Although, I think a reader would not miss anything great (except some of its ideas) if this book is left unread, considering there is a lot more good content out there.

So in Eon you get a big asteroid thing hanging up there in the sky which when they go and investigate they find it's bigger inside than it is outside. Eon is quite well written and the characters are developed to some extent but they never really come alive for me, perhaps there is too much plot and world building to cover to allow room to flesh out the characters.

Paragraph breaks vary according to the post I’m examining in the app reader, but there doesn’t seem to be a pattern; whether it’s a blogger using the classic format to edit or the block editor I don’t know, but even my own posts vary. This small world is dubbed "the Stone" by the Americans, "the Potato" by the Soviets, “the Whale” ( 鲸) by the Chinese and “the Thistledown” by its absent makers.

Still, as an avid sci-fi reader I like reading the odd bits of technobabble as long as they do not overwhelm the book to the point of rendering it unreadable. These themes are further explored as we learn more about the rivalries between the two major factions of the "Stoners"—the more radical, pro-technology Geshel, and the more conservative and predominantly anti-technological Naderites, named in honor of 20th century consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader (who, in Bear's fictional future, was martyred in the nuclear war).

I am well aware that Eon has been written in the 1980s, before the end of the Cold War, and nuclear exchange between the two superpowers was still a possibility, albeit faint. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

Explorers of its interior discover that the end of the Stone's seventh chamber opens into “the Way”, a corridor that extends beyond the size of the asteroid. Not long after Eon, he wrote Forge of God and its sequel Anvil of Stars, both of which are a study of character development in the face of incomprehensible aliens and worldbuilding on a scale that is difficult to understand. But most sleepwalking Americans, at the time, had no clue of the Eurasian (and Eastern European) realities of the times.

This at a time when East-West relations are already precarious, and the Russians fear that the Americans would discover some kind of alien super-weapon to gain global dominance. She realizes that the asteroid is not from an alien civilization at all, but from Earth itself, 1,300 years in the future. As time is not an issue, let's not brief her fully ASAP so she can get to work, but let her experience this strange hollow asteroid herself, browse its libraries, appreciate its interior design computer programs. Bear emphasizes that just because one belongs to a group doesn’t mean one’s own identity and choices are subsumed into that group.