Darwin’s Radio

By Greg Bear

More and more, in the last few years, I’ve come to enjoy good hard SF books by folks like Robert Sawyer. I’m going to have to add Greg Bear to my regular reading list. Darwin’s Radio is excellent.

The book supposes that the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution is actually correct, and ponders the moment of just such a punctuation. While I can’t speak to the science very thoroughly (it rings true, from what little I know of genetics), the politics and the people in the book are spot on. Though Bear was writing a decade ago, the developments in post 9/11 USA have shown just how much we’re willing to trade civil liberties for freedom, and his book plays on that question remarkably.

It will take an act of will (though not a major one) to avoid reading the next book right away. I’ll wait a bit, but I plan to read Darwin’s Children sometime within a year, for certain.