Queen of Angels by Greg Bear

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Greg Bear's Queen of Angels.

The Short of It

Plot: Overlapping stories show our world fundamentally transformed and stratified by a combination of nanotechnology, AI, and surveillance. 

Page Count: 420

Award: Prequel to 1993 Nebula winner Moving Mars

Worth a read: No.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail?
Technobabble: Astounding.

Review: A truly miserable read. Densely packed with trite innovations and a tepid future to go with them. At every turn does nothing more than recall better works by better authors. Only one of the many stories here is even remotely interesting - that of an AI gaining self-awareness - but even that drags like a dragon but with none of the flames. Character work is dreadful, pacing is abysmal, and word building is drab. Books like this change this from a reading challenge to a masochistic slog.

The Whatever of It

Spoiler Free!

What is there to say about a book that I hated this much?

Instead of wasting your time with this drivel, I'm going to offer you a vague outline of each of the four storylines included here and then give a recommendation for a better work that addresses the same topic or theme.

1. A murder is committed in an era when almost everyone is either supremely well adjusted or psychologically fixed. The main character here is a cyborg policewoman.
• For murders in a world where it is unheard of, consider The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester.
• For cyborgs and augments, including murder investigation, look to Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan.
• For a different system of preventing crime, look to Minority Report by Phillip K. Dick.
2. A friend of the murderer from the first story tries to fit into a world that he feels has left him behind. He has not been psychologically conditioned and thus does not feel that he belongs.
• For someone falling further and further away from the evolution of humanity, consider The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
• For more on a psychologically fixed society, just read 1984.
3. A scientist has an experimental approach to psychology that involves diving into the minds of those being examined.
• For diving into the minds of others, go watch Inception. 
• Or read half of the books by William Gibson. 
• Some parts of the Bobiverse touch on this as well. And again, Altered Carbon.
4. A computer gains sentience.
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
• Murderbot Diaries.
• Ancillary Justice.
• Just so much stuff that's better than this.

This is the first of three books, the third of which won an award. I'll try to get through the next two, but I'm pretty mad at Johannes Gutenberg for doing this to me.

Update: So, Greg Bear just died, and I feel like a villain. I checked his works on Goodreads in the hopes of finding a highly rated short story or book as a bit of redemption. It looks like the vast majority of his most well known works stay below a four star rating. So, if you're a Greg Bear fan, please tell me where to look or what to read. I would like to have a more positive view of his works... and I need to read the next two books in this trilogy.

Is this worth it, Stranger?

And don't forget to read a book!