The Collected Stories of Greg Bear

reg Bear is one of the greatest science fiction writers of the late twentieth century. His powerful voice combines the rationality of science with intensely passionate characters that can only be created by a writer who loves humanity. This collection contains Bear's earliest published fiction from the late 1960s and early 1970s as well his remarkable award-winning work from the '80s and '90s, plus all-new introductions written by the author. He's put every story into context for the reader, and provided some wonderful insights into the creative process. In a genre whose borders are shaped and defined by its short fiction, here is a collection from one of its finest practitioners.

Blood Music Analog, Stanley Schmidt, 1983 There is a principle in nature I don't think anyone has pointed out before. Each hour, a myriad of trillions of little live thingsbacteria, microbes, "animalcules"are born and die, not counting for much except in the bulk of their existence and the accumulation of their tiny effects. They do not perceive deeply. They do not suffer much. A hundred billion, dying, would not begin to have the same importance as a single human death. Within the ranks of magnitude of all creatures, small as microbes or great as humans, there is an equality of "elan," just as the branches of a tall tree, gathered together, equal the bulk of the limbs below, and all the limbs equal the bulk of the trunk. That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it. * * * It had been two years since I'd last seen Vergil. My memory of him hardly matched the tan, smiling, well-dressed gentleman standing before me. We had made a lunch appointment over the phone the day before, and now faced each other in the wide double doors of the employees' cafeteria at the Mount Freedom Medical Center. "Vergil?" I asked. "My God, Vergil!" "Good to see you, Edward." He shook my hand firmly. He had lost ten or twelve kilos and what remained seemed tighter, better proportioned. At university, Vergil had been the pudgy, shock-haired, snaggle-toothed whiz kid who hot-wired doorknobs, gave us punch that turned our piss blue, and never got a date except with Eileen Termagent, who shared many of his physical characteristics. "You look fantastic," I said. "Spend a summer in Cabo San Lucas?" We stood in line at the counter and chose our food. "The tan," he said, picking out a carton of chocolate milk, "is from spending three months under a sunlamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you. I'll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk in private." I steered him to the smoker's corner, where three diehard puffers were scattered among six tables. "Listen, I mean it," I said as we unloaded our trays. "You've changed. You're looking good." "I've changed more than you know." His tone was motion-picture ominous, and he delivered the line with a theatrical lift of his brows. "How's Gail?" Gail was doing well, I told him, teaching nursery school. We'd married the year before. His gaze shifted down to his foodpineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana cream pieand he said, his voice almost cracking, "Notice something else?" I squinted in concentration. "Uh." "Look closer." "I'm not sure. Well, yes, you're not wearing glasses. Contacts?" "No. I don't need them anymore." "And you're a snappy dresser. Who's dressing you now? I hope she's as sexy as she is tasteful." "Candice isn'twasn't responsible for the improvement in my clothes," he said. "I just got a better job, more money to throw around. My taste in clothes is better than my taste in food, as it happens." He grinned the old Vergil self-deprecating grin, but ended it with a peculiar leer. "At any rate, she's left me, I've been fired from my job, I'm living on savings." "Hold it," I said. "That's a