Product Description

A terrifying disease, or the next step in human evolution? Three scientists must battle to find the truth in this heart-stopping technothriller. Mitch Rafelson makes a major discovery high in the Alps -- the preserved bodies of a Neanderthal family with a human child. Kaye Lang investigates a mass grave in the Caucasus -- the bodies are mutated. Christopher Dicken tracks a mysterious flu-like disease that causes pregnant women to miscarry. Together, these three scientists discover that so-called junk genes, dormant in our DNA for millions of years, are waking up. A signal from Darwin's radio has triggered the next step in human evolution. The women who miscarry become inexplicably pregnant again. However, this time they are carriers of Homo sapiens novus. But there is mass panic, official denial, draconian measures against the terrible 'disease'. Only Mitch, Kaye and Dicken can solve the evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race, if a future exists at all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90505 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Greg Bear notoriously reworks traditional SF themes in his own special way. His first success, Blood Music (1985), features an intelligent plague which seems destructive but eventually recreates humanity in new, transcendent form--echoing Arthur C. Clarke's rough-hewn 1953 classic Childhood's End. Darwin's Radio revisits this territory but foregrounds scientific, medical and political reactions to disaster; it's reminiscent of a Michael Crichton technothriller. The menace is a "new" virus, SHEVA, which is in fact very old--embedded in a ancient human DNA sequences and now emerging as "Herod's 'Flu", which in pregnant women always forces miscarriage. Chillingly, US health aauthorities first see this threat as something to boost funding, while conservative scientists suppress research into the bizarre reality of what's happening. Evidence from Neanderthal remains and Stalin's mass graves hints that SHEVA is no disease but evolution in action. Human genomes everywhere, linked by the subtle network of "Darwin's radio", are activating Plan B: the creation of a new species. Then, with the world racked by panic, riots, death cults and martial law, SHEVA begins to mutate ... Tense stuff, though some biological info-dumps are tough going, and it's awkwardly paced towards the end when nine months are needed for the biologist heroine's own pregnancy, leading to... but that would be telling. This is a fearfully plausible scientific thriller. --David L Langford

About the Author
Greg Bear was born in 1951 and published his first short story sixteen years later. His first novel was published in 1979, and his most famous novels, Blood Music and Eon, emerged during the eighties and have now become established classics.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and solid, but he missed the best story
Darwin's Radio is my first Greg Bear novel, after my hearing many good things about him over the years - and I wasn't disappointed with it. It's a well-written novel, crammed with scientific ideas, questionable politics and real people - more than enough to hold the attention of any sci-fi reader. Sadly, I never really felt any great emotional connection to the main characters until the very end of the book, when the answer to the big question of the book - is what's happening a disease or the next step of human evolution - was coming clear. I wish Darwin's Radio had continued for another few hundred pages, to see where Bear's speculations would have eventually led us. Maybe I can wait for a sequel.....

Speculative science, not science fiction.
Darwin's Radio is a real eye-opener about molecular biology, evolution, and the condition of the human race, not just the human race of the present or the early humans who were the immediate descendants of the hominids, but the human race as it may soon become in the future. Bear himself, after researching the book, "came away with an unshakable sense that evolutionary biology is about to undergo a major upheaval--not in the next few decades, but in the next few years"!

In a powerful and exciting narrative, Bear explores just this sort of evolutionary upheaval, as SHEVA, a retrovirus, begins to attack women, causing them to miscarry at three months, while, at the same time, causing them to begin spontaneously a new, ostensibly fatherless, pregnancy within a month. Kaye Lang, a highly respected molecular biologist, and Mitch Rafelson, a disgraced anthropologist, are involved in research to contain SHEVA, studying DNA and its coding, various immune responses to bacteria and viruses, genetic mutations, and the possibility that SHEVA is not a new phenomenon at all. As the virus starts to spread and thousands of women find themselves infected, public safety is endangered, riots occur, shootings result in deaths, and the government starts to panic, requiring SHEVA-infected women to register their pregnancies, and their second stage babies, if delivered alive, to be turned over to the government.

Bear does a masterful job of depicting both the personal traumas and the petty jealousies which surface when people in power recognize that a genuine emergency can also provide opportunities for personal advancement. Conflicts on both the personal and professional level are astutely presented and heighten the tension and immediacy of the SHEVA crisis. Remarkably, Bear never reduces issues or individual behavior to the level of black and white, carefully preserving the grays which are involved in all ethical and moral inquiry. The science here is dense and challenging to someone (like me) who is not a scientist, but the human story and its implications for the future are so clearly presented and intriguing, that I became thoroughly engrossed in the possibilities of new directions in evolution. Mary Whipple

Science Fiction with actual science
I first read this book when a friend leant it to me after telling me that there was too much science for her liking and that I'd probably enjoy it. She was right.

After the inital shock of just how much science there was in the book I settled into it surprisingly quickly. The characters were well developed, the story fast paced enough to keep me interested. And the chapters were short enough to keep me happy - I knew that I had time to read them practically anywhere.

All in all this was a great book and the sequel was just as good. I'd recommed this to anyone who enjoys science fiction - but be warned, sometimes this book is more science than fiction.