Eternity was published by Warner Books in 1988, the sequel to Eon. The nuclear war that erupted at the end of the first novel has devastated Earth, but the Thistledown — the hollow asteroid — still orbits overhead, and the Way still extends infinitely through its seventh chamber. The sequel follows three converging storylines as different factions struggle over the future of the Way.
On post-apocalyptic Earth, Gaia (the recovering planet) has been placed under the protection of the Hexamon — the advanced civilization that originally built the Thistledown and now exists mostly within it. The Terrestrials resent their dependence on the Hexamon, and political tensions between the two groups drive much of the novel’s plot. Meanwhile, within the Way, a woman named Rhita — from an alternate universe accessible through the Way’s “gates” — seeks to travel to the Thistledown to deliver a warning: the Way must be closed, or it will eventually destroy the fabric of reality.
Bear’s physics in Eternity is even more ambitious than in Eon. The Way operates according to principles that bend and ultimately break the laws of conventional physics, and Bear’s descriptions of its impossible geometry — an infinite corridor with adjustable properties, containing gates to alternate universes — are rendered with a mathematical precision that gives them the authority of genuine speculation.
Collecting Eternity
First edition (Warner Books, New York, 1988): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$30
- Paperback editions: $5–$10