Bear Greg 01

Reviews & Overviews by Rod Cameron

Author Title Reviewed

Greg Bear DARWIN’S RADIO September 2000

Published by Price Pages

Harper Collins (2000) £6.99 Paperback 440 pp

I found Darwin’s Radio to be an enjoyable story which has the reader supporting common sense and the underdog against humanities’ usual instinctive reaction of kill first and ask questions later. With the work on the human genome project providing a deeper understanding of human evolution, Bear has managed to convincingly merge current understanding with a seemingly plausible fast track evolutionary mechanism. Whether his scientific techno-babble would stand up to the scrutiny of a geneticist remains to be seen, but it sounded reasonable to me.
The book starts with the discovery of a mass grave of mutated villagers in the Caucasus; a mummified prehistoric family revealed by ice-thaw high in the Alps; and a mysterious new ‘disease’ that strikes only pregnant women, resulting in miscarriage. However the women who miscarry become spontaneously pregnant again without sexual activity. And the resulting babies are not normal.

The author details the predictable xenophobic reaction. The World’s governments enact emergency measures: segregation of the sexes, abortion of all foetuses. But is it a killer plague or is it something else? It is left to the three scientist hero(ine)s to ‘save’ the day. There is a famous biologist, Kaye Lang. A disgraced paleontologist Mitch Rafelson and the U.S. government’s ‘virus hunter’ Christopher Dicken. And their task is to overcome mass panic and superstition and convince everyone that the so-called junk genes that have slept in our DNA for millions of years are waking up.

As the New Scientist describes it, "Darwin’s Radio is a tense techno-thriller in the Michael Crichton vein … there are riots, flights to the hills, death cults, martial law, and superstitious fear". Darwin’s Radio is a ‘hard science’ science fiction novel set in the near future, and is to be recommended.

Author	Title	Reviewed
Greg Bear	DARWIN’S RADIO	September 2000
Published by	Price	Pages
Harper Collins (2000)	£6.99 Paperback	440 pp
I found Darwin’s Radio to be an enjoyable story which has the reader supporting common sense and the underdog against humanities’ usual instinctive reaction of kill first and ask questions later. With the work on the human genome project providing a deeper understanding of human evolution, Bear has managed to convincingly merge current understanding with a seemingly plausible fast track evolutionary mechanism. Whether his scientific techno-babble would stand up to the scrutiny of a geneticist remains to be seen, but it sounded reasonable to me. The book starts with the discovery of a mass grave of mutated villagers in the Caucasus; a mummified prehistoric family revealed by ice-thaw high in the Alps; and a mysterious new ‘disease’ that strikes only pregnant women, resulting in miscarriage. However the women who miscarry become spontaneously pregnant again without sexual activity. And the resulting babies are not normal. The author details the predictable xenophobic reaction. The World’s governments enact emergency measures: segregation of the sexes, abortion of all foetuses. But is it a killer plague or is it something else? It is left to the three scientist hero(ine)s to ‘save’ the day. There is a famous biologist, Kaye Lang. A disgraced paleontologist Mitch Rafelson and the U.S. government’s ‘virus hunter’ Christopher Dicken. And their task is to overcome mass panic and superstition and convince everyone that the so-called junk genes that have slept in our DNA for millions of years are waking up. As the New Scientist describes it, "Darwin’s Radio is a tense techno-thriller in the Michael Crichton vein … there are riots, flights to the hills, death cults, martial law, and superstitious fear". Darwin’s Radio is a ‘hard science’ science fiction novel set in the near future, and is to be recommended.