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A review by jeremiah_mccoy
Eon by Greg Bear
5.0
This book was an odd. It is rare to come across a book that is hard to sum up in a single long sentence. The elevator pitch works for so many books, but not here. Eon was written during the cold war and you can clearly feel that in the book. The fear of Nuclear Armageddon was part of my childhood, and this book brought those memories back. The base premise of the book involves time travel but not in the way people think of it normally. I will put spoilers behind a tag.
The Stone (or Potato if you prefer) is actually an object from a potential future that shows the oncoming nuclear war, the aftermath and the society that forms after. The people of the present, which is the predicted future at the time the book was written and in our past, find this asteroid from the future and the evidence of their future history. They are not able to save their world from nuclear war and end up running afoul of the their future descendants and their own political struggles.
Ultimately I really liked this book. The ending is not as strong as the first two parts but it is good. I think a few lingering parts are not resolved super well, and there are some relationship stuff that feels mildly forced, but really those are super minor quibbles. This is a well deserved classic.
Spoiler
The Stone (or Potato if you prefer) is actually an object from a potential future that shows the oncoming nuclear war, the aftermath and the society that forms after. The people of the present, which is the predicted future at the time the book was written and in our past, find this asteroid from the future and the evidence of their future history. They are not able to save their world from nuclear war and end up running afoul of the their future descendants and their own political struggles.
Ultimately I really liked this book. The ending is not as strong as the first two parts but it is good. I think a few lingering parts are not resolved super well, and there are some relationship stuff that feels mildly forced, but really those are super minor quibbles. This is a well deserved classic.