The Wind in the Willows has always been at my periphery. I cannot remember the first time I heard about it, but surely it was before I was ten. It may have been an advertisement for or review of one of the many television or radio adaptations. Or it may have been in casual conversation, if under tens ever had casual conversations in which The Wind in the Willows came up. Maybe a friend or two had read it. But I don’t remember any specific conversations. We were too busy kicking a ball about or putting a cricket ball through a window. Teachers probably mentioned it. But whatever the reason I knew about it, I never read it.

It was never high on my priorities, either. Even less so now, short decades after leaving childhood’s shores. A children’s book that I hadn’t read when I was a child: what would be the point now? Of course, nothing has much point anyway, so when I stumbled across a well-worn paperback copy at my parents’ house a few months ago (uh, where did that come from?) I figured I may as well give it a go.

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Ah, a new Greg Bear novel to consume. Having grown up reading Eon, The Forge of God and other humbly named novels, I was all ready to engross myself in some more of Bear’s visionary hard sci-fi flights of fancy.

This was not what I was expecting.

What I got instead was half science fiction, half fantasy, and all of it bordering on literature. Literature! From a science fiction writer? And one who normally specialises in the harder aspects of science fiction at that? Closer in spirit to Bear’s fantasy duology Songs of Earth and Power than any of his previous science fiction tomes, City at the End of Time is like nothing the author has written before.

Bear probably had specifics in mind when he wrote this book, and there will usually be one explanation that makes more sense than others, but this book has left a lot to the imagination. There are many things in City at the End of Time — characters, plot points, situations — that are open to interpretation. And therefore open to different meanings. And therefore subject to further study. See? Literature.

Speaking of imagination, Bear shows he still has buckets of it. Like many of his previous novels, the sheer scope of this book is something to behold. As Bear’s career has progressed, his stories have tended to get grander, and to get more apocalyptic. From the Little Death of his Eon series, to the destruction of the Earth in The Forge of God series, Bear ups the ante yet again, dealing with nothing less than the destruction of the entire universe in this book. And, not content to play with the universe in a purely Newtonian sense — the destruction of space at a fixed time — Bear gives a nod towards Einstein’s connection of time and space and intends to destroy both of them. In other words, not only does the universe die, but it becomes as if it never lived. How can some event that’s already happened become…um…not happened?

It is not only the concept that takes an extra level of comprehension. Bear’s method of writing is not going to win a whole legion of mainstream fans: the non-linear story-telling, the lack of explanation, the confusing, fantastical elements. I was not surprised to see that this book rates two and a half stars (out of five) on Amazon, with a fair number of one star reviews. I can see why, even if I don’t necessarily agree.

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