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Darwin's Radio
by Greg Bear
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Ballantine Books (2000-07-05)
ISBN: 0345435249
EAN: 9780345435248
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
Release Date: 2000-07-05
SKU: BX027-061107003
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Clean and shiny. Very minor wear, near new. Spine uncreased, pgs crisp, clean, tight, unmarked. No remainder mark.
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com
All the best thrillers contain the solution to a mystery, and the mystery in this intellectually sparkling scientific thriller is more crucial and stranger than most. Why are people turning against their neighbors and their newborn children? And what is causing an epidemic of still births? A disgraced paleontologist and a genetic engineer both come across evidence of cover-ups in which the government is clearly up to no good. But no one knows what's really going on, and the government is covering up because that is what, in thrillers as in life, governments do. And what has any of this to do with the discovery of a Neanderthal family whose mummified faces show signs of a strange peeling? Greg Bear has spent much of his recent career evoking awe in the deep reaches of space, but he made his name with Blood Music, a novel of nanotechnology that crackled with intelligence. His new book is a workout for the mind and a stunning read; human malignancy has its role in his thriller plot, but its real villain, as well as its last best hope, is the endless ingenious cruelty of the natural world and evolution. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
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Product Description
A 2000 HUGO AWARD NOMINEE
Ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans wait like sleeping dragons to wake and infect again--or so molecular biologist Kaye Lang believes. And now it looks as if her controversial theory is in fact chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken, a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service, has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. Then a major discovery high in the Alps --the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--reveals a shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.
Now, as the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve--an evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race . . . if a future exists at all.
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Download Description
Greg Bear's powerfully written, brilliantly inventive novels combine cutting-edge science and unforgettable characters, illuminating dazzling new technologies -- and their dangers. Now, in Darwin's Radio, Bear draws on state-of-the-art biological and anthropological research to give us an ingeniously plotted thriller that questions everything we believe about human origins and destiny -- as civilization confronts the next terrifying step in evolution. A mass grave in Russia that conceals the mummified remains of two women, both with child -- and the conspiracy to keep it secret... a major discovery high in the Alps: the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family -- the newborn infant possessing disturbing characteristics... a mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women, resulting in miscarriage. Three disparate facts that will converge into one science-shattering truth. Molecular biologist Kaye Lang, a specialist in retroviruses, believes that ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans can again come to life. But her theory soon becomes chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken -- a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service -- has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. The shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up. Now, as the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang, along with anthropologist Mitch Rafelson, must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve. An evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race... if a future exists at all. A fiercely intelligent, utterly enthralling novel of adventure and ideas, genetics and evolution, a fast-paced thriller that is grounded in the timeless human themes of struggle, loss, and redemption.
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD Selected by the San Franciso Chronicle, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of the Year "A frightening new wrinkle in human evolution... Darwin's Radio delivers the kind of narrative kick that distinguishes such novels as Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "Vintage Bear... [His] characters are as complex as his ideas."
THE SEATTLE TIMES "A masterpiece... Fascinating."
USA TODAY
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Customer Reviews
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Nothing to do with Science or Darwin
Rating  (1)
Date: 2008-09-04
This book is nothing more than a corruption of science, and spends more time in denial of both science and Darwin than dealing with any real science. The cutesy story line is brief, and overburdened with pointless digressions and endless moralizing over contrived points.
Bear admits at the end that he's a new-age spiritualist who insists that there is a god and that science is basically a crock of dung. He's paying lipservice to science by grabbing the highly visible name "Darwin" to sell his book, but obviously has zero real understanding of either science or Darwin.
The book is poorly written, proof that a degree in literature is inadequate to good storytelling, and demonstrates how the corporate media just continues to grind out and popularize below-average writers. It seems that they base good reviews upon word count. That would explain Stephen King...
Four stars? Amazon must be flooded with shill accounts from publishers. This is the largest piece of dung I've read in ages. I was forced to skim the sequel to this offal, as the dialog and plot were so nebulous as to almost qualify as ghosts.
Bear is an admitted Evolution denier, and makes it clear in the back of the sequel Darwin's Children - which I also recommend that nobody ever read. There are few books that deserve to be burned, very few. This is one of them.
Darwin's Radio does for Darwin what Jonestown did for Kool Aid[tm].
There is more to say, much more, about what's wrong with Bear and his writing in any novel, than there is to say about any degree of accuracy on any point in this book. It's that bad.
He's got viruses confused with pixies, science confused with god, morality confused with superstition, and has just about every other possible concept as bass-ackwards as anything I've ever read in my life.
I've read over 7000 books, and Darwin's Radio ranks as the #3 worst book I've ever read. #2 is the sequel, Darwin's Children. The #1 worst book I've yet read remains "Dianetics." It probably [hopefully] always will be.
The only thing more disappointing that reading a huge pile of excrement like this is delving into the sequel, at LEAST expecting some sort of fairy land fantasy to wander through -which Bear had clearly set up in this book. Nothing of the sort transpired, and it's a massive tome of bored ramblings from an armchair scientist.
Reading this book caused me to do two things: Walk around my Den ranting to myself about debasement of science, and to coin the phrase FAIRY SCIENCE.
In the best possible light, Darwin's Radio is Fairy Science. At worst, it's a hit-piece on science designed to stupify and repel young minds from science. In no case is there any real science anywhere in the book, it is only alluded to before Bear makes an outrageous, and wrong, statement thereafter abusing said science for his own specious goals.
AVOID AT ALL COST.
Demopoly
US Navy cold war vet
BA Asian Literature
Masters in Software Engineering
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How many Greg Bears are there really?
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-21
This guy is such a mixture of ideas and visions; Blood Music was fascinating, Eon was absorbing, and Darwin's Radio was brilliantly conceived (and a compelling read, a genuine page-turner). Bear seems lately to interpret his role as one of explaining science and high-tech concepts, to reveal rather than to extend the theories. I think this is a pity. Radio is a book I adored, I devoured it once but I never went back to it. I think Bear is the most restless of our sci-fi greats I think there's a masterpiece left in the pen yet. This isn't it but its proof positive of his abilities.
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Compelling idea, but doesn't deliver
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-05-29
Imagine a cross between the convoluted scientific theories of Michael Crichton with the thrilling medical researchers found in any of Robin Cook's medical mysteries and you will land yourself with a copy of Greg Bear's novel, Darwin's Radio. The 92-chaptered book tracks a large list of characters on their travels (and intertwining love affairs) as they attempt to research a new form of endogenous retrovirus, known as SHEVA or Herod's flu. Using a fictional disease, Bear argues that there is no way that evolution couldn't have happened, and it is still happening to this day.
I enjoyed the ideas in this book, but was really uninterested in the characters and their stories. Honestly, I would have liked the book to be a quicker read with more suspense.
A+ on the evolutionary theory.
B- on the story
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Spins an unlikely idea into a plausible tale
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-05-22
Archaelogist Mitch Rafelson has become an outcast among his peers, because he put a Native American tribe's request that he respect a "specimen" as the bones of one of their ancestors ahead of his duty to the institution employing him. In Europe, looking for a way to restart his career, he's manipulated by an unscrupulous couple who want him to help them find a buyer for the remarkable thing they've discovered hidden away in a high mountain cave: three bodies, frozen thousands of years ago. "Another Ice Man," they think, assuming that their find can make them rich, and also assuming that Mitch's sullied reputation means he won't mind doing as they demand. The frozen bodies are those of a man, a woman, and a newborn infant. The two adults wear curious masks, and the woman's abdomen has been pierced deeply by a sharpened stick.
In Georgia (the one that used to be part of the U.S.S.R.), fellow scientist Kaye Lang is called away from her work to help determine what happened to the people whose bodies have been uncovered in a mass grave. She's startled to discover that the grave holds only men and pregnant women. All of the bodies wear peculiar mask-like skin growths, and all of the women have been shot in the abdomen.
So begin the stories of two people who find themselves drawn together in solving the same mystery, which soon starts manifesting itself all around the world. As ancient retroviruses infect human couples of childbearing age, strange and frightening pregnancies result. Is what's happening the most dangerous epidemic the species has ever experienced? Or is it incontrovertible proof that humans evolve not gradually, as scientists have believed for decades, but in sudden leaps dictated by "programming" carried in each individual's genetic code?
Author Bear takes an intriguing but (to me, at least, initially) unlikely idea and proceeds to spin it into a plausible tale. His characters are believable, too, and the story is both exciting and well paced. I'm now eager to read the second volume.
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Interesting evolutionary SF, weak sociology and character development
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-03-30
Excellent SF hypothesis -- plausible, well researched, nice extrapolation of a possible genetic/evolutionary mystery. In a nutshell, humans hit the next phase of evolution and it isn't what we expect, nor does it evolve the way we expect. Indeed, it throws the world into a crisis unlike anything we've seen before.
This book is idea driven...the characters and even the plot are tacked on. The plot works, so do the characters, but both are flat and clearly engineered to allow the author to show off research rather than to create drama or emotional involvement. To put it simply, if you are a hard SF fan, you will like this book. If not, you probably will not.
Aside from the speculative element, I didn't get much out of this book. The characters are flat. They seem interesting at first, but after a few chapters it become clear that their relationships and motivations do not drive the story and do not change as the story evolves. There is nothing interesting or dynamic about them and sadly they are contrived solely to convey the SF concept. Scientists and politicians are the worst-portrayed. Both groups are shown in a tightly stereotyped, homogenized manner that is neither interesting nor believable.
The book is also very repetitive...1/4 of the way through all of the science has been presented and the reader has figured out what it means. The next 1/4 shows the character's catching up with reader. Then in the last half there are some weak extrapolations exploring how the world reacts to the SF element, but over and over the SF element is re-explained in countless "as you know Bob" speeches.
The worst part of this book, and something which utterly kills its sequel is the sociological extrapolation. It portrays all of humanity in a way that focuses on prejudice and fear, and in a way that has no precedent in history, sociology, psychology or politics. More than anything, it shows a certain paranoia and lack of trust on the author's part. A key plot point is that a generation of children is lost...and then a generation is born who are really a new species. In such a situation, people will be terrified, but it seems to me they would cling to any hope they could find. In this book, the fear takes over terrible mistreatment of the new children ensues including internment camps and `protocols' to eliminate them. Oddly, throughout this disaster, there appears to be no economic disruption anywhere in the world. Hmm. Strange. Anyway, this part of the story just doesn't make much sense. In short...the sociological extrapolation is poorly though out, contrived to make the otherwise boring science seem dramatic for an extra 200 pages, reflective of the author's stilted world view and not much fun to slog through.
Summary: worth reading, great premise, but not as good as the nebula award might lead you to think.
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