Rating: 
Summary: The Next Step in Human Evolution
Review: Darwin's Radio is the first novel in the Darwin series. Mitch Rafelson is an anthropologist who follows a lead to a small cave that has been buried under a mountain glacier until fairly recently. There he finds the mummified remains of a Neandertal couple, Homo sapiens neandertalenis, and a baby, who is Homo sapiens sapiens. Kaye Lang is in Tbilisi, Georgia, to study bacteriophages, but a recently uncovered mass grave site near Gordi becomes a political hot potato and she is co-opted by the UN to investigate due to her slight experience in forensic medicine. Around sixty men and women have been shot or clubbed to death and buried. At least two of the women are about seven months pregnant. Christopher Dicken is an agent of the Epidemic Intelligence Services of the National Center for Infectious Diseases. He meets Kaye while in Tbilisi following up a rumor of women bearing children who are different and of entire villages being razed and sterilized. He returns to the CDC with samples from the grave site near Gordi as well as from a Turkish mother and newborn. Mark Augustine is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a time of cutbacks, so Augustine is looking for a public relations angle to save his budget. He has sent Dicken out searching for an elusive virus in the Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey that causes miscarriages and which has been hidden by the governments, doctors and the general population. However, a young researcher finds cases of this disease at UCLA Medical Center and isolates a previously unidentified virus that is the common element in seven miscarriages. He sends samples to the CDC, where it is called Herod's Flu. The samples do not match any known disease in the CDC files, but does match an HERV (Human Endogenous RetroVirus) embedded within the human genes. This virus was first identified by Kaye Lang in a series of papers on partial and full HERVs on chromosomes 14 and 17. The disease is officially named SHEVA (Scattered HERV Activation). It causes a miscarriage in pregnant women, followed by another pregnancy without the introduction of any male sperm. The resulting infant is different, mutated, with extra chromosomes. This novel is the story of the next step in human evolution, which is driven by a mechanism hidden within our own genes. The public reaction to this new species is fear, anger and violence. Ambitious politicians fan the flames to promote their own careers and the SHEVA children, and their families, are the victims. The SHEVA mechanism is highly speculative, but the public consequences are not unlikely. While this plot has been used many times -- e.g., Van Vogt's Slan and Shiras' Children of the Atom -- the author adds a degree of details never provided in previous stories and also raises some new issues. Highly recommended for Bear fans and anyone else who enjoys hard SF with an evolutionary biology theme.
Rating: 
Summary: Uninspired
Review: Don't get me wrong, the book wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't as good as everyone says that it is. It postulates some realistic science and some realistic sociology, but the ending just drags and the majority of the book is rather boring. I was especially unimpressed with Saul, who is a clinically depressed scientist. Granted, clinical depression is a bad thing and it makes everyday life more difficult, but Saul was an eminently despisable character, since he was such a whiner about his illness. It is one thing to be stricken with brain chemistry that you can't overcome, but it is another to take it out on your closest loved ones. Thousands of people are disadvantaged, but Saul is a baby about it. Gratefully, Saul leaves the story rather early, and we are left with the love story between other characters, which is rather bland and uninspired. The plot is interesting, if lacking in the chutzpah to continue in the direction that it was headed, but can't carry the weak dialogue and slow pacing. I wouldn't really recommend this book to too many people unless they are voracious readers and need something to kill some hours. It's not entirely bad (Stella's entrance is rather hideous, in a fun way), but it's not good enough to justify eight dollars.
Harkius
Rating: 
Summary: Darwin's Radio
Review: "Darwin's Radio" is one of the best hard science fiction novels of recent years, and I don't say that lightly. Not only does it clearly and concisely explain a bold scientific conjecture, but it also does so in an unexpectedly timely manner. The idea at the center of the story is a genetic structure called a retrovirus that was incorporated into mammalian DNA millions of years back. When examples of retroviruses start appearing and affecting people around the world, causing numerous miscarriages, authorities react by treating it as a disease. However, a trio of scientists believe that this actually marks the next stage in human evolution, and that similar retroviruses were responsible for evolutionary events in the past. The books follows these three as they search for proof of their theory and attempt to explain some startling facets of the emerging virus. What I particularly enjoyed about this book was how it incorporated the current public attitude towards genetics and biotechnology. We live at a time when there's still a lot of public misunderstanding about medicine and genetics, politicians frequently abuse that misunderstanding, and standards for scientific journalism in the mainstream media are shockingly low. Bear incorporates these facts into his story. There are brief but effective passages designed to show public reaction to the growing epidemic and the scientific community's initial inability to stop it. And there is discussion of how ordinary people are affected by the events described. It is these passages, more than anything else, that make this novel so frighteningly realistic. Some reviewers have complained about the quality of characterization in "Darwin's Radio". This, of course, is a dilemma that all authors of hard SF face. If too much space is devoted to the scientific aspects of the story, then the literary aspects must suffer. I personally don't think that characterization was a major problem in this book. The major characters all have believable and dynamic personalities. There are a few inner monologues that sound a bit cliched and sloppy, but in the grand scheme of things that shouldn't prevent you from enjoying the book as a whole.
Rating: 
Summary: No exciting music playing on this radio
Review: Well, what an absolute disappointment! I have read several of Bear's books, and I thought this one might follow suit with excitement, intrigue, suspense, scary critters...SORRY! None of those! I tried really hard to wade through this mishmash of oddly developed characters, a totally unecessary and weak romance between the two primary characters, and a plot that could have been really good. Sadly more time was spent with the science of the theory than the fruition of the theory, resulting in an oddly confused mess that I couldn't even finish. In conclusion I just can't recommend this read if one is searching for that perfect beach book! It just isn't all that exciting! Of course if you need help sleeping...:-)
Rating:
Summary: More human than humans
Review: I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It was thick at times, but he made something very startling sound plausible and real. It feels like something that could be happening right now, and we would have no idea. There are just so many terrific ideas woven into the book - a virus has been hiding for eons in the human DNA which has now begun to emerge in response to some unknown trigger, there is a group-level consciousness aspect to it - there is an emergent awareness that is developing which is causing it to express itself in more and more people. The net effect is the mutation of humans into a new species. Authorities start herding "infected" women into camps and force abortions, even though any woman could develop the "infection" instrinsically and an ever-increasing number do. When children of that strain finally do arrive they are not what you would expect. They are more human, possibly, than humans themselves. Sympathy, not terror is the emotion that Bear leaves you with. A very good book.
Rating:
Summary: Needs an editor
Review: Needed an editor
Reviewer: A reader from Malden, MA USA
This is book built around a perennially, if not original, great idea-Man's next step in evolution. Unfortunately, as with other books (e.g., Eon) by this author, it's much too long (538 pages) and drawn out. It needed an editor badly. It could have been much more exciting and suspenseful if tightened up and shortened by about 200 pages; and the extraneous backroom-politics junk omitted. Then it might have lived up to its aspirations to be another Midwich Cuckoos (by Wyndham) or Childhood's End (by Clarke), from which it draws its themes heavily (as it does also to some degree from Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale).
Darwin's Radio drowns the reader in technical biological details and jargon that are unnecessary for one's appreciation and comprehension of its ideas. No work of fiction should need a glossary of terms-if you can't explain the science simply, then you probably don't understand it yourself; and you lose the reader. Although I am fascinated by science and fairly proficient in it, I nevertheless found myself skimming a lot of the long, overly technical passages.
Bear has written a couple of excellent (shorter and tighter!) novels like Blood Music, a chilling masterpiece of ideas and suspense; and Queen of Angels. I wish he'd go back to that style.
Also, the edition I read (the paperback) was full of typographical errors, like when Jack walks over to Mitch and squats beside him to talk: "Jack squatted beside Jack." You'd think that by the ninth paperback printing the publisher would have cleaned up the text a bit.
I recently learned that there's a sequel, but unless it's significantly shorter I'm not going to waste my time reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Needed an editor
Review: This is book built around a perennially, if not original, great idea-Man's next step in evolution. Unfortunately, as with other books (e.g., Eon) by this author, it's much too long (538 pages) and drawn out. It needed an editor badly. It could have been much more exciting and suspenseful if tightened up and shortened by about 200 pages; and the extraneous backroom-politics junk omitted. Then it might have lived up to its aspirations to be another Midwich Cuckoos (by Wyndham) or Childhood's End (by Clarke), from which it draws its themes heavily (as it does also to some degree from Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale). Darwin's Radio drowns the reader in technical biological details and jargon that are unnecessary for one's appreciation and comprehension of its ideas. No work of fiction should need a glossary of terms-if you can't explain the science simply, then you probably don't understand it yourself; and you lose the reader. Although I am fascinated by science and fairly proficient in it, I nevertheless found myself skimming a lot of the long, overly technical passages. Bear has written a couple of excellent (shorter and tighter!) novels like Blood Music, a chilling masterpiece of ideas and suspense; and Queen of Angels. I wish he'd go back to that style. Also, the edition I read (the paperback) was full of typographical errors, like when Jack walks over to Mitch and squats beside him to talk: "Jack squatted beside Jack." You'd think that by the ninth paperback printing the publisher would have cleaned up the text a bit. I recently learned that there's a sequel, but unless it's significantly shorter I'm not going to waste my time reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Turn this Radio off!
Review: Darwin's Radio is one of those books you desperately want to like. Greg Bear is a consummately gifted science fiction thinker, an author more interested in the unintended consequences of wayward scientific theories and ideas than he is in plotting, character, description, dialogue, and flow of the action. Occasionally the idea is so compelling that this is forgivable, as with Bear's brilliant, gripping, terrifying and oddly optimistic "Blood Music", which starts out as a nanotechnological horror story and ends up playing with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Darwin's Radio, sadly, is not such a book. In one sense it is typical Bear, in that the Big Scary Scientific Idea at the center of the book is engaging and forces the reader to think through the implications. The trouble, of course, is that the author pays too much attention to the idea behind Darwin's Radio---discontinous evolution---and too little attention to character development. The result is a book that is hard to get into, hard to stay interested in, and ultimately disappoints and bores the reader. The plot, in a nutshell, is vintage Bear: an anthropologist, Mitch Rafaelson, stumbles across three mummies in a cave in the Alps: a Neanderthal man and woman, and a baby, the latter evidently Homo Sapiens. Recovering in a Swiss hospital after an Alpine storm strands his team in the mountains and kills the other two members of the party, Rafaelson learns that researchers and scientists are curious---too curious---about the nature of the 'baby'. In the meantime, a plague is sweeping across the planet, causing pregnant women to miscarry, delivering dead fetuses that are horribly deformed. The rest of Bear's characters---including retrovirus researcher Kaye Lang, CDC investigator Christopher Dicken, his Machiavellian superior Mark Augustine, and a horde of other researchers, scientists, and bureaucrats---race to discover what is behind the virus, and as the book lumbers towards its turgid conclusion, the "virus", a series of immaculate births, and the mummified infant all come together. By the time they do, the reader really doesn't care. The idea, that human evolution occurs discontinuously and not gradually, is an interesting one, and the science in "Darwin's Radio" is well developed enough to spur me to research the subject on my own. But the characters, the settings, and the action itself are poorly developed and generic. I would have thought, before reading "Darwin's Radio", that it would be difficult to make a boring novel about the extinction of the human race; Bear succeeds in doing exactly this. "Blood Music", Bear's breakthrough novel about nanotechnology gone wrong, succeeded in that it took a scientific concept, pushed it to the worst-case scenario (with little nanites getting out into the world and rewriting the ecosystem), got the story to the point where I thought I knew what was going to happen---and then completely shifted course, catching me off guard and making for a delicious, unnerving, and unpredictable read. With "Darwin's Radio", the link between the mummy infant and the global virus is pretty clear to the reader by about Page 50, but Bear keeps his characters lumbering along in search of a connection between the two. In the best murder mysteries, the characters are operating on the same level of knowledge as the reader; in the worst, and "Darwin's" qualifies, the reader is about 250 pages ahead of the characters. This disconnect kills any suspense Bear could have developed, and when the Big Cool Event finally happens---it elicits a yawn. Two stars for the interesting concept and the discussion of real-world retroviruses; spare yourself the trouble and get a copy of "Blood Music", which is startling and vintage Bear.
Rating:
Summary: At Least He's Done His Research
Review: This novel has an intriguing premise, concerning a new step in human evolution. Greg Bear has definitely done his research into this area, as the book is overflowing with extremely precise biology and chemistry. Bear was sure to make the scientific aspects of the story plausible in light of the most recent knowledge, and that is what makes for strong science fiction. Sadly, the intricate scientific information becomes overwhelming and starts to needlessly take up space as the story progresses. At times you get the impression that Bear is merely showing off his own knowledge. This is all at the expense of the characters. First, there are far too many minor characters uselessly cluttering up the plot, while the major characters are superficial and underwritten, often speaking in either nerdy scientific jargon or predictable clichés and platitudes. This weakness is also quite evident in some of the clunkiest love scenes you will ever encounter. Meanwhile, Bear's background storyline concerning the breakdown of social order is full of holes and is lacking in plausibility. In fact, plausibility is a quality he obsesses over with the science but not with the plot and characters. Overall, while it seems groundbreaking, few of the premises of this novel are original. The medical and scientific events are strongly influenced by Robin Cook, the breakdown of society arising from a new and rampaging virus was dealt with much more hauntingly by Stephen King in "The Stand," and the concept of a new and improved step in human evolution is straight from "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke. This is worth reading but is not a stunner.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!!
Review: A great read (took me two days), had trouble putting it down. Greg Bear paints a very good picture and is a excellent story teller. He made all thw high tech biology terms and theories very understanable. highly recommend!!
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