Darwin's Radio
   Greg Bear
  1999 A DelRey Book/Ballantine Pub. NY USA
   ISBN: 034542333X


As an outbreak of a flu-like disease strikes expectant mothers, a molecular biologist specializing in retroviruses, a "virus hunter' & an anthropologist, each with their own first-hand & similar discoveries, pool their resources & reluctantly realize that something asleep in our genes for millions of years is waking up.

This is a fast-paced adventure in ideas, genetics & evolution. As the clues & the scenes unfold, the idea that we are not the unchanging acme of our species becomes more & more apparent.

While scientists bicker, citizens riot & politicians placate, there are groups of scientists scrambling for answers in their labs, doctors wrestling with mass miscarriages & bureaucrats intentionally bungling data. In other words, all hell is breaking loose.

Some of this latest Greg Bear saga is eminently readable, flowing & fluent, as is this author's trademark; some of it reads like a scientific monograph for dummies - an abbreviated overview of genetics, what they are & how they affect us. I managed to stay afloat, just.

I really enjoyed this read my beloved passed on to me. Just as he had done for the previous few days, I would take every moment I could to continue the adventure, especially after listening to him grunt in surprise, read snippets out loud & chatter on about evolution & what it means to us.

Greg Bear has written a taut scientific thriller on the premise that we're going to go nuts when the source of our very continuance as a species as we know ourselves is threatened. That politicians are going to falsify facts, scientists are going to be silenced & the people are going to regress into witch hunters making unholy sacrifices of hapless men. We're going to condone a state of national emergency that requires mass incarcerations of pregnant women & the segregation of genders.

Hot stuff!

My one criticism about Darwin's Radio is that I felt so isolated, globally speaking. Involving the whole world would have made this book much, much larger, however, I got the impression that anywhere else in the world didn't matter.

Naturally, my beloved & I saw importance in different parts of Darwin's Radio. He careened off into the scientific experiments, political ramifications, legal issues. I spun off into the personal experimentation, private laboratory, relationship issues.

Greg Bear writes so evocatively I could easily see the people, the babies, the new mutations. Something now crops up in the news & suddenly Greg Bear's ideas filter in between the gaps. A remarkable novel about transforming our fear of the alien.

Greg Bear's works are legion & include: Psychlone; Blood Music; Song of Earth and Power; The Infinity Concerto; The Forge of God; Heads; Moving Mars & so many more.
(011600)

Rebecca