Darwin's Radio

This was the October SF Book of the Month for Beyond Reality. I'm the one who nominated, so I certainly needed to read it. After a number of false starts getting hold of it, I finally got a copy from the library (and then found out on Thursday night that a friend owns it and I could have borrowed

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it from him!)

I gave myself about a week to read it, knowing I'm running a bit slow right now. I was captured by it pretty much immediately and finished it in two days. (Which isn't a bad thing as it gives me more time to read A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 which certainly is going more slowly.)

The basic premise is that this new disease show us, a kind of flu that affects pregnant women more than men and causes miscarriages. Even more strangely, women who miscarry tend to fall pregnant again swiftly, without needing more intercourse in between. While the CDC and others are trying desperately to stop the pandemic, a small group of people begin to wonder if this is a disease or something else. They believe this is an upgrade, a new step in evolution that has been triggered from instructions in human DNA at a time when it is most needed.

It was a bit depressing to discover how much trouble my brain had working with the science, especially since I did study at least a bit of microbiology at university level, even if I never worked in the field. Still, once I eased back a little and stopped worrying out it, the most important parts fell into place so that I could easily follow the story. For me, that seems to be the trick, let the scientific aspects seep into my head by osmosis rather than study it to the point I could try to sit an exam on the subject.

Bear tricked me on the roles of the main characters, as the one I expected to be the hero wasn't, and the one who looked like being something of an anti-hero turned out to be the hero after all. Bear has faced up to a range of issues, from human development to the idea of respect versus science with relation to digging up human bones, but he doesn't dwell on these too hard, instead letting the characters muse on the subject often without reaching any definite conclusion. Mostly, he focuses on telling the story and lets the reader get as involved or not as they choose in the issues it raises.

I found that the tone of the book - mostly the reaction of the general public - reminded me very much of John Wyndham's Trouble with Lichen, which was interesting, as the topic of the Wyndham novel is very different, but the more I consider it I find the themes to be quite similar. I may need to think about this a little more.

I'm glad there's a sequel that will look at what is different about the new generation of children and I've already got it from the library and need to fit it into my reading schedule.

I thoroughly enjoyed this - reading it when I really should have been resting because I needed to know what happened next - and gave it a 9/10.

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A very interesting look at what would happen if humans evolved.
The science was plausible, and while I'd hope for cooler heads, the public reactions were plausible too. I found the characters to be realistic – even the ‘evil’ guys had good motivations.
I enjoyed the mystery at the beginning

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over the individual reactions at the end. The ending was a bit disappointing – clearly this was written with a sequel in mind.

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Bear is famous for Blood Music, a fix-up novel that postulated a virus that leads to our body cells become autonomously intelligent. Darwin's Radio returns to extreme biological speculation, but in much greater depth and sustained length. This time Bear explores a possible cellular mechanism for

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near-instant evolution. The focus is not on the new humans, who appear only at the very end, but on the parents and the effects of uncertainty and risk on society. Bear devotes a lot of time to the biology, sociology, and politics, both scientific and governmental. It is an impressive construction, with strong characters, but is also a good example of more being less. Nancy Kress in Nothing Human achieved comparable if not greater impact telling a similar story, with far less plausibility and attention to detail.

Still, highly recommended.

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It's a rare book that I can't finish, but this is one of them. I can look past outdated science if what emerges follows from the principles set forth, but that doesn't happen here. The premise is interesting, but the result is goofy at best.
What I can't be bothered with is bad narrative. This book

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is populated by boring characters running through an uninteresting plot, ending with a flat honk of a climax. Halfway through, I couldn't take it any longer and loaded the Wikipedia summary to see if it got better. It didn't. The page for the sequel made me wince.

This is not one of Mr. Bear's better works, nor is it best of breed for its conceit. You're better off looking into other titles than finding a copy of this one.

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I don’t think this one was quite as good as Blood Music, but it kept me pretty interested. Only the end was slow moving and kind of an anti-climax.’

The mass grave in the Republic of Georgia contains men and women of median age and all the women are pregnant. They test positive for SHEVA.

The

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renegade anthropologist is Mitch and eventually it’s discovered that the Neanderthal family also had SHEVA.

But this is only way after SHEVA is running pretty rampant in the US and other parts of the world. Men carry SHEVA but rarely show symptoms. Women on the other had, have lots of symptoms. Most of them are like flu symptoms but the worst is that SHEVA causes pregnant women to miscarry. But it’s a weird fetus that is expelled – not right at all. There are obvious deformities and most of them have more than the normal 46 chromosomes. Some autopsies are done and it’s discovered that the fetuses are little more than ovaries and fallopian tubes. All of them have ovulated.
This solves the mystery of how the women who miscarry become pregnant so quickly and without benefit of sex. The first daughter leaves behind a granddaughter.

At first none of these second babies come full term either. They get diseases in the womb that normal babies are protected from. They sometimes have deformities of their own and the government is convinced this is a disease.

But Kaye and some other scientists figure out that the retrovirus isn’t acting like a disease. Nothing it produces is consistent enough. They formulate that the virus is released from ‘hibernation’ when the population is stressed. It triggers changes and blocks off normal human reproduction in order to produce altered children. In other words – evolution. A sub-species change. It happened before when Neanderthal couples began to have more modern children, and it is happening again.

In the end, the government tries to sequester all SHEVA mothers and quarantine them like they were disease carriers. Then when the 2nd stage pregnancies start coming to term and the children stay alive and aren’t grossly deformed, they want to round up the kids and put them in labs. By this time, Kaye and Mitch have hooked up and she is pregnant. Her first fetus self-aborted as usual, and her 2nd baby seems to be doing well.

This is when things start to come apart. Bear up to this point had been going back and forth between differing points of view. Now he drops a lot of that and only focuses on Kaye and Mitch. It kind of sucks because a lot of the new regulations are coming from a guy named Mark Augustine who is Surgeon General and head of the Centers for Disease Control. He and leaders from the National Institute of Health are treating it like a disease and it’s clear that Augustine plans to eliminate all people of power between him and the President. This is dropped though and we don’t really see how far he gets. Pretty far though since Martial Law is in place and the parents and children are being rounded up like Jews in Germany around 1935.

It ends with Mitch and Kaye on the run with their daughter Stella Nova. The new species of human now has melanophores on their faces – spots of skin that can change color like a cuttlefish and their tongues have also changed to accommodate a new speech pattern. They as parents have been rewired to deal with the communication needs of their new daughter. They have the same melanophores and both have to wear makeup to get by in the world. If they’re caught, they get sent away to labs.

Until the end broke down, it was interesting to hear the scientific debate and see how information spreads within the community of scientists. At first, there were huge fights including fistfights over the Neanderthal couple. When it was proved that the baby was genetically theirs, people flipped out. The assumption and almost divine law that evolution is a very gradual process was completely turned inside out. It was obvious that it doesn’t work that way because no ‘missing links’ were ever found and now we were witnessing a sub-species change that was taking place in one generation not hundreds.

One thing that was happening that wasn’t explained outright was the dreams Mitch was having about the Neanderthal couple. He dreamed about what happened to them. That they were driven from their community and hunted down to be killed. The woman had already been stabbed in the stomach and her baby was born dead. The climbed to the cave in which they died trying to escape. There were others who gave birth to ‘flatfaces’ and were also driven out and the babies killed. But the message was clear that evolution was not thwarted then and it would not be thwarted now no matter how much the present species didn’t want to believe or took extreme steps to stop it.

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engrossing story, well put together, and i'll look for the sequel too. i had a lot of trouble buying the central figure as a character, though, and inasmuch as i did she pissed me off. i think maybe she got dented while being shoehorned into the plot at various points, and sustained too much

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permanent damage.*g* cause she too often acted and thought like the complete idjit she clearly wasn't supposed to be. which impacted on other characters in her vicinity, and on the believability of the whole story.

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Maybe it's just because I'm an evolutionary biologist, but this book stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. When something unbelievable happens in a science-fiction book, the author can take one of two approaches: either quickly handwave it with technobabble and move on to

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focus on the consequences of the event, or foreground the explanation based on reasonable extrapolations of current science. The author tried to do the latter, but his "explanation" made all the sense of a handwave.I also found the author's attitudes toward women, particularly the bodily autonomy of women, to be troubling. What happens to the women in this story is a violation of their bodily autonomy: they become pregnant against their wishes. Being disgusted and horrified by this pregnancy is a perfectly normal and understandable reaction. However, by the end of the book, the women who are frightened and repulsed by their unwanted pregnancies and the offspring created of same are vilified, while those who embrace pregnancy and motherhood are celebrated. Not to mention that the children produced by these pregnancies, who are supposed to be yay and wonderful and the next step in human evolution, are just plain creepy.

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Similar in some respects to Blood Music, this is Bear's take on the next step in human evolution. What if something could trigger evolution to happen in a generation, and not over a long period of time, how would we react to the next generation of humans, and how would they react to us? An

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excellent exploration of society and how something so extreme could change it.

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Darwin's Radio is the novel most firmly-based on modern science that I've ever read which puts forth a theory on how evolution to man may have occurred. Greg Bear's acknowledgements in the back credit conversations with numerous scientists. I was in molecular biology in grad school, and I was

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amazed at the advanced level of knowledge shown in this book. How can an author gain such an informed knowledge of such a difficult subject without becoming a molecular biologist himself? But Greg Bear did it, to write this book.
The theory Greg Bear puts forth is not supported as "the truth" by the scientists he talked to, he says; but it is a fascinating supposition, and the scientific details are valid and the theory consistent with knowledge at the time of publication.
Besides having my mind opened to a remarkable interpretation of biological science to explain how evolution may occur in leaps and bounds rather than in one tiny incremental change in some one individual at a time, I was amazed at the skill with which the author wove the science into the text so as to allow the characters who live the story to live and breath as very real and sympathetic people. There is no subverting of characterization in the interest of scientific or technological exposition, which is something that commonly turns me off in science fiction. A good book has to be about people under stress with serious problems to solve, and Darwin's Radio is certainly this! I found most of the characters to be written with great imagination and understanding of human nature.
This SF novel is unique in my reading experience in its treatment of current progress in biotechnology as the means to understand the evolution of mankind rather than a poorly understood excuse for all sorts of imagined future physical enhancements. If the book has a drawback - which I have to admit it does - it is that the science is so truly a part of the book that people without any college courses in biology or genetics would probably find it difficult. My brother, an engineer but without the biology background, did. The author added a glossary to the back of the book, but it's probably not enough to make it easy to read. But there's nothing wrong in learning some actual facts while you lose yourself in this fascinating book!
The novel was awarded the Nebula Award for Best Novel after it came out. I found it mind-blowing, and in my opinion this book should be recognized as one of the best ten works of science fiction of all time.

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Darwin's Radio is a superb case of a writer doing thorough research to write a technologically advanced novel. Probably the best I've ever seen for fiction! However, the average individual, with only high school chemistry and biology would be lost within the first few pages of advanced bio-genetics

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and molecular biology! A more simplified truth may have captured an audience earlier rather than later, which is what this book does. The average individual will find themselves bored through the first half, but by the middle of the book the story is beginning to take shape. Unfortunately, the shape is easily recognized. An almost cookie-cutter-like storyline that one can easily predict the outcome of.
I praise Bear for his research, however, the story-telling was a bit lackluster for my personal taste. The premise, however, of another evolution in the future, makes for a great group discussion for book clubs!

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Darwin's Radio is a science fiction story about how humans evolved and how they might evolve in the future. It is also a story of how our government might react to both an epidemic and science it does not agree with.

This is one of the best science fiction stories I have read in years! The

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characters are real, well-rounded, and interesting. The plot moves along nicely with no longer 'lectures' on the genetics involved and is (unfortunately) very believable. The writing is tight and clean.

I did have two tiny problems with the book. First, the characters, such as Christopher Dicken, are referred to through the first third of the book as 'Dicken' and then is suddenly referred as 'Christopher'. It took a few rereads to sort out whose last name went with the first. Second, the transitions from one chapter and point of view to the next chapter and point of view were too abrupt for my tastes in several spots.

Overall, wonderful!!! I will reread it again, once I've forgotten some of the plot, and now I can't wait to read the sequel.

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Engrossing biological hard sf. What happens when the human race evolves? and how will we cope? The answer is of course, badly. But with a ray of light still present throughout.

Bear posits the just about feasible hypothesis that sometimes evolution acts very quickly indeed. Buried within the introns

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of the genome are alternate genesets for species design to cope with rapidly changing conditions. All it takes is the right type of viral infection to trigger this shift, and within a generation of children speciation will have occurred. Naturally such changes are quickly noticed in modern society, and upon skilled bio-tech investigation, prior hints at the possibilities are un-earthed. But for those involved, there is no cure. Only the option to face the future un-guided by the past.

Our heroes are Mitch a disgraced archaeologist who has fond some unusual remains in an alpine cave, and Kaye, and eminent biologist who has spotted the first possibilities of the viral transmissions. Neither of them are well versed in the politics of science, communicating complex ideas to the public, nor the role of policy and public opinion. But when they discover some facts that seem to oppose the general wisdom, they soon find out why these matters are vital.

The initial third is somewhat dense in biology. It isn't that complicated, but even the basic primer at the back doesn't really explain it that well either. This may be enough to put off some readers who don't understand what DNA is and it's role in human life. The rest is surprisingly good characterisation, and complex politics, centered in the US. Ignorance and fear remain the prime motivators, and in these times no-one has the patience while science finds the right answers. Originally written over ten years ago, it has aged well, with little of the biology being directly overturned (apart from the total number of genes). The technology is also well predicted.

There are a few quibbles, especially the US centric matter, of a worldwide issue. Likewise many of the political issues and decisions get glossed over and the characters given little background. But it works well enough. Thoroughly readable and enjoyable by anyone with even a slight amount of biological background. The key points are possibly not so much the speculation over human evolution, but the attitudes towards science, politics and the other, in society today.

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My son's mum flipped through this book and said it seemed like it was done by a virologist who thought they could write, as opposed to a writer who thought they understood virology. I don't 100% agree--she is certainly right if we are referring to the sciencey passages, but there are also the

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character moments and dramatic reveals that we expect from a well-put-together Hollywood biothriller. Some of them, like the birth of a key baby for humanity's future, are handled masterfully. And certainly I can admire Bear's commitment to getting the science right. But the two sides do not always seem well integrated, and some kind of weird contempt for the masses and their ignorance (in the face of a terrifying epidemic that even the experts don't understand!) seeps in. I enjoyed this, but I would not read it again, although I would read the sequel if it came to me of its own accord.

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Anthropologist Mitch Rafelson discovers the mummified bodies of a Neanderthal couple and their strange newborn. Molecular biologist Kay Lang has unearthed evidence that “junk DNA” may have a role to play in evolution, but is having trouble persuading her colleagues her conclusions are valid.

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Virus hunter Christopher Dicken is trying to discover the source of an illness that strikes pregnant women and their fetuses. Mark Augustine, of the Center for Disease Control, is trying to manage public reaction and advise the US government of how to respond.

And then the women who have lost their babies become pregnant (often without having sex), and their children are born with motor and language skills far in advance of “normal” humans.

Is evolution a gradual process, or can its changes sometimes be abrupt? Do retroviruses have a role to play in evolution? What might happen if evolutionary changes were triggered by a virus?

These novels are well worth reading for the science they explicate. The public and governmental response may strike some as over the top, but I think they are plausible. While this is billed as a scifi thriller, it is not an action novel, but an ideas novel. I found it gripping, but if you love action, you may hate it. Since it is told from the point of view of at least three people it seems disjointed at times. Darwin’s children is even more disjointed, and explicates the societal response over time.

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Unutterable tripe, premise pretty good but very poorly written. Almost as if he could smell the movie deal.

Overall Darwin's Radio was an interesting look into possibilities of evolution. There was one glaring (to me) over site of the science that was not addressed in the book but it was only incidental to the story being told.

Bear's storytelling let the reader infer many things, and a few parts that

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weren't critical to the story were given quick explanations/conclusions i.e. Saul. Several items seemed to have been kind of pointless to be added in, with the possibility that it will become important in sequel books. The book had a nice pace, things kept moving but not at light speed.

Good book, enjoyable, not one of his best but definitely a good read.

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I had trouble with this book. The characters are sort of flat. I certainly didn't feel connected to them. The book didn't read smoothly and the story jumped around alot. There wasn't any build up of suspense. I'm not going to bother with the sequel. This was just too painful.

People discover active retroviral genes in the human genome. This suddenly develops into a new plague to rival HIV, and there are worse things to come (that all count as spoilers).

The science is pretty solid - it's speculative fiction, but it's plausible, mostly. Oddly for a book which is hard

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sci-fi of a biological nature, I found the behaviour of the society far more compelling than the science - I think that's a testament to the plausability of the science though, it lay in the background for me and worked.

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An interesting look at what might possibly be the next stage of evolution. Greg Bear's Hugo nominee is a wonderful mix of scientific and political thriller as well as a study of human reactions and relationships. Beautifully laid out and written in an interesting manner.

After I finished this book I

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sat back and thought, my god, I know all about viruses and diseases and retroviruses now. Greg Bear does not dumb down the science to make sure his audience gets it, instead he explains everything several times in innovative ways to make sure the reader comprehends the importance of his storyline. The science in this book is complex and believable, compelling and worthy. While I am generally a physics and chemistry lover, the biology and molecular sciences portrayed in Darwin's Radio excited me. These aren't the same biology principles I was bored with in high school, these are full out edges of possibility, dangerous and life-changing sciences.

The principle behind this book is that subspeciation and thus, evolution, is actually a function of biologically engineered retroviruses- retroviruses with networks to tell when a mutation is working and when one is failing. While it is generally speculative science, it is very grounded in modern principles which are explained throughout the novel as well as in a primer at the end.

Well worth a read! This scifi book breaks the boundaries of simple outbreak thriller into the bounds of political intrigue and romance.

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The first book I've read by Greg Bear, but I won't be the last. I've already begun Darwin's Children. As others have written, the science here is a bit difficult to follow, but as the story progresses, it becomes well worth it.

What sets this wonderful book apart from others of the genre more than any other factor is the fact that it carefully explores the social implications, even the long-term ones, of a biological crisis. I look forward with high anticipation to other titles by this author.

Greg Bear puts the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution into overdrive to deliver this award winner. In a single near-future generation, much of the population jumps to the next level of humanity, a la Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon. The first thing I noticed in "Darwin's Radio" was how much I

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liked the characters. They weren't caricatures, but interesting, if fallible, people like we meet every day. I could follow most of the science, but the genetic details were obscure. The story doesn’t hinge on the science anyway, the science is only there to confirm the possibility of the main premise. The story is really about the social repercussions of a radical and sudden change in the characteristics of large segments of humanity. Issues of public welfare versus individual rights proliferate and get nasty. Reading this book in 1999, pre-9/11 and Patriot Act, must have been a very different experience than it is now. Sometimes SF gives us glimpses of the future we’d rather not meet in reality. It’s not all Jules Verne submarines.Books set in the near future often seem more anachronistic than those of long ago or the far future. We can accept the fantasies of Jules Verne and aren’t aware of his historical mistakes unless we’re Verne scholars or historians. Anything goes in the far future, of course, because, well, we are ancient history and the laws of physics really could change, maybe. Reading “Darwin’s Radio,” I kept thinking “Use the internet,” “Get your cell phone,” and “What did CNN say?” What a difference 10 years can make. 5 stars for characterization, a great and well-developed premise, and interesting popular science.-1 star for a slow ending and forgetting about CNN.

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Biothriller set in the near future. Government response to perceived threat was chillingly realistically scary. Loved the biological thesis and the weaving of disciplines in this book. How would we respond? What would our govenment do? How quickly could the scientific community abandon what it

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thinks it knows in the face of new evidence?

A few negatives: Some of the scientific explanations were a bit tedious and they sub-plot regarding her husband's business dealings seemed not really vital to moving the story along; it added too much unnecessary intrigue and failed to provide enough insight to flesh out the personal side of the story. The politics vs science theme was pretty well done but might have been even MORE effective if some of the "villians" were a little less stereotypically beaurocrats.

Overall though a very, very good book. Strong recommend - especially for anyone with an interest in biology/genetics/evolution or biomedical ethics.

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Biotechno thriller set in the first years of the new millenium. Story takes soms detours along the way and ah awful lot of explaining is done about biogenitica. In the positive sens this means I got the feeling I actually learned something reading this book.