Hardfought

by Greg Bear

A Nebula Award–winning novella by the author of Moving Mars and the Eon trilogy.   Humans have been engaged in a long war against an advanced alien race, the Senexi. But the possibility for peace may finally exist, thanks to a young girl who learns of the enemy’s larger role and humanity’s opportunity to evolve, in this award-winning story by the author of Darwin’s Radio and many other highly acclaimed works of science fiction.  

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, American, Ebooks, Audiobook, Military Science Fiction

99 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Greg Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), parallel universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin’s Radio, and Darwin’s Children). His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.

(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating hard sci fi, littered with jargon and concepts that blow the mind. The far future humanity depicted here is barely recognizable, having adapted their bodies and societies radically for an intractable war against an ancient galactic race of incredibly long lived gas giant dwellers. Told from the perspective of an individual on each side, Bear also gives a grand, 10,000 foot view of the history and conflict. The "new" upstart race, i.e. humanity, battling the old, over territory, resources, or perhaps only because they are there and remain wholly incomprehensible to each other, with no basis for any mutual understanding. Bear packs so much into this short novella, dropping the reader into a vortex that doesn't let up. Not an easy read, but enthralling and worth it!

[William Opdyke · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's funny, each time I read this, I find something I missed on previous reads. This is the best sort of speculative sci fi.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Heavy" science fiction for such a short novel. Tells the stories of two sides in an interstellar war by focusing on a few characters from each side: heavily modified human soldiers, versus ancient gas-giant dwelling creatures with truly alien concepts of knowledge and morality. This is not upbeat space opera, but rather a cautionary tale of how the horrors of war could extend, in the future, across eons, transforming both sides into ever-more-efficient engines of destruction. Interspersed with a lot of jargon, some of it never properly explained, and some speculative science that unnecessarily muddles things.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Won the 1984 Nebula for Best Novella; runner-up for the Hugo. Many, many reprints: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...

This might still be my favorite Greg Bear story. If you've missed it, this will be the best $2 you ever spend. Or read it again -- it's aged well. Amazing story. This is the best sort of speculative SF. My highest possible recommendation.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Bear packs an epic Space Opera full of ideas and spanning entire millennia into short novel length, without requiring several phonebook-sized volumes to blow your mind.

The far-future depicted is intriguingly strange, the space battles against unknowable ancient aliens are intense and imaginative, but the most memorable part is the dread the reader feels as humanity, warped by the pressures of war, progressively becomes as alien and unrecognizable as the creatures it fights.

This tale would work well as an anime, I think.

[Yev · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some authors who have a writing style that I can only appreciate in a technical sense because their aesthetic either does nothing for me or actively disengages me. Sometimes this even happens for authors I'm intentionally trying to enjoy. After reading some of his short fiction and attempting to read his novels, it's evident to me that this is the case for Greg Bear. It's not only because of the heavy usage of neologisms, a few of which are explained, though several have to be inferred from limited context available. Probably what it is most is how he handles his characters. I just couldn't care about them at all or otherwise feel anything towards them, which may have been intentional.

In the distant future, at least several 100,000s of years, what passes for humanity has been fighting the Senexi, a reticent elder race whose history spans roughly twelve billion years, for a few 100,000s of years. It's a situation of experience versus adaptability. Both store their collective histories, though the Senexi become it rather than be informed by it. The Senexi strive for uniformity and to be one of one mind where difference is death. Humanity, at least in terms of the combat shown, use mass produced personnel based on their greatest individuals believing that will lead to the best outcomes. The narrative is presented from both of their viewpoints and neither one is favored over the other. Both are certainly alien. As to why they're fighting, it's because the other exists, more or less.

The story is mostly about the characters, though primarily in how they're pawns with minimal agency. They do as must be done as a resource to be expended. For the humans it's "how can we best kill the Senexi" and for the Senexi it's "how can we best infiltrate the humans". I didn't care for it on a plot level either. There's probably a considerable amount I'm missing, but I don't have sufficient interest for that to matter to me.

[Gregoire · Rating 5 out of 5]

N’étant pas fan de Greg Bear, sans le billet de Le culte d'Apophis, je serais passé à côté de ce joyau qui m’a procuré un intense plaisir à la lecture
Il y a longtemps que je n’ai pas lu une novella qui dépayse et questionne autant tout en maintenant un suspense insoutenable : un pur joyau de ce que peut apporter la SF en terme de créativité et de réflexions

Le sujet ? la guerre éternelle entre 2 civilisations et espèces qui n'ont rien en commun, ne communiquent pas mais se combattent depuis des millénaires au point que tout est centré sur cette guerre jusqu'à perdre son identité, ses valeurs, sa destinée ??? avec les visions et destinées de Prufrax (clone ? humaine ) et Aryz (deviant ? senexi)

https://lecultedapophis.com/2018/05/1...

Avis : ce n'est pas une lecture facile tellement le dépaysement de cet univers est grand mais si visuel et bien rendu par l'auteur qui nous plonge dedans sans filtre, qu'il est impossible de décrocher Le choc est important et les questions posées essentielles, méritent qu'on s'y attarde longuement

Conseil : Prévoir de bonnes heures de lecture attentive, de relecture de passages sans interruption pour s'imprégner de l'atmosphère et des concepts évoqués !!!

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know this deserves more than two stars - for it's writing and cleverness alone - but I just couldn't connect. For one thing this is SF of the most hard-boiled variety and was therefore mostly over my head. Bear's world is so alien, so unlike anything I can even imagine that much of what was happening was lost on me. This, I suspect, is my failing rather than Bear's. He, after all, wrote Strenghth of Stones and The Infinity Concerto, both of which I loved.

[Jim Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Bear has a lot of "what will become of us?" stories, playing out different scenarios: a new take on aliens-attack answering the Fermi paradox, in The Forge of God series; nanotechnology and corporate sharp elbows going a little out of control in Blood Music. Or Petra, that got made into an animated short.

Then there's this one. I haven't read it in decades and it does not leave.

[Dan (ThatBookIsOnFiyah) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply moving novella

Bear uses an ongoing war between humans and an alien species, the Senaxi, to challenge the reader’s ideas of war, culture, and history. This novella is set far in humanity’s future in a non-linear timeline that considers the possible future for mankind after their encounter and war with the Senaxi. It asks how humans can preserve history, love, and culture in the light of this never ending conflict and the possible ramifications of cloning and merging with another species. In many ways, mind-blowing, but at times confusing, as Bear immerses the reader in the story with little explanation.

[Trike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1983 award-winner works by hinting rather than revealing. We aren’t given hard-and-fast answers about the conflict between humans and the alien Senexi, who evolved on a gas giant. We see the terrible cost of war on the personal level, but things are left vague enough that the reader has to supply their own answers.

I suspect this tale will be evergreen because of that vagueness. We can project any conflict on it and it still rings true. Currently we have the War on Terror, and this story could certainly be seen as analogous to that. But it was written during the days of the Cold War, and I can easily see the parallels with that conflict. (I was 18 in ‘83, so I remember it well. In fact, my 35th high school reunion was happening as I read this.) But this could also be read as a parable for Vietnam, or for Nazi Germany.

As I said, evergreen. Bear doesn’t hold our hand as he plunges us into this strange future of (apparently) quantum war with extreme time dilation. He makes us work to puzzle it out, so that the story acts as a Rorschach test, reflecting our own experiences.

Me, I think Bear is illustrating the Nietzsche thing: “Battle not with monsters, for when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” (Paraphrased.) He warns of the slippery slope of Perpetual War, the brink of which we seem poised on today... but I would have said the same thing 35 years ago, too.

[Daud Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, weird and weird. The sci-fi part is not difficult to understand.

Its actually impossible.

And that's by design. So is the lingo. The entire point of this writing style is to transport you to a society almost entirely alien to us. And the author succeeds remarkably here. The self-exploration of of a an alien mind is also pretty fascinating

[Chandrika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic science fiction. Classic Greg Bear. Also, food for thought. Makes a pleasant read. Though there were a few parts he could have shortened a bit but nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading this one.

[Crow Meris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A disturbing read. To what extent will we go to modify ourselves and our protegny to defeat an enemy which may not actually be an enemy - simply something so completely foreign to our own being that it is beyond our comprehension.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very bizarre. My brain is a bit numb after reading that. Everything felt so far removed from human experience that it almost physically hurt to read it. And that's a good thing! I love challenging sci-fi like this. I'll definitely have to read it again because I'm sure I missed things.

[Randy Mccallum · Rating 5 out of 5]

A glorified short story in novella form. The author is able to quickly immerse the reader in two vastly different cultures in a far away galaxy. Simply amazing storytelling from one of the masters.

[Andrewcharles420 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Post-solar, human-descendant race in a multi-generational war for the galaxy with an ancient gas-giant-evolved species.

I liked scope and scale of the story--galactic and covering eons of time, while keeping it relatable to human interests. The characters had interesting perspectives and ideas, though the whole scenario was rather bleak.

I picked this up because it reminds me of the old Ace Doubles that have always served as great introductions to authors. I didn't care much for previous Bear short stories (my review of Tangents). I liked a lot of what this story suggested and contained, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy this author expanding it. I'm very curious about the other author in the double--Timothy Zahn. I've read a couple of his Star Wars novels and recall liking them, time to see if it was the subject matter or the writer that was the greater factor.

I'd say this is aimed towards a space-opera crowd and hits its mark. This took me 5 days to complete reading, though I had started it a few months back and got distracted before restarting.

[Lillian Kopp · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not a particularly enjoyable read. There were some good points in there, and the requirement to puzzle out the thought-processes and new terms made it interesting, if a little difficult to follow. There were some great quotable lines in there, as well as some interesting perspectives. It seems, at first, that the Senexi are meant to be the foil of humanity, though the lines get blurred—which is the point.

Some thought put into the story, but I just got very annoyed with the style.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had real problems with one, Greg Bear's "Hardfought," which I found annoying more than interesting and found myself skimming. A future war story that I just couldn’t care to follow. The story was buried under the deluge of style and invented words and concepts and I’m not sure I found a character anywhere in it. I can usually finish most any story, especially if it is included in a Year’s Best anthology, but I finally just gave up and skimmed this one to the end.

[Tam Bowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with most of Bear's work I've read, excellent and bizarre, hard sci-fi, with the kind of strange other-ness you'd expect to actually see in civilizations that are far removed from our own in time or origin.

[Kenneth W. Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome SF sense of wonder, also great literature

When I first read this in Asimovs back in the 80's, it totally blew me away. I was not surprised to learn that it won a Nebula award. Reading it again, nearly four decades later, it still blows me away.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

As others have said, hard sci fi, which for me is not enjoyable. Felt like much of the story was written with terms that were either not explained, or not able to be discerned. This left the story very distant, and not interesting. 2 stars is generous

[John Diamant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard scifi read

Very deep and a hard read. Yet I feel I the need to read it again to understand it better. I will re-read it some other time.

[Blaise Carland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good.

[Brian MacAskill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good, and we'll-deserving of the Nebula. Worth a second read.

[Laufey]

þessi er á kindle

[Perrystroika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with Blood Music, Hardfought is easily the best thing that Greg Bear ever wrote.

[Jeff Pfeiffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's pretty mid overall.

[Brian Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent far future novella. Felt unreal in a good way - nice prose too.

[Zack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to follow and little character engagement.