Sitrep

I will not start reading Eon by Greg Bear until I have finished reading the gripping, 746-page The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (Millennium, Vol 3) by Stieg Larsson. However, reading Larsson is interrupted and delayed by:

posting about the Time Patrol;
real life - daily meditation, weekly meditation group, reunions with former colleagues from two work places, a 50th birthday party (not mine), family outings, domestic chores, physical exercise, supporting the Fire Brigades Union in its campaign about pensions and the quality of their service.

Larsson, like Anderson, knew how societies work - modern state apparatuses are complicated and sometimes secretive, are lubricated by personal contacts and networks and can generate internal conflicts, for example when a police department investigates crimes committed by members of a clandestine group within an intelligence service.

In Anderson's The Avatar, a group of world politicians conspires to suppress significant information and to maintain their own power but we learn that such groups, although powerful, are not undefeatable.