to large-scale SF, Nebula and Hugo-winner Bear (Quantico) links three young drifters in present-day Seattle with an unimaginably distant future. When the drifters answer an odd newspaper advertisement, they soon find themselves caught up in a war between mysterious and powerful forces. Two not-quite-humans, creations of a million-year experiment, have discovered that their ancient fortress/city, perhaps the last refuge of intelligence in a dying universe, is about to fall before the onslaught of chaos. They have been chosen by beings evolved far beyond mere matter to undertake a dangerous mission to preserve the universe's last vestiges of consciousness. Somehow the two groups engage in telepathic communication despite the eons that separate them. Something of an homage to William Hope Hodgson's classic The Night Land, this complex, difficult and beautifully written tale will appeal to sophisticated readers who prefer thorny conundrums to fast-paced action. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.

Bear (Darwin's Radio; Blood Music), five-time winner of the prestigious Nebula Award, has written a dreamlike tale that interweaves cutting-edge cosmology theory, creation mythology reminiscent of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the Librarian and library of Jorge Luis Borges's classic short story "The Library of Babel." Spinning between the two spools of contemporary Seattle--in the present universe aged ten billion years and the Kalpa, a reality that exists 100 trillion years ahead in a future universe--Bear develops the stories of four young people embedded in an epic 100 trillion years long as they interact with a malevolent godlike being and overwhelming chaos while connecting the present with the future and acting as channels for the rebirth of the universe. Plunging readers into a visceral experience of cosmological theory and the big creation stories of mythology, this challenging and imaginative work will receive critical attention. Recommended for public and academic libraries where intelligent speculative fiction circulates.--Sara Rutter, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa Lib., Honolulu (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Eschatological fantasy from Bear (Quantico, 2007, etc.). One hundred trillion years from now, an entity known as the Typhon, or Chaos--the distinction isn't clear--lazily absorbs what remains of the universe; only the city Kalpa survives, watched over by the near-omniscient but distracted Librarian. In a Seattle-like city in a time similar to our own, Ginny Carol flees from sinister pursuers and takes refuge in a vast warehouse full of books, some readable, most not, presided over by enigmatic bibliophile Conan Arthur Bidewell. Ginny carries a mysterious jewel called a sum-runner; she dreams of the remote future, of a city named Kalpa and a young woman explorer named Tiadba. Soon, Jack Rohmer arrives at the warehouse; he too carries a jewel and dreams of Kalpa, and of a young warrior named Jebrassy. Ginny and Jack have the ability to move through alternate realities, but both are finding their choices increasingly restricted. In Kalpa, meanwhile, the Librarian creates Tiadba and Jebrassy out of primordial matter, gives them some companions and sends them off into Chaos. More people arrive at the warehouse: some witches, some cats, Daniel Patrick Iremonk--he can cross alternate worlds by moving from body to body, ejecting the current occupants as he goes--with his evil nemesis, Max Glaucous, sometime agent of the Chalk Princess. Yes, it really is that affectless and unintelligible. Somehow, all this will save the universe, or maybe start a new one, but trillions of--no, wait--hundreds of pages later, you still won't care. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In a post-human future, one city, guarded by reality generators and surrounded by the terrible maelstrom of Chaos, is the sole bastion of order. In our time, three people who can alter the course of fate, a murky past, and the dreams of a decaying city at the end of time are brought together by a newspaper ad and into the hands of collectors of their kind. Back in the future, the strange characters include keepers and the Librarian, who seek to protect history, and others who welcome Chaos. As the lines of fate and possibility collapse toward inevitability, the three fateshifters resort to the tenuous protection of a Seattle warehouse full of books as a storm that threatens to destroy everything approaches. If the trio survives and holds onto memory through the disaster, memory will begin again, the long decay of reality will end, and mysteries will be solved in the eye of the storm. Fascinating. Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

Bear (Darwin's Radio; Blood Music ), five-time winner of the prestigious Nebula Award, has written a dreamlike tale that interweaves cutting-edge cosmology theory, creation mythology reminiscent of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces , and the Librarian and library of Jorge Luis Borges's classic short story "The Library of Babel." Spinning between the two spools of contemporary Seattle—in the present universe aged ten billion years and the Kalpa, a reality that exists 100 trillion years ahead in a future universe—Bear develops the stories of four young people embedded in an epic 100 trillion years long as they interact with a malevolent godlike being and overwhelming chaos while connecting the present with the future and acting as channels for the rebirth of the universe. Plunging readers into a visceral experience of cosmological theory and the big creation stories of mythology, this challenging and imaginative work will receive critical attention. Recommended for public and academic libraries where intelligent speculative fiction circulates.—Sara Rutter, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa Lib., Honolulu

In his triumphant return to large-scale SF, Nebula and Hugo–winner Bear (Quantico ) links three young drifters in present-day Seattle with an unimaginably distant future. When the drifters answer an odd newspaper advertisement, they soon find themselves caught up in a war between mysterious and powerful forces. Two not-quite-humans, creations of a million-year experiment, have discovered that their ancient fortress/city, perhaps the last refuge of intelligence in a dying universe, is about to fall before the onslaught of chaos. They have been chosen by beings evolved far beyond mere matter to undertake a dangerous mission to preserve the universe's last vestiges of consciousness. Somehow the two groups engage in telepathic communication despite the eons that separate them. Something of an homage to William Hope Hodgson's classic The Night Land , this complex, difficult and beautifully written tale will appeal to sophisticated readers who prefer thorny conundrums to fast-paced action. (Aug.)