Phases :: Real Reality Philosophy Philosophical Essays

Phases Phases Reality is a difficult term to comprehend. The meaning itself is quite simple: What is real? The idea of reality is significantly more complex: What makes something real? This is the sort of question that depends greatly on the individuals interpretation of the reality that surrounds them. In the novel Blood Music, Greg Bear shares his thoughts on how people within a rapidly changing reality are affected. Bear explores several theories that help answer questions like: What if reality as we know it could be altered? How would this changing reality affect the people involved? Also the fundamental question, what is real? Bear uses quite a large assortment of actual facts in this novel. His research in the subject of biology helps to add a greater feel of realism to the story. Bear even went as far as to break the novel up into phases to help the reader further understand the happenings in the novel. The phases as a whole can be thought of as a sort of outline for the reader, a st ep-by-step guide to the transitions from one reality to another. Each phase can be thought of as a matrix. A matrix is a place in space and time that is constant and stable enough to be considered a reality. The words matrix and reality can consistently be used interchangeably since their meanings are basically the same. Bears choice in phases is no coincidence. Since Blood Music deals with the topic of developing biological change in human beings, Bear appropriately chose the five phases of cell development also known as the cell cycle. The novel follows these five phases to a tee. It is as though he resolved to create a story that was led by the predetermined phases. This discovery would lead many readers to think more likely than not, Greg Bear sat down with the phases in mind long before a single sentence of the story was ever written. The five phases or realities of the novel are: interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. In the very beginning of the book, the first and last thing the reader will come across is the interphase. Very much like this terms biological meaning, the interphase can be thought of as a state of uninterrupted being. In other words, there is no change happening in this phase. This phase appears twice in Blood Music, in the beginning and at the end, yet they only make up a total of two and a half pages.