Blood music greg bear sparknotes

Blood Music Short Guide Blood Music by Greg Bear The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.

(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.

The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.

The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.

All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.

Contents Blood Music Short Guide ............................................................................................................. 1

Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 2

Overview ...................................................................................................................................... 3

About the Author .......................................................................................................................... 4

Characters ................................................................................................................................... 5

Setting ......................................................................................................................................... 7

Social Concerns ........................................................................................................................... 8

Social Sensitivity .......................................................................................................................... 9

Techniques ................................................................................................................................. 11

Literary Qualities ........................................................................................................................ 12

Themes ...................................................................................................................................... 13

Adaptations ................................................................................................................................ 14

Key Questions ........................................................................................................................... 15

Topics for Discussion ................................................................................................................. 17

Ideas for Reports and Papers .................................................................................................... 18

Literary Precedents .................................................................................................................... 19

For Further Reference ............................................................................................................... 20

Related Titles ............................................................................................................................. 21

Copyright Information ................................................................................................................. 22

2

Overview "Are you stoned?" I asked.

He stood his head, then nodded once, very slowly. "Listening," he said.

"To what?"

"I don't know. Not sounds . . . exactly. Like music. The heart, all the blood vessels, friction of blood along the arteries, veins.

Activity. Music in the blood."

"Blood Music" is a tale warning about the dangers of genetic engineering that echoes the cautionary themes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus (1818; see separate entry, Vol. 5). The novelette completely overturns the conventions of the Romantic protagonist as Vergil Ulam, the ostensible hero, defies his superiors, saves his experiment in intelligent "Medically Applicable Biochips," and by so doing leaves a fatal legacy of horror and misery to humanity. The "music in the blood" is the relentless activities of invaders of the human body that turn their creators into gigantic versions of themselves.

3

About the Author Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California on August 20, 1951. He grew up in many different areas of the world because his father was a Navy man who served assignments in Japan and the Philippines, as well as postings to naval bases on the Gulf Coast, East Coast, and West Coast of the mainland United States. His childhood experiences in diverse lands may account for the sensitivity to different cultures displayed in his fiction. It is difficult for young children to make friends when moving about frequently, and Bear's passion for reading may have its origin in lonely hours when he was young. He is an eclectic reader of science, history, and fiction.

His ambition to be a writer seems to have begun early, perhaps when he was eight years old, and Bear was writing in hopes of publication by the time he was a teenager. This precocious feat was achieved at fifteen when he sold a short story to Famous Science Fiction. Despite his early good fortune Bear, like many young writers, found it difficult to publish other works; his second professional publication did not appear until he was in his early twenties, but he attracted critical attention as one of science fiction's most promising young talents.

In the years since he has retained the respect of critics with his taut narratives and imaginative settings.

To supplement his income as a novelist, Bear worked as a journalist, contributing to Southern California newspapers during the 1970s and early 1980s. Bear is widely admired by his science fiction peers, and he has served in various posts for the Science Fiction Writers of America, including president from 1988 to 1990.The Science Fiction Writers of America have given Bear three Nebula awards: for best 1983 novella, Hardfought; for best 1983 novelette, "Blood Music"; and for best 1986 short story, "Tangents". The World Science Fiction Convention has twice given Bear its annual Hugo award: for best 1984 novelette, "Blood Music" and for best 1987 short story, "Tangents."

In 1983 he married a second time to Astrid Anderson, daughter of science fiction author Poul Anderson, and they have a son Erik and a daughter Alexandra.

4

Characters Blood Music's cast of important characters is small. Vergil Ulam launches the plot with his quest. He is thirtytwo years old and at the beginning of the novel overweight, bespectacled, troubled with health problems. He is a misfit at the Genetron lab and in society. He had been frustrated all his life, very gifted but never "good at gauging the consequences of his actions." Moreover, he is a flawed character ethically, having falsified university credentials to obtain his job. Yet he feels no guilt, believing that "the world was his personal puzzle," and "any riddlings and unravelings he could perform . . . were simply part of his nature." Vergil is somewhat the stock, "pure" scientist.

Minor characters offer perspective, illumine themes of alienation and power politics. Gerald T. Harrison, the Genetron boss who judges Vergil "very ambitious" but too wayward, cares less for research than he does for management. He represents the big- business system of control. Earlier the company had forced Vergil's lab partner Hazel Overton to destroy her sideline experiment because it was feminist and "socially controversial."

A notably more significant character is Dr. Edward Milligan, physician, Vergil's former college roommate. In the novel Edward functions as something of a stock character, the cautious man of science. He responds to the theme of change in the novel for he believes innovation is essential, but "everyone had the right to stay the same until they decided otherwise."

When noocyte-induced bodily changes strike Vergil, he goes to Edward for tests. At this point Vergil looks good, having lost weight and discarded his spectacles, but tests reveal skeletal and blood abnormalities, and more.

Edward wants Vergil hospitalized, but the stricken man refuses and toys with the notion of letting out his bath water to release noocytes throughout the city. It is then that Edward acts as "the last responsible individual" and electrocutes Vergil. He does it at scant advantage to himself, however, for he has already been invaded by noocytes.

At this point Dr. Michael Bernard, an expert in artificial intelligence and neurophysiology, emerges into prominence. As a fictional creation, Michael is remarkable, a blend of Vergil and Edward. He is interested in the situation, meets Vergil and contracts noocytes through a handshake. Knowing he has little time, Michael pilots his own plane to Germany and takes refuge in a friend's isolation lab. There he remains and observes the effects, which include ugly patterns on his skin and, like Vergil in his later stages, grotesque reshaping of the body.

In the later chapters Michael engages the reader as the interpreter of unfolding events in the world. Isolated, but aware of these through the media, he contributes commentary, including philosophical and thematic points.

5

Michael ponders the social dangers in scientific findings, including those of Pasteur and Salk, which perhaps saved murderers. As for himself, Michael relates to the "rational" and "noble" scientists. He also compares himself to Frankenstein, the fictional character who created a monster. "People were so afraid of the new, of change."

Philosophical considerations build, through the characters Michael and his visitor Sean Gogarty, a British professor of theoretical physics. Michael finds himself communicating with the noocytes on the topic of free will within a totalitarian group. "I'm afraid," he tells them, "you'll steal my soul from inside." Sean explains to Michael that change is inevitable, based upon the nature of reality. "There is nothing, Michael, but information." Eventually, Michael rejoices in the camaraderie as he is engulfed. He is at once individual and each member of his "research team." Michael now fears only that change is needed to accommodate so much freedom.

Major themes echo in lesser characters. Candice Rhine, who becomes Vergil's lover, breaks through Vergil's social ineptness. She specifically overcomes his long-standing reticence with women. He thinks of her in terms of a successful experiment; she is soon the unwary victim of his.

April Ulam, Vergil's mother, provides another perspective, that of parent and son. She is vital, enigmatic, and generally calm on learning of her son's noocytes. April raises points that would occur to many readers, bringing out some subtle themes. Alienated by the idea of "intelligent germs," she calls them nonsense. When Vergil declares their fascination and importance to him, April voices a popular opinion: "Not when I see the world in the shape it's in today, because of people with your intellectual inclinations." Lab people daily come up "with more and more doomsday."

April's reaction to the ongoing noo cyte transformation of California is a metaphor for the acceptance of the inevitable. She willingly approaches the burgeoning mass to seek Vergil, accompanied by brothers John and Jerry Olafsen, blue-collar workers. In contrast to these types stands Suzy McKenzie, who declines to submit.

Mentally "slow," Suzy has a special chemistry and cannot be readily transformed, a fact the noocytes know. With all other New York City residents "absorbed," she struggles with isolation, but finally yields happily.

6

Setting The setting for "Blood Music" is sketchy, apparently a common, undistinguished American city where the principal characters live in apartments, and this ordinariness of place may well be a deliberate authorial device to heighten the reader's identification with the horror inherent in the story. The acts with terrible consequences committed by Vergil occur in a community familiar to the novelette's audience; their homes, their apartments, and their streets could be the setting for the beginning of the end of humanity and its collective aspirations.