In The Forge of God (1987), the Earth’s demise is an inevitability. Greg Bear’s novel of apocalypse was published when he was establishing himself as a leader of American hard SF in the 1980s. This is a sophisticated, chillingly believable, and scientifically rigorous view of the end of the world. Crucially, Bear is as interested in human beings as he is in the devastation that unfolds. Knowing the outcome does not undermine the emotive power of his human-scale story.

While humankind makes a stab at self-preservation, this novel confronts the chilling idea of a broadly hostile universe for which Earth is woefully unprepared. In a way, though, The Forge of God is oddly uplifting - dealing as it does with the vanishing beauty of our world and that sturdy cliché, the strength of the human spirit. 

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