Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: The book is fascinating, tying in the fields of biology and anthropolgy in what can only be termed a biological thriller.It draws the reader in, and weaves a compelling story, with an open, but still satisfying ending. There is certainly science, but it accessible science, and doesn't seem terribly impossible. Perhaps it could even be probable. Our knowledge of this area is thin at best. The down side: The story never reaches a true climax, but instead seems to flounder after being drawn down from the larger picture to the story of two individuals. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does make the ending seem to drag on a bit before the resolution. Overall, if you are the sort of person who likes scientific hunt and chase, along with politics and people caught in between both, you'll like this book. It will certainly not disappoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Unexciting and Intellectually Weak
Review: This book is a suspense thriller based on an idea about human speciation. The concept is that apparently useless sequences within our genome can act to orchestrate qualitative changes in genetic structure and regulation leading to the instant emergence of a new human species. Darwin's Radio is written in conventional popular thriller style with multiple characters, interleaved plot lines, and the usual romance and sex scenes. Bear is a competent professional who handles these elements decently and the quality of characterization and writing is solid if not exciting. As with much genre work, this book can be judged by non-literary criteria, in this case, the interest and plausibility of the ideas on which the plot is based. In this respect, Darwin's Radio doesn't fare very well. Bear did a lot of homework and seems to have learned a lot about genetics and virology in the course of preparing this book. His grasp of population genetics and evolutionary biology, however, appears to be weak and unfortunately, his plot device is far fetched, probably impossible. Even worse, he conflates 2 separate ideas. One is the idea of macromutations leading to rapid evolution, the second idea is the notion of teleological evolution. In this book, the new human species is presented as more intelligent than homo sapiens and the implication is that prior macromutations produced by this mechanism, modern homo sapiens included, were similarly more intelligent than their progenitors. Why is this necessary? Why, for example, couldn't a new human species be less intelligent but more social? There is no necessary connection between macroevolution and these simplistic teleological notions. This book is neither intellectually coherent nor very well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard Science- Tough Read
Review: Hard science-fiction alows us to learn while we enjoy a good story. The science is here,the makings of a good story also. But the book never takes hold of the reader, never pulls one along for the ride. I learned about phages, retrovirus and genetics, but didn't have a lot of fun.
Rating: 
Summary: Greg Bear does his homework!
Review: As a biologist, I appreciate accuracy in depictions of biological science. The most enjoyable aspect of this book is its comparatively high level of scientific understanding. So many SciFi authors either gloss over or simply bumble through the details, hoping nobody will notice that they don't have a clue. Greg Bear does his homework! Endogenous retroviruses are real, and are becoming a real concern. While the results would certainly not be quite as interesting as those proposed by Bear, this was nonetheless a fascinating romp through contemporary molecular biology. I can't wait for the inevitable sequel!
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Ending
Review: The beginning in the Republic of Georgia hooked me. The science explanations were a bit heavy to wade thru. Then Saul died without explanation other than "he's sick." Only later is "mental illness" explained to be the culprit. Never anything else. Oh well. As a previous reviewer said, loss of an interesting character. It got pretty interesting after that, although I was never convinced of the CDC director's rationale that everyone who expressed SHEVA and their "next phase" offspring was a deadly threat to the remainder of us. The final few chapters were the most disappointing, if only because the potential for the story to really take off was there, but it just chopped off with no real conclusion. I realize it's a set-up for a sequel, but . . . . What happened in the "concentration nursery" in Iowa? What's up with the new form of communication between Stella and the other next phase boy? Why is the 3 year old who can talk just minutes out of the womb and who complains to herself that verbal communication is so slow and clunky also so incredibly naive? With intelligence like that, I don't care if she's only 3 and sheltered by her parents, she wouldn't be like that. Overall, a good idea, but poorly executed. He spent too much time building up to the next generation and then no time at all regarding it. I find that sad, becuz the second half of the book really had me into the characters and what was going to happen. P.S. Minor Gripe-- Didja notice the phones were all down once AKS took over Saul's company, but Kaye could still log on to the internet?
Rating:
Summary: a little too technical
Review: I enjoyed this book overall, but Mr.Bear (doesn't that sound like a kid's toy?)went into way too much detail about the chemical bonds, and the virus, retrovirus, endovirus thing. The book gets much more interesting when he lays off the technobabble and concentrates more on the characters. The only other complaint I have is that he often has the characters refer to events that the reader knows nothing about, or he only alludes to an event, and we're left wondering "What's up with that?" Overall, a good read, if you can stick it out through the science parts.
Rating:
Summary: Great science, good characters; could be shorter and tauter
Review: Kaye Lang, the heroine of Darwin's Radio, is a world-class microbiologist, whose ideas about unusual genetic influences on evolution become relevant when Herod's flu strikes, causing hundreds of thousands of miscarriages. She is one of the few who suspect that it's not just a disease, and is soon caught up in political fights as the US government tries to understand the disease--a kind of retrovirus--and find a cure. The science is well-researched and very believable, and the characters are well-drawn. So why only three stars? Partly it's just that the book is too long, as several other reviewers have noted below. Kaye's relationship with Saul Lang takes up perhaps fifty or sixty pages out of the first two hundred, but is almost never referred to thereafter. Bear must have put this in to round out Kaye's character, but it seems unnecessary to the plot or to our sense of who Kaye is. The few connections Saul's actions have to the rest of the plot could have been done just as well in many fewer words. The sections about the politics and science of the surgeon general's office are also too long, though since this is the lens through which Bear focusses on Washington politics it's an essential part of the thriller. However, the ending of the book throws all this preparatory material away; Bear abandons all the standard techno-thriller machinery he has gone to so much trouble to set up, and the reader follows Kaye away to a different kind of ending altogether. Kaye Lang is a good character, and her life and work are what make this book as good as it is. But Bear's decision to write the book as a techno-thriller, when it could have been done more simply just as Kaye's story, seems to me to be a critical mistake. It's a mark of how good a writer Bear is that this mixture is as powerful as it is.
Rating:
Summary: Fails to Reach Orbit
Review: Bear is a good science fiction author, and you will rarely be disappointed with picking up anything he's written. Even when they are incomplete novels like "Darwin's Radio". The story is classic Bear, an education in the reading with great detail and good (if slightly too masculine) characterization . Unfortuately, this story just peters-out in the last 75 pages, characters are left hanging along with plotlines, a huge conspiracy remains, and the relationship between the old and new races sputters to a conclusion in an unsatisfactory Epilogue. Perhaps Bear wants to write a sequel?
Rating:
Summary: Great 1st half...what happened?
Review: This book started with a truly mind bending, mind blowing first half. A horrifying, plausible disease is loose, and our characters have to stop it. Great so far. Lots of nifty science that I swallowed like a good reader. Then, Bear turns the story into a romance. Our main characters are in love and ON THE RUN! Oh, boy. That's when it lost me. Just keep with the mystery and the disease, and it's a winner. Can he go back and start over from page 350?
Rating:
Summary: Genetic thriller + intolerance + evolutionary biology. Wow!
Review: While always looking for new arrivals for a genetic thriller reading group my technology management consulting firm sponsors, I was delighted to happen upon Darwin's Radio, a referral from a friend. I am constantly searching and infrequently finding authors who have command of science, technology and biology. Greg Bear's novel is one of the first to deal with the fascinating topic of punctuated evolution. Unlike Darwinism that explains evolution of species in gradual steps, punctuated evolution hypothesizes evolution in terms of provoked jumps (for example a SHEVA retrovirus) that may be responsible for the rapid emergence of new species. Coupled with the recent completion of the human genome project (Summer 2000) and the growing interest in the role of "junk" DNA, Bear draws together contrasting and compelling biology that is well researched and well presented for the intelligent layperson reader. While I got a little tired of all the parenthetic "love-making" references involving Kaye and Mitch, the juxtaposition of intolerance, fear and biology makes for a full and enjoyable read.
| 
