Evolution

Rating:
Summary: Rare I don't finish a book
Review: ...but I couldn't finish this one. A trite and overly obvious plot, inept characterization, and weak prose.

Rating:
Summary: Walking with Stephen Baxter
Review: A giant, juicy book full of the classic SF sense-of-wonder. Stephen Baxter does nothing less than take us on a journey from the dawn of primate life -- Purgatorius, the first primate, which appeared just before the comet strike at the end of the Cretaceous -- to the far, far post-human future. There's a sweep to this that reminds one of the last section of H. G. Wells's THE TIME MACHINE, which isn't surprising, given that Baxter previously wrote a wonderful sequel, THE TIME SHIPS. EVOLUTION is an ambitious novel, and a very important work.

Rating:
Summary: Read and speculate
Review: A refreshing, very well researched book. I enjoyed it greatly. With only one quibble. He depicts us as successfully depositing a Neumann probe on Mars, just before our civilisation collapses. The probe replicates itself. Its descendents undergo machine evolution, subject to much the same forces as biological evolution. Eventually the robots dismantle Mars and have some kind of rocket drive that lets them wander. This is just a minor subplot; the book concerns itself mostly with Earth.

But the way he wrote the fate of Mars seemed strongly ominous. If the robots could dismantle it, and has rockets, surely Earth would be a natural destination for some of them? It is the closest planet to Mars, for one. Sheer proximity, and the fact that there are a plethora of robots and that we are surveying geological time spans would ensure this. (Somewhat akin to Saberhagen's Berserkers.) Subsequent chapters never follow up. This I found very implausible, given his premises.

On an unrelated note: The fate of Mankind is indeed shown as depressing. Am I reading too much between the lines? Or is there an unstated advocacy for human space travel? For the colonisation of other worlds? Nowhere are these explicitly stated, apart maybe from the abovementioned robot probe to Mars. And that did not involve human travel. But by presenting a possible depiction of our fate if we do not get off this globe, is Baxter trying to say this?

Rating:
Summary: The swansong of the Advancing Modern World
Review: Anyone who is a fan of the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and also veers toward science fiction in reading habits should tackle "Evolution."

I don't use the word "tackle" lightly. In fact, it's a bit of a slog. At nearly 600 pages, most of which deal with non-speaking animal species, this book takes a little patience. It is definitely NOT a "page-turner." I would suggest reading it a chapter at a time, then giving oneself time to digest it.

Like "2001," this book deals with nothing less than the evolution of our species, where we were, and where we are going. There are a few reasons why I think this novel is important:

1: At a time when various religious groups are rattling their sabers and DEMANDING that Biblical Creationism be taught in public schools, it's a good time for rational adults to have a good grasp of what evolution is and isn't. This book offers a much greater understanding of the geological, meteorological, and biological forces that guide both the diversifying and extinction of species.

2: This novel serves notice that the human species is in an increasingly precarious position, largely of our own making. Environmental degradation, the threat of nuclear war, political and religious extremism, our reluctance to even address overpopulation, and the increasing vulnerability of our electronic infrastructure, all seem to spell a disaster waiting to happen. There are characters in "Evolution" who perceive this and who hope to avert catastrophe. Will they succeed?

3: This book makes a compelling case that we can no longer afford to keep all our eggs in one basket ... That is, the survival of our species and our Advancing Modern World depends on spreading outward. I know there have been many disagreements in the forum over the merits of space exploration. I for one have always been a strong supporter of the space program, not that I expect to see Moonbase Alpha or humans walking on Mars in my lifetime. But as human beings we are in a unique position to fully understand the forces that threaten us. We differ from animals in that we are able to perceive things not only as how they are and how they were, but how they might be. Resigning ourselves to stay on this planet and this planet only puts us, in my humble opinion, at an evolutionary dead-end.

"Evolution" will certainly not be every reader's cup of tea. But if you think as fondly as I do of the Advancing Modern World (as so optimistically portrayed in "2001"), this book serves as a much-needed reality check.

Rating:
Summary: Evolution Schmevolution
Review: As a long-time student of science, my jaw dropped when I saw this book on the shelf and I immediately gave over my credit card and rushed home with this book.

First, the bad:
The same old Politically Correct song and dance, ad nauseum. A female African scientific genius tries to help save the world from Christian "cultists" and white male capitalism. I've nothing really against this notion of a story, but modern sci-fi is just dripping with PC, and I sometimes dream of a holiday from it. My eyebrows raised when Baxter noted that the poor monkeys were driven to extinction by a hunger for monkey meat in Africa (that didn't sound very PC, plausible or no) but then he finally added that this was in large part due to "European" loggers and the threat of heterodoxy was laid to rest.

Also, some of Baxter's flights of fancy were a little too far off the beaten scientific track: intelligent dinos, air whales, and Antarctic dinosaurs.

However, all of these criticisms cover a small portion of the story and in and of themselves are not reasons to avoid the novel.

The Good:
Baxter obviously loves these little anthropolical stories he's woven together. They are informative and compelling. A previous reviewer found them boring, but not me. I've enjoyed them quite a bit. They are epic in scope and leave me dwelling on the science of the tales, long after they're over.

Rating:
Summary: Survival of the Fittest
Review: As an avid Baxter Fan (see my list please), I was a little disappointed with his last outing (Manifold Origins). Seeing that this book was to deal with similar subjects I wasn't expecting too much.

This book proved a pleasant surprise. Baxter once again manages to teach us about the world in which we live and interweave it into a story that keeps you engrossed. This novel encompasses many different narratives that manage to tell the story of man: from the first scurrying primates that lived alongside the dinosaurs, to the dawn of intelligence, to the subsequent dawn of society, and even to the eventual downfall of man and the end of life on earth entirely. I am not an anthropologist so I don't know how much of Baxter's musings ring true, but Baxter clearly throws in lots of imaginative flair and covers himself adeptly with the standby, "Over millions and millions of years, it could happen...".

Each individual narrative tells the story of one of our ancestors. Every primate or hominid is given a name and the story is told from their prospective. I enjoyed every single section with the exception of the part set during the decline of the Roman empire which I thought didn't seem to follow the flow of the preceding sections. The parts set in the future actually only account for about a 100 pages. I would have liked some more future stuff, but I think Baxter was trying to lend some more credibility to this work by sticking to the "hard" science. I sense he put a lot of research into the novel and I think that even the average reader will appreciate his attention to detail.

Overall, a great book and an easy read. Highly reccomended.

Rating:
Summary: Evolution on the Beach
Review: At over 640 pages, Evolution-by award winning author Stephen Baxter, a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge and South-Ampton Universities-may not be exactly the sort of light reading one may think to bring to the beach this summer; however, its underling warning for the Human species may be a reminder of that other book concerning beaches.

Evolution is perhaps the most interesting novel I have come across concerning the fate of humanity if we stay on our current course. But, rather than offer the reader the usual, overblown apocalyptic Sci Fi novel, or beating us over the head with a righteous morality play, Evolution takes the scientific route toward offering a subtle but very effective message.

That message: We'd better begin to learn to cooperate as well as we compete or we Homo-Sapiens have already passed our prime.

Evolution begins 65 Million Years ago when the comet which ended the reign of the dinosaurs on Earth was as bright in the sky as the sun. Baxter shows us the "lifestyle" of some of the late Cretaceous reptiles & birds from the "point of view" of the first primates-mousy little fur balls which hid from the thunder lizards by burrowing underground in the forests. Baxter names each animal we encounter-again, as the primates would see them-to give us a sense of the primates' existence and "state of mind"-as simple as some of those early minds were. This interesting technique allows the reader to partly identify with what occurs to these creatures on their road to modernity. We experience what it means to be human by what it meant to be each of these creatures in an ever changing environment.

In essence, Evolution is a story of existence, adaptation, survival and extinction. By the time we get to what we may call modern humanity-around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire-we see how humanity's potential to become more than "just another animal fighting for survival" lies in our ability to cooperate and inhibit our more competitive, territorial and destructive natures. As humans fill the ecosystem like swarms of insects-something Baxter points out drove us away from our primate origins and into a much too complex existence-there needs to be created a new way of living, for the ways of old have depleted the earth's resources, severely altered the atmosphere, polluted the land and water, and sent to their extinction hundreds and thousands of species of animal.

Evolution does what no other such novel has done; it lets you view humanity from the inside. It lets one see from where we came, and spends most of its pages in the deep past so that one has a resonating feel for our biological history. Baxter spends very little time in the present and near future, a time when Earth finally fights back against the human "virus" and humanity collapses upon, and in spite of itself.

The concluding chapters take us 50 to 500 million years into the future to where we learn what life post-humanity might be like. Humans themselves, that is the descendents of the few survivors of the 21st Century, have de-evolved as survival becomes more important than the Big Brained lofty goals and achievements of their ancestors. Indeed, post-humanity primates live in a much healthier ecosystem.

Evolution serves two major purposes, in my opinion. One, it allows the ordinary novel reader (as opposed to readers of scientific journals or books), a chance to learn about both evolutionary theory, and what it means to be human, in a way they may never have otherwise. Also, it serves as a warning. All species live only for so long, and then become extinct; it often depends on how well they can adapt to Earth. If not for the Asteroid of 65 Million years ago, the Dinosaurs might still be around today. But mammals inherited the Earth, and in particular, one unique primate. How long can we survive? That depends on how well we adapt to Earth. So far, we have tried to make the Earth adapt to us, and we are failing miserably; we need to change our strategy.

And Baxter offers a way.

The lead character in the chapters dealing in the near future-Joan Useb-says at a conference of international scientists, that human culture, which had once been so profoundly adaptive, had become maladaptive. The solution she explains is within us already.. it is a primate solution.

(Useb) "Life isn't just about competition ... it's also about cooperation, interdependence. Our global society is becoming so highly structured that it is becoming something akin to a holan: a single composite entity. We have to learn to think of ourselves in that way. We have to build on the other half of our primate natures-the part that isn't about competition and xenophobia. Human interdependence comes from our deepest history. Now, without anybody planning it, we have engulfed the biosphere ... And we have to learn to manage it together."

Rating:
Summary: Awesome and deeply moving saga
Review: Baxter - one of the most inventive sci-fi authors writing today, does it again with a novel of mind-boggling scope and vision.

There is something viscerally gripping about this tale, because it is humankind's tale. From the limited consciousness of our far distant ancestors, who eventually battled their way to bloody dominance at the top of the food chain, then into a bleak and unimaginably distant future, Baxter gives the reader a scarily plausible feeling of "being there".

Through a series of vivid tableaux, set millenia or mega-years apart, Baxter illustrates with astonishing skill, the developing sentience of our species. Some of the episodes are more gripping than others, and one or two did feel a little over-long (I found chapter 15 - Rome, somewhat laboured), however, the sense of growing excitement is such that I defy any reader not to yearn for the next development in this astonishing saga of one family's lineage across the ultimate family tree.

Whilst most of the material is based on sound archaeological/anthropological knowledge and toes the traditional evolutionary line, Baxter does flirt with some delightfully speculative creations, such as tool-making sapient dinosaurs (rather like Professor Michael Magee's postulated anthroposaurus sapiens) and the air-whale. I personally would have liked Baxter to have explored this avenue a little more, with some examples of ooparts (out-of-place artefacts) or anomalous fossils, but, what the heck, let's not get too picky!

These almost 600 pages just fly past and leave the reader yearning for more. In particular, the episodes describing the adventures of "Far" and her love of running, and of the human survivors, awakening from suspended animation long beyond their own time and agreeing to meet once a year at Stonehenge, were deeply moving and will remain with me for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: An unusual kind of science fiction
Review: Baxter creates a vision of primate evolution between 65 million years in the past and 500 million years in the future. It is, then, a major accomplishment that he manages to blend scientific theory and fact with speculation in an almost seamless way.
The tales from the daily lives of primates are primarily illustrations of Baxter's vision. Consequently, like evolution theory, most tales have no psychological or moral dimension; in fact they are interrupted frequently by detached observations that reduce the behaviour of the "protagonists" to evolutionary programming.
I would expect many readers to have problems with this, but it is in fact in line with the theme and as such contributes to the atmosphere.
The only major disappointment in this respect is the incongruous adaptation of self replicating robots sent to Mars. Did some lingering space age optimism get the better of sound judgement? Fortunatly it does not affect the story greatly.

Rating:
Summary: Survival of the Fittest
Review: Evolution told from a remarkable perspective: that of the proto-humans, modern humans, and post-humans themselves. Taking us into the mind of (as just one example) a small mammal (with the first glimmering of intelligence) just as the dinosaur-destroying comet hit the earth 65 million years ago, Baxter gives us new insights into what Darwin's "survival of the fittest" means in the real world.

Unique in its point of view, the book is long and somewhat repetitive, but well worth the effort to read to the end.