Hull Zero Three: A disorienting start, but satisfying conclusion

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't think I was going to like this book--the first 80 pages or so are basically impenetrable. At first the author writes in a style which causes us to experience the disorientation first-hand: "A jerk and an awful sound, like water rushing or blood spurting. Everything's dark and muddled. A little redness creeps into my vision. I'm surrounded by thick liquid..." And this beginning passage is an easy one compared to later when we get complicated and incomplete descriptions of the ship, jumping in anti-gravity rooms filled with human/machine cleaners, body parts, and indescribable stuff.

But as the main character, The Teacher, learns about his birth and purpose, the book picks up and I started to be invested. Deeply layered and embedded themes concerning innocence, language, the usefulness of knowledge, and guilt begin to coalesce. And the plot itself ain't too bad as it unfolds a detailed plan filled with complicated loops and twists to send a ship out to start human life in another star system. This I appreciate because my guess is our first attempts, whenever they might come, to seek out other worlds will be much messier than the usually slick SF space travel gimmicks we get: Star Trek's warp speed, Ursula K. Le Guin's and Orson Scott Card's ansible (instantaneous communication with earth), etc. Instead, my guess, is that Greg Bear has it about right as far as tone--dark, death, cyborgian ambiguity, messy, unpredictable.

My only *big* qualm is that Bear falls for the god/spiritual trope (something silvery) near the end as a plot device. It's not discussed much, but does explain a pivotal plot turn. Too bad as I think he could have simply continued to use the complexity of human motivation and identity to bring us home.

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