Greg Bear
1999
Awards: Nebula
Nominations: Hugo
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –
SPOILER ALERT
I
really enjoy Greg Bear’s books. His writing is straightforward and his
ideas are original and satisfyingly weird. He’s like the Stephen King of
sci-fi. This particular book isn’t overwhelmingly great, but it does have a
Bear-ishly unique plot and is fun to read.
Since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,
there has been a debate over the extent to which evolution happens
gradually and the extent to which it is punctuated by relatively sudden
leaps. In Darwin’s Radio, not
only does evolution occur in sudden leaps, but the leaps can be very
dramatic, with an entire species reaching a new stage of biological
development within a generation or two.
This includes humans.
The
book begins with the discovery of the frozen, mummified remains of a
prehistoric family – a man, a woman, and a baby – in the Alps. At first,
the paleontologist who discovers them thinks they are Neanderthals. But
it turns out, upon further investigation, that the baby is Homo sapiens
and that the adults were Neanderthals who appear to have physically changed into Homo sapiens shortly
around the time their baby was born. It looks as if the parents
literally shed their skin to reveal the new evolutionary form. It also
looks like these three early humans were murdered.
(Note: I think that at the time this book was written, the scientific consensus
still was that Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals. In order to get
into the story, you just have to go along with that.)
At the same
time that all this prehistorical investigation is going on, something
strange is happening to contemporary humans. A new flu-like retrovirus
is spreading around the world. Men can be carriers but only women get
infected. When a pregnant woman contracts the virus, it makes her abort
the fetus. This is very upsetting, of course, and people start
panicking. What it takes people a while to realize is that before the
fetus aborts, it itself ovulates and leaves behind a new viable fetus… with six extra chromosomes than normal... that continues to develop.
And
then, even weirder, when a man and a woman are about to have a baby
from one of these new extra-chromosome fetuses, they both start to
change physically. Their vocal chords and sense of smell get more
sensitive and their facial skin starts peeling off, revealing new
patches that change color with emotion.
A biological researcher
investigating the retrovirus eventually hooks up with the paleontologist
who found the mummies and they put two and two together. They develop
the theory that a Homo sapiens gene existed all along in early hominids,
in the form of a dormant retrovirus. At some point some kind of
species-wide biological clock determined that it was time for the next
evolutionary step and activated the virus in the Neanderthals. It caused
them to have Homo sapiens babies and caused the parents to change form
too, to match their children. Because they were different, these
new-form humans were likely feared and persecuted and sometimes even
murdered by their earlier-form relatives.
And this is also, of
course, what is happening to modern humans. The biological master clock
has activated another dormant part of our genetic code. When the first
few extra-chromosome babies are born they, too, have sensory patches of
color on their faces and they can communicate with their parents in an
almost empathic or telepathic way. They are a new stage of human. And
they, too, are feared and persecuted by regular old-style humans, and
are forced to go into hiding from their families and neighbors and the
government. (Setting us up nicely for a sequel, Darwin’s Children.)
My main problem with Darwin’s Radio was
that I didn't really like the main characters very much - either the
paleontologist or the biologist working on the retrovirus or the modern
evolutionarily advanced families. They seemed more like tools for
telling the story rather than real rounded personalities. Fortunately,
however, the basic ideas were cool and well-developed enough to carry me
through the book in spite of the people not being very appealing.
This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
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