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Title: Darwin's Children by Greg Bear ISBN: 0-345-44836-7 Publisher: Del Rey Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.32 (31 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Nice sequel to Darwin's Radio!
Comment: Greg Bear keeps writing books that end up on my list of favorites. Darwin's Radio was brilliant, and Darwin's Children is an excellent sequel. Don't pick this story up in the middle. If you haven't read Darwin's Radio, get that one first -- you won't be sorry. As for this book, Bear does a great job of developing the character of a "new child," the next step in human evolution. I can't comment on how good the science is, since my main knowledge of biology stops with the frog I cut open in high school, but ultimately the characters make this a fine story. He also mixes in some ideas about God, and he does it deftly and gently, without making it seem out of place in a story that deals with evolution.
A nice added touch in Darwin's Children is a biology primer at the end of the book, along with a glossary of technical terms. Not enough to get you that job at the CDC, but helpful nonetheless.
Rating: 3
Summary: A spark missing
Comment: I'd enjoyed Greg Bear's fisrt novel in this series, Darwin's Radio, tremendously - evolution, physical anthropology and neaderthals, with a new race of humans being born. What's not to like?
In Darwin's Children, the first generation of new humans are growing up, and there's enormous government tension engendered by their presence, the fear of them as a contagious virus that needs to be contained, etc. (In the real world, I suspect the response to 'new' humans would be far more savage and deadly, but perhaps the author didn't want to go there.)
Mitch and Kay, and their new human daughter Stella, are key protagonists in this novel, but not the only players: every chapter in the book switches - irritatingly - from one character point of view to another.
As is so often the case with science fiction, the science becomes the protagonist, with the human characters often little more than mouthpieces for lengthy disserations on various scientifica topics - in this book for example, evolutonary and viral biology (though Bear provides a glossary at the back for the jargon-challenged).
I suppose this would have all been fine, except nothing really happens in Darwin's Children. There are tensions. Stella grows up. Mitch and Kay have relationship issues. There's a very touching archaeological find of mixed races buried in 30,000 years of old lava (CAN two races of humanoids work together???). Oh, and Kay has an epiphany - which is all very interesting - but ultimately has little bearing on either the story or the development of Kay's character.
In short, after rushing out to buy the book in hardcover, I was left feeling flat. Perhaps this was a book Bear didn't want to write anyway - but his publisher made him....
Rating: 3
Summary: Boring, Disjointed and Over-rated
Comment: The sequel to the considerably better Darwin's Radio lacks much of interest - the injection of recent understandings of the possible role(s) of viruses in evolution aside.
The topic matter at hand truly could lend itself to very interesting story-telling, but in this text Bear does not seem to push hard enough. What it lacks is a penetrating insight needed to take expository texts into the realm of worthwhile fiction.
Also, I think that a chief problem in the plot arcs is that they do not cohere very well. Much is left out and context is often absent, with the result for me being that I really didn't follow the story - as it were - too closely. I found myself skipping/skimming over large portions of the text.
The "science is good" in the text, sure, but the "science is good" also in Scientific American. In the SF genre, good science absent good ploting means, ultimately, a less fruitful yield.
What perhaps irks me the most is that the actual payoff of the text is so asymmetrical with the tout & hype.
Put another way, if this is considered "masterful" science fiction, then we are in a dark period of science fiction writing. My view is that the science fiction genre, emblazoned as it used to be with irreverance and occasional iconoclastic brilliance, is now almost completely subject to creativity-dampening strictures of political correctness. Bear's work is almost a monment to P.C. in writing.
Put anoyther way: P.C. and S.F. are utterly incompatible. Since the publishing industry will not publish those texts which do not jibe with current notions of what's P.C., and since the American readership is evidently so docile and easily pleased, then we may predict an extended dark age for the SF genre.
However, to give Bear proper credit for not being completely P.C., he does engage the issue regarding the peopling of the Americas. This contribution to the discourse alone made me bump Bear's work up from two to three stars. All praise be the vestigial remnants of independent thought!!!
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Title: Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear ISBN: 0345435249 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 05 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Ilium (SIMMONS, DAN) by Dan Simmons, Homer Iliad ISBN: 0380978938 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Moving Mars by Greg Bear ISBN: 0812524802 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Vitals by Greg Bear ISBN: 0345423348 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Humans (Neanderthal Parallax Series) by Robert J. Sawyer ISBN: 0765346753 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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