Greg (Gregory) Bear (1951– ) is an award-winning US writer best known for his science fiction short stories and novels. Bear’s first published fiction, “Destroyers,” appeared in Famous Science Fiction in 1967, when he was sixteen. The son-in-law of the famed SF writer Poul Anderson, Bear would go on to become one of the best-known hard science fiction writers of the 1980s, with such classics as Eon (1985) and Eternity (1988). He has won five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. Other novels include the Forge of God series, the Way series, Queen of Angels, and the duology Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children. He has most recently written several fascinating novels set in the universe of the Halo video game.
Bear’s activities outside of writing have included serving as the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1988 to 1990 and cofounding San Diego Comic-Con. His early artwork appeared as covers for the magazines Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He also serves on the board of advisers for the Museum of Science Fiction.
Bear has had a fascinating tendency to explore both the microscopic and macroscopic worlds to excellent effect. Novels such as Eon are dramatic showcases for Bear’s talent for cosmological space opera, including large-scale ideas like hollowed-out asteroids. But he has been equally adroit at balancing a sense of awe about the universe with interesting details of characterization and science aimed at exploring the life within us. Case in point: the nanotechnology in the classic Nebula and Hugo Award–winning “Blood Music,” first published in Analog (1983). Bear expanded it into a novel that was published in 1985. Much about the way Bear uses the science of transforming RNA molecules into living computers is groundbreaking and breathtaking all on its own. But “Blood Music” showcases how Bear, unlike many other writers, manages to incorporate the hardest and most cognitively demanding of hard science fiction premises into stories whose protagonists display far greater complexity than anything unliving. Bear clearly understands that human beings are just as difficult to understand as physics or any other branch of hard science. In linking science and humanity, “Blood Music” remains one of the most important stories hinting at the posthuman condition.