Summary
The second in a new series of three HALO novels, Greg Bear's Halo: Primordium dives back into the Forerunner saga.
A long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad. I served my enemies. They became my only friends.
Since then, I've traveled back and forth across this galaxy, and out to the spaces between galaxies--a greater reach than any human before me.
You have asked me to tell you about that time. Since you are the last true Reclaimer, I must obey. Are you recording? Good. Because my memory is failing rapidly. I doubt I'll be able to finish the story.
Once, on my birth-world, a world I knew as Erde-Tyrene, and which now is called Earth, my name was Chakas...
In the wake of apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans--Chakas and Riser--are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed.
Captured by the Master Builder, misplaced during a furious battle in space, they now find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky, and where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and neglect. For they have become both research animals and strategic pawns in a cosmic game whose madness knows no end--a game of ancient vengeance between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life, and the Forerunners who expect to inherit their sacred Mantle of duty to all living things.
In the company of a young girl and an old man, Chakas begins an epic journey across a lost and damaged Halo in search of a way home, an explanation for the warrior spirits rising up within, and for the Librarian's tampering with human destiny.
This journey will take them into the Palace of Pain, the domain of a powerful and monstrous intelligence who claims to be the Last Precursor, and who now has control of both this Halo and the fate of Forerunners and Humans alike.
Called the Captive by Forerunners, and the Primordial by ancient human warriors, this intelligence has taken charge of, and retasked, the Master Builder's cruel researches into the Flood--which it may have itself unleashed on the galaxy more than ten thousand years before.
Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California, on August 20, 1951. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University in 1973. At age 14, he began submitting pieces to magazines and at 15 he sold his first story to Robert Lowndes' Famous Science Fiction. It would be five years before he sold another piece, but by 23 he was selling stories regularly.
He wrote more than 30 science fiction and fantasy books and has won numerous awards for his work. In 1984, Hardfought and Blood Music won the Nebula Awards for best novella and novelette; Blood Music went on to win the Hugo Award. The novel version of that story, also called Blood Music, won the Prix Apollo in France. In 1987, Tangents won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best short story. He also won a Nebula in 1994 for Moving Mars and in 2001 for Darwin's Radio. Both Dinosaur Summer and Darwin's Radio have been awarded the Endeavour for best novel published by a Northwest science fiction author.
He is also an illustrator, and his work has appeared in Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Vertex, and in both hardcover and paperback books. He was a founding member of ASFA, the Association of Science Fiction Artists.
His works include City at the End of Time, Hull Zero Three, The Mongoliad, Mariposa, Halo: Cryptum, Halo: Primordium and Halo: Silentium. His most recent works included Take back the Sky, and The Unfinished Land, published in February 2021.
Greg Bear died on November 19, 2022, from a series of strokes, caused by clots. His wife, Astrid, was by his side. He was 71.
(Bowker Author Biography)
