Three Novels

Reading Eon by Greg Bear has led to a reconsideration of In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells and of Brain Wave by Poul Anderson. We need more science fiction about changes to human nature.

I do not have a copy of In The Days Of The Comet but would like to reread the passages in which the first person narrator interprets and explains the psychophysical effects of the cometary gas that had entered the Terrestrial atmosphere.

Although I had previously discussed Brain Wave, I have found significant details in the text that I had not noticed before. Anderson imagines a single change inside individual human beings, then deduces the effects on civilization.

"The change in human nature and human society which this would bring about was beyond even his imagination."
-Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977), p. 137.

There is a "Mystery" in Eon which I will post about when I have has a night's sleep and maybe done a few other things - although my impression is that it remains a bit too abstract and mysterious for a work of hard sf.