The Way series is a trilogy of science fiction novels and one short story by American author Greg Bear published from 1985 to 1999.

In their timeline, human civilization was nearly destroyed by the "Death", a calamitous World War involving nuclear weapons.

In 2007, CGSociety organised a "CG Challenge" based upon Eon[1] Jarts, politics, and technology make up the second book in the series: Eternity.

In the third book (a prequel, set in the time before Eon), Legacy, soldier Olmy ap Sennon is sent to spy on a group of dissidents who have used the spacetime tunnel of "the Way" (introduced in Eon) to colonize the alien world of Lamarckia, a planet with an ecosystem that learns from its changed environment in a way that resembles Lamarckian evolution.

In the short story, The Way of All Ghosts, soldier Olmy ap Sennon is sent to close a lesion that formed out of a wayward gate into perfection.

Within the universe of The Way, the Thistledown is an asteroid starship built by hollowing out Juno and fitting it with mass-driver (rail gun) engines and thermonuclear drives.

The asteroid is prepared 500 years in the future, as told in Bear's novel, Eon, and is engaged on a multi-generational journey to Epsilon Eridani, around which a habitable planet is known to circle.

At the creation, and rejoining of the Way to the Thistledown, the character Konrad Korzenowski and his engineers designed and 'built' the Way out of the in-folded geodesics of the inertial dampening field of the 6th Chamber machinery.

Its matter and energy anchored it to its continuum and relative time, but its geometry and quantum entanglement had been strained by the inertial dampener, thus making it susceptible to superspace distortions, and therefore it could be affected by them negatively.

The Flaw permits a violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics, therefore defining the Way as a perpetual motion machine of the First Order, making energy out of nothing.

During this period, ambition led Korzenowksi to use the clavicle to open the first exploratory gate within the way, leading to the universe of the Jarts.

Korzenowski on returning had not taken into account the time dilation effects within the Way, and the Jarts had centuries within the way to access alternate universes, such as the one to the world of the Talsit.

The progressive Geshels and conservative Naderites (two fictional groups in the novels) who made their travels into the Way quickly met the Jarts.

Both sides fought each other through the use of remote slaved munitions carrier vehicles, of broadly similar design (a consequence of their shared environment).

Ultimately, the Jarts were driven back beyond 2 ex 9 ( 2x10^9 km, or 2 billion kilometres), a position they remained at until Journey Year 1174.

The opening of gates and use of field technology permitted the Geshels to cover the Way with soil and living plants, as well as fill it with air, for nearly a lightyear down from the Thistledown.

Quickly, the gate openers discovered that the epoch and origin of the Thistledown within Earth's solar system defined where the gates opened to - almost without exception (and these exceptions included as a consequence of the infinities addressed through superspace geometries as defined by Patricia Vasquez) were alternative versions of Earth within other Universes.

The mathematical construction of the Way as written creates a rhythm, or order in which gate loci are located, a consequence of the propagation of World Lines along folded Geodesics.

The reason for the Geometry Stacks, as they are called, is described by the author as being a direct consequence of the origin of the Way within the Thistledown, and its development through extension of the inertial dampening field of the Sixth Chamber.

Since the Way and Thistledown are entangled, the existence of the Geometry Stacks is to be expected within mathematical theory first developed by Patricia Vasquez in 1989 with regard to folded spatial transforms expressed as a function of the superspace curvature of the Way.

The most noteworthy aspect of the Geometry Stacks is their infinite profusion of alternate Earths, in far greater quantity in comparison with the commerce gates with partners, clients—and enemies.