than compelling, but its portrait of the different responses of intricate, interlocking cultures is striking." Kirkus Reviews noted that the novel was "exceedingly hard to follow if you haven't read the original or don't recall precisely what occurred therein...Imaginative but overcomplicated, bogged down in purposeless information and irrelevant subplots, largely devoid of narrative tension. Another disappointment: the ideas are there, the discipline isn't." John Clute in The Washington Post commented that "The plotting is as joyfully contrived as good pulp plotting always tries to be...In short alternating chapters, Bear builds several segments of space-operatic plot towards his central revelations, and does so with competence and wit; but at the heart of Eternity lies a message that cuts deep into any presumption that telling a good story is the same thing as understanding the world. The universe, Bear says in this large, brave, courteous book, is greater than the tale." Palaeobiology It has been suggested by David Langford that the physical form of the Jart specimen as described in the novel is a tribute to the real-life bizarre fossil species Hallucigenia. See also Simulated reality Simulated reality in fiction References 1988 science fiction novels 1988 American novels American science fiction novels Novels by Greg Bear Fictional universes Artificial intelligence in fiction Fiction about consciousness transfer Fiction about immortality Genetic engineering in fiction Nanotechnology in fiction Transhumanism in fiction