Scan barcode
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/evolution.htm[return][return]Clocking in at 584 pages, this novel takes us from the age of the dinosaurs to the Earth's far future through around twenty vignettes of life on our planet. Crammed with detail, huge in vision, it will certainly appeal to the thoughtful New Scientist reader and to the millions who have enjoyed the recent BBC series about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.[return][return]However well-researched and detailed, I confess it didn't leave me completely satisfied. The supposed link between the individual chapters is that this is the story of one single strand of DNA, which at one point is encoded in the cells of the palaeontologist Joan Useb in the framing narrative, set in 2031. Well, it clearly isn't so. There's no way she could be descended from Jurassic tool-using dinosaurs, from the first New World monkeys, or from the exotic Antarctic fauna of the Pleistocene; and while she could well be descended from several of the human era characters, there are pretty strong indications that she is not an ancestor of the post-humans in the later chapters.[return][return]Shorn of its central conceit, the book becomes mostly a series of speculative essays about the past or future. The author says firmly that this novel is "not intended to be a textbook" -- it might have been better if it were, as we would have some basis for judging which of the many authorial asides are daring speculation as opposed to conventional wisdom. I would also have liked some maps of the drifting continents, and indeed some pictures of the various creatures; my visual imagination is not strong enough to reconstruct them to my own satisfaction from the author's description, especially when some chapters, particularly those set in the unfashionable Cenozoic Era, seemed to have a dozen new species in the first few pages. The cover image combining globe with outline hominid skull is striking, beautiful even, but uninformative.[return][return]The first section of the book, beginning with the cometary impact that killed the dinosaurs, faces the problem that, without anthropomorphising inappropriately, it is difficult to get readers to identify with non-human and non-intelligent characters. Instead the protagonists are subjected to ecological disasters of various natures which they survive, or don't as the case may be. Rather too often we get editorialising on the lines of "little did they know how significant this would be..." A lot of the "viewpoint" characters are female, but it seems that only the males have orgasms, a trend that continues throughout the book.[return][return]The central set of chapters, set in the human era, links a diverse set of stories of the development of culture and technology through a supposed common biological lineage demonstrated by the names Ja-ahn, Ejan, Jana, Jo-on, Jahna, Juna and presumably also Joan Useb over a period of tens of thousands of years. Apart from the geographical improbability of a single line of descent through all the chapters, I have a somewhat technical linguistic gripe: the sound often spelt "J" in English is one of the most mutable of phonemes, and I'd be surprised to learn of any examples of a language where we know it to have been stable even over a single millennium.[return][return]Apart from that, the human chapters are the best-written. Baxter's vision of the future post-2031 is pessimistic and bleak, with one superbly grim episode where a British military cell emerges after a hibernation which they thought would be only for a few decades to find the world changed beyond recognition. In the end, rather than our biological descendants, the real heirs of humanity seem to be robotic interplanetary explorers, and I'd have liked to read a bit more about them.[return][return]Evolution aims to be a darker version of a history of the world a la Wells, Shaw, Stapledon, and so on. This kind of thing has been done much better before, including by Baxter himself in The Time Ships, his superb homage to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The value added here is Baxter's extensive research into current biology which basically gives the book its interest. But, as with much hard sf, I am left dubious about whether the book's scientific accuracy contributes anything to its value as a work of literature.
kerrizor's review against another edition
4.0
Solid book, and I ripped through it, delighted at the scope and imagination involved, however 2 things - first, Baxter has a depressingly pessimistic and nihilistic world view I find unsettling.. and second, the third and final section features some... well, flights of fancy that while entertaining, didn't seem plausible to me, and broke the mood of "hard science about the story of human evolution"
lindabeth's review against another edition
dark
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
hansemrbean's review against another edition
3.0
First I have to say that I admire the task Stephen Baxter has undertaken - no less than a cruise through the whole history of primates, from the beginning in the time the dinosaurs have been extinct, to the end of life on earth. He clearly did quite a lot of research to make all these histories plausible, and mostly succeeded, as far as I can say. It just didn't work for me.
The book is written as a collection of stories that happen thousands or millions of years apart each, and so naturally they have no connection save the occasional reference by the author to an earlier story. There is also a background story that happens in the near future, that the author returns to after every few chapters, but it is also only very loosely connected to the rest of the stories. I actually made a pause after each few stories and read something else in between - and I didn't have the feeling that I lost anything.
The first part tells the stories of 8 different primates millions of years apart, from 65 million years ago to 5 million years ago. It is mostly written in the confines of what we know about these times, with some speculation added in (the wildest being about some bipedal dinosaurs with tools and rudimentary cloth, and some kind of proto-language). For me it reads like the script for a documentation on the Discovery channel, which would work well enough. It has both the story of some animal trying to survice, and some background information provided by the author trying to explain its behavior. My problem with that is that are a lot of visual descriptions of animals and plants that I find really difficult to imagine without having at least some pictures available (I may just lack the imagination). Also the idea to tell a story instead of just describing what we know about these times backfired for me, as I'm actually interested in the things we know and how we know them, and it was impossible to tell speculation from facts (or at least hypotheses) in these stories.
The second part is about the development of humans, from 1.5 million years ago to the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire. The stories get more interesting in the sense that the human behavior and interaction gets ever more complex, but the same about facts and speculation applies here.
The third part describes the future and as such is mostly speculation, of course, but is based on some plausibe scenarios. It has been described as depressing and pessimistic by others, but I don't fully agree here - it is just realistic (humanity will not live forever), and while the scenario that the civilization as we know it vanishes rather sooner than later may be on the pessimistic side, it is nevertheless completely plausible and realistic. And there is some optimism at the end...
So, in the end, while this didn't work too well for me, I think this maybe a very interesting book for people with a different perception, and I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from trying it out.
The book is written as a collection of stories that happen thousands or millions of years apart each, and so naturally they have no connection save the occasional reference by the author to an earlier story. There is also a background story that happens in the near future, that the author returns to after every few chapters, but it is also only very loosely connected to the rest of the stories. I actually made a pause after each few stories and read something else in between - and I didn't have the feeling that I lost anything.
The first part tells the stories of 8 different primates millions of years apart, from 65 million years ago to 5 million years ago. It is mostly written in the confines of what we know about these times, with some speculation added in (the wildest being about some bipedal dinosaurs with tools and rudimentary cloth, and some kind of proto-language). For me it reads like the script for a documentation on the Discovery channel, which would work well enough. It has both the story of some animal trying to survice, and some background information provided by the author trying to explain its behavior. My problem with that is that are a lot of visual descriptions of animals and plants that I find really difficult to imagine without having at least some pictures available (I may just lack the imagination). Also the idea to tell a story instead of just describing what we know about these times backfired for me, as I'm actually interested in the things we know and how we know them, and it was impossible to tell speculation from facts (or at least hypotheses) in these stories.
The second part is about the development of humans, from 1.5 million years ago to the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire. The stories get more interesting in the sense that the human behavior and interaction gets ever more complex, but the same about facts and speculation applies here.
The third part describes the future and as such is mostly speculation, of course, but is based on some plausibe scenarios. It has been described as depressing and pessimistic by others, but I don't fully agree here - it is just realistic (humanity will not live forever), and while the scenario that the civilization as we know it vanishes rather sooner than later may be on the pessimistic side, it is nevertheless completely plausible and realistic. And there is some optimism at the end...
So, in the end, while this didn't work too well for me, I think this maybe a very interesting book for people with a different perception, and I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from trying it out.
andreaaamary's review against another edition
4.0
This is my nerdiest guilty pleasure ever. I love love love imagining what it’s like to live in a different time period and to be able to do that from multiple non-human perspectives was something I was not expecting to be done well.
holomew151's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
unvaluedcrown's review against another edition
4.0
A collection of short stories chronicling the evolution of man from the earliest primates to 100 million years into the future. This one was a roller coaster. Some stories were gripping and oddly emotional, others were disturbing and heavy. One story was just downright boring (I'm looking at you, Romans). This book evoked a lot of strong emotions from me.
I often found myself skimming past the abundant sex scenes in abject horror. There were at least 30 in this 575-page book, and while I understand it's a natural part of life and necessary to evolution, I reeeeeally did not need so many graphic descriptions of genitals.
I often found myself skimming past the abundant sex scenes in abject horror. There were at least 30 in this 575-page book, and while I understand it's a natural part of life and necessary to evolution, I reeeeeally did not need so many graphic descriptions of genitals.
dotted's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
sirlancelot2021's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
inspiring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
vonnegutian's review against another edition
4.0
Bearing in mind I have recently finished ‘The Silk Roads’ by Peter Frankopan, juxtaposing that against ‘Evolution’ by Stephen Baxter is both interesting and apt – two histories of humanity, one real, one fictional, both incredibly plausible (if plausibility is indeed an applicable consideration) and both great, great books in different ways.
What Baxter has done here is incredibly impressive: using thoroughly researched scientific theory, he has crafted a narrative of humanity’s development through the far reaches of time until Baxter’s imagined end in the distant future.
Initially, the writing jars a little as the early protagonists are invariably ‘early humans/animals’, but once you become accustomed, the qualities of the story simmer to the surface and you realise both the mammoth task he has undertaken and how well he does it.
‘Evolution’ is a series of short stories from chronological points upon humanity’s timeline (till the very end no less) spanning an ample 565 million years. Each cleverly illustrates a momentous part of our development whilst all coming together to illustrate our mark on Earth. Be it rodent-like mammals seeing the end of the dinosaurs, ape ancestors floating across continents on raft-like mangrove forests or a Homo Saipan killing the last Neanderthal, at each juncture Baxter leads us to reflect on where we’ve come from and appreciate the immensity and incomprehensibility of the journey. And despite its fictional stature, this work is a exemplary exponent of Science and evolutionary theory to which I wholeheartedly prescribe.
On this evidence, Baxter is a fitting heir to his occasional co-collaborator Arthur C Clarke. Not Science Fiction as we know it but very much a true nonetheless. It is an awe-inspiring work and well worth a read if you are of a scientific persuasion.
What Baxter has done here is incredibly impressive: using thoroughly researched scientific theory, he has crafted a narrative of humanity’s development through the far reaches of time until Baxter’s imagined end in the distant future.
Initially, the writing jars a little as the early protagonists are invariably ‘early humans/animals’, but once you become accustomed, the qualities of the story simmer to the surface and you realise both the mammoth task he has undertaken and how well he does it.
‘Evolution’ is a series of short stories from chronological points upon humanity’s timeline (till the very end no less) spanning an ample 565 million years. Each cleverly illustrates a momentous part of our development whilst all coming together to illustrate our mark on Earth. Be it rodent-like mammals seeing the end of the dinosaurs, ape ancestors floating across continents on raft-like mangrove forests or a Homo Saipan killing the last Neanderthal, at each juncture Baxter leads us to reflect on where we’ve come from and appreciate the immensity and incomprehensibility of the journey. And despite its fictional stature, this work is a exemplary exponent of Science and evolutionary theory to which I wholeheartedly prescribe.
On this evidence, Baxter is a fitting heir to his occasional co-collaborator Arthur C Clarke. Not Science Fiction as we know it but very much a true nonetheless. It is an awe-inspiring work and well worth a read if you are of a scientific persuasion.