Line #6 Literature/TheWaySeries


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eon_gregbear.jpg]]
2
3	The Way is a science fiction series by Creator/GregBear, composed of three novels and a short story.
4	* ''Eon'' (1985)
5	* ''Eternity'' (1988)
6	* ''Legacy'' (1995, a {{prequel}} to Eon)
7	* "The Way of All Ghosts" (1999, a short story)
8	The series centers around [[BigDumbObject an asteroid called the Stone]] that suddenly appears on the galactic scene and enters orbit around Earth. However, as the NATO scientists who explore the Stone soon discover, the human-built facilities inside the Stone may not have come from ''their'' future, but that of an alternate Earth. The libraries in the Stone tell of a nuclear war that has yet to occur in their time, leaving said scientists the task of changing the course of their own future.
9
10	Oh, and the descendants of humanity are still living in the asteroid, down a corridor in the last chamber that extends '''beyond''' the end of the asteroid. And they've been waiting a long time to come back home...
11
12	Eon should not be confused with [[TabletopGame/{{Eon}} the RPG of the same name]].
13	----
14	!!Eon contains examples of:
15	* AfterTheEnd: With Earth plunged into a nuclear war, the NATO forces on the Stone convince the Soviets to work together to survive. [[spoiler:They eventually return to Earth to start caring for the survivors and dissipating the radiation.]]
16	* AlienGeometries: Patricia has a device that measures the value of Pi. Since the series deals with some seriously warped spacetime, a locally determined value for Pi (the ratio between the circumference and radius of a circle, which is not constant in curved space) is a physical property she suspects might be useful to know while testing and exploring.
17	* BadFuture: Patricia thinks the future history books found on the Stone foreshadow possible events in her own Earth’s future.
18	* TheBadGuyWins: In the end the Jarts manage to shoo axis city out of The Way.
19	* BigDumbObject: The Thistledown, and then an interesting case of a Big Dumb Object having an even ''bigger'' Big Dumb Object inside....
20	* BiggerOnTheInside: [[spoiler: The seventh chamber]] The cover description actually spoils that surprise.
21	* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Due to the lower gravity closer to the axis, the buildings in Thistledown were build larger as they got taller - like a golf tee.
22	* BornInTheWrongCentury: Patricia.
23	* ButNotTooWhite: Patricia reassures Paul that he is “the first non-Anglo boyfriend” she’s brought home to meet her parents. But her mother later thinks to herself that Paul looks “more Anglo than the others” because of his pale skin.
24	* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts?
25	* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: There have been reports of people seeing things around The Stone. They've been brushed off as hallucinations brought on by the stress. Some may indeed have been hallucinations, but Olmy and his Frant were scouting around.
26	* CostumePorn: When the rogue appears to Patricia a second time:
27	-->"She rolled over and rubbed her eyes. The rogue's appearance had changed; he now seemed to wear baggy pants and a cardigan sweater. His hair was styled in a loose shag, and a watchless fob hung from a belt loop, terminating in a hemline pocket in the sweater. [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture The rogue was in the height of 2005 fashion.]] She leaned forward in bed and examined his shoes. ''Huaraches'' and Japanese ''tabi'' socks completed his wardrobe."
28	* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: [[spoiler:After being shot in the head, Mirsky can feel the difference whenever he thinks with the replacement parts of his brain, and considers himself a different person from before.]]
29	* DeathIsCheap: Axis City citizens are granted two times brought back from the dead, and after that they spend eterity in city memory, a computer network in which people continue to live rich lives in and can still communicate with those who are still corporeal.
30	* DesignerBabies: An interesting twist - to make a child, two personalities are copied from the parents and merged in city memory, and the child grows in city memory. When they decide to become corporeal, ''they'' are the ones deciding how they want to be designed.
31	* DisposableWoman: Yefremova to Mirsky, and [[spoiler:Paul to Patricia]], pretty much.
32	* DrillSergeantNasty: During Mirsky's training.
33	* FailedFutureForecast: In the novel's version of the twenty-first century, the United States enters a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Also, The Berlin Wall still seems to be up, due to West German personnel on the Stone.
34	* FreudianTrio: The ''Zampolits'' have Belozersky as Id, Vielgorsky as Ego and Yazykov as Superego.
35	* GenderBender: Axis City citizens can pick whatever gender they want - or none!
36	* GenderRarityValue: A shortage of women on the Stone [[spoiler:after the Death]] leads to arming said women to protect against rapes.
37	* TheGhost: The Jarts never physically appear in ''Eon.''
38	* HiveMind: Sort of. Frants don't have names. When they are near another Frant, they share all memories with them. As a consequence, all Frants end up knowing everything every other Frant knows.
39	* HumanAliens: The Frants, but oddly enough many of the future humans avoid this by having artificially designed bodies.
40	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Time-related {{One Word Title}}s for the main books:
41	** ''Eon''
42	** ''Eternity''
43	** ''Legacy''
44	* InterserviceRivalry: Mirsky's men vs. the ''Zampolits''.
45	* IWantMyJetPack: Patricia says the second chamber, “just doesn’t look that much like the future.” She’s somewhat justified in this case, though, since the second chamber architecture was built to resemble twentieth-century Earth; technology in other parts of the Stone is more advanced.
46	* LegoGenetics: The Geshels like different bodies.
47	* LuckySeven: The seventh chamber of the Stone is the important one. [[spoiler:It is blown off the end of the Stone with seven charges.]]
48	* TheManBehindTheMan: The rogue says he's working for a very powerful person who is going to reward him surprisingly well. [[spoiler: In a not-bad-guy sense it turns out ''Olmy'' had hired the rogue.]]
49	* MrExposition: Chapters Three and Four are basically Lanier doing this for each chamber in the Stone.
50	* TheMole: [[spoiler:Takahashi.]]
51	* NobodyPoops: In axis city, you don't have to. Olmy's body is a self-contained system.
52	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Averted with Ralph Nader and Mikhail Gorbachev. One has to wonder if Nader "The Good Man" has been told of the book in RealLife.
53	* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: During the famine after [[spoiler:"The Death" i.e. WorldWarIII that broke out partly because of the arrival of "[[IHaveManyNames The Stone/Potato/Thistledown]]"]], as documented by [[FictionalDocument Gershom Raphael in his book "The Book of the Death"]], today's brother or sister could become tomorrow's dinner.
54	* NotQuiteDead: Mirsky is [[spoiler:shot in the head]]. We have to wait ten chapters before finding out he was [[spoiler:regenerated by the library’s emergency systems.]]
55	* NoTranshumanismAllowed: Subverted by the Neomorphs, many of whom have amazingly inhuman engineered bodies.
56	* NukeEm: Both the United States and the Soviet Union have this attitude.
57	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Belozersky and Yazykov.
58	* OneWordTitle:
59	** ''Eon''
60	** ''Eternity''
61	** ''Legacy''
62	* OutrunTheFireball: [[spoiler: As an offensive weapon, The Jarts open a gate into the heart of a sun. This is bad for The Way, and the Naderites have to escape it.]]
63	* RagnarokProofing: [[spoiler: Axis City does send someone along now and then to check up on things in the city, but when the library's computer is programmed to handle the repair of a man who had half his head shot off on the offchance that medical services doesn't come when it has been summoned - ''that's some serious contingency programming''.]]
64	** In the second book, ''Eternity'' (tropes below) it is pointed out that because they had gotten to the point that technology not only prolonged life but life ''depended'' on it, everything was built to last.
65	* RealTrailerFakeMovie: In 2007 the [=CGSociety=] (for Creative Digital Artists) held a contest to create images and pieces using the book as a reference point. The winning trailer was titled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrLo1qUkCH8 Worlds Within Worlds]]" and had more than one fan drooling and wishing it were real. ([[http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/eon/ All submissions are here.]])
66	** The ''Worlds Within Worlds'' Trailer has a trope - who knew a frant would be an AdaptationalBadass? [[spoiler: In the book Patricia meets Olmy and the frant as she steps off a train, and they leave peacefully - no others were present.]]
67	* RedScare: Still scary.
68	* RingWorldPlanet: The Stone, with the Thistledown inside.
69	* SeriousBusiness: Technological advancement, for the Naderites.
70	* SpaceAmish: Played with in The Naderites. They keep themselves a tech bracket a little beyond the 21st century, but below the Geshels of Axis City.
71	* StarfishAliens: Of all the species that trade along the Way, only the Naderites and Frants are humanoid. (The Geshels ''can'' be, if they choose.)
72	* ThrowAwayCountry: Subverted when Patricia reads a textbook with an index of all the casualties in her home state of California.
73	* TimeyWimeyBall: [[spoiler: ''The book doesn't have time travel'', it's more alternate universes - the Thistledown was dragged into an alternate universe which was the same but The Death hadn't occurred yet. This doesn't stop some concern about timey-wimey though, as one of the reasons Olmy takes Patricia to Axis City is because she's almost figured out the math behind the inertial dampeners, and it was some papers she hasn't published yet that laid down the theoretical framework for them.]]
74	* TrappedBehindEnemyLines: The Soviets.
75	* TrappedInAnotherWorld: [[spoiler:Patricia]], literally.
76	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Eon begins on Christmas Eve in 2000, and most of the action occurs during 2005. The book was published in 1985, so it was set 15-20 years in the future at the time.
77	** Patricia's 10-key "slate" she takes notes on is odd, but on the other hand that's how most people were texting at the time!
78	* UnusualDysphemism: The Earth team’s name for the Stone’s original builders? [[spoiler:Stoners]]. Having a nervous breakdown over the existential ramifications of the Stone? [[spoiler:Getting Stoned]].
79	* UnableToCry: Olmy is engineered not to cry, but says when he actually watched The Death happen it was the first time he ever ''wanted'' to.
80	** [[spoiler: Revisited in ''Eternity'' when he learns his son chose to be able to cry.]]
81	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Once the traitor is uncovered, that particular plot pretty much goes away. You never find out what happens to the traitor.
82	* WorldWarIII: The Death.
83	* YearInsideHourOutside: When humans closed up The Way after opening their first test gates, [[spoiler: the Jarts came though the test gates and had plenty of time (relative to the humans) to make themselves at home.]]
84	* YouAreInCommandNow: [[spoiler:Mirsky]]
85	!!Eternity contains examples of:
86	* AGodAmI: [[spoiler:The inhabitants of Axis City, at the end of The Way]].
87	* AlternateHistory: Patricia ended up in a world where UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat survived his illness and lived to old age - changing the whole of history.
88	* BizarreAlienSenses: Jarts sense their surroundings mainly through a sense that combines sight and hearing into a single mental image.
89	* ChildProdigy: Turns out that Ways are permissible, but the powers that be have never seen a race come up with one so early in their development.
90	* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Turns out The Way is screwing with the grand plan of creation. Oops...
91	* FightingFromTheInside: Olmy
92	* GenreSavvy: [[spoiler: The Engineer had a feeling someone would come from the end of time and tell them they'd screwed things up with The Way.]]
93	* TheGodsMustBeLazy: Whatever the powers that run the universe are, they send [[spoiler: Mirsky]] to go tell everyone that The Way is interfering.
94	* IdiotBall: Wise, Film/JamesBond-ish Olmy, - uploading a [[spoiler:Jart]] into his brain and thinking he can contain it.
95	* MultiversalConqueror: After taking sole control of the Way, the Jarts use it to take over every planet in every universe they can access.
96	* PiecesOfGod: More or less the motivation for the [[spoiler:Jarts' actions. Turns out to be correct]].
97	* PowersThatBe: The "Final Mind" has sent a representative back.
98	* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: The inhabitants of Axis City are the descendants of those who had to crawl up through the rubble after The Death. In this alternate universe, they are helping the survivors dig out and decontaminate the planet.
99	* StarfishAliens: While the Jarts have mostly evolved beyond physical forms, their original bodies are utterly alien. Command Jarts resemble black, two-headed ''Hallucigenia'' the size of elephants, and lower-ranked Jarts use smaller, ancestral versions of those same bodies when they need to take on a physical form.
100	* TurnOutLikeHisFather: Olmy's son
101	* WhenYouComingHomeDad: Olmy rarely visits his son in person - though its not ''that'' bad because he sends partials often.
102	* YouCantFightFate: Mirsky says even the gods are perplexed by fate.

Context Literature / TheWaySeries