![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentWell, I didn't get my writing test finished. I'll just have to hope I don't finish too late at work tomorrow.
On the upside, I did finally get the review of Stephen Baxter's Evolution out of my head and on to paper. So here it is. Please excuse the fanyboyishness. :-)
-----
Have you heard of the clock of the long now?
The clock of the long now will be built in Nevada, on land adjoining Great Basin National Park. When completed, the clock will tick once a year, with a century hand that advances once every hundred years. Every millennium, a cuckoo will come out and sing.
The clock of the long now will be built to chart the depths of the future, to force us to think about timescales - to really think. Not just about the next year, or the next decade, or the next century, but about the next millennium, and all the years after that. The clock is being designed to last ten thousand years. This one artefact is intended to last as long as humanity's entire technological history to date. In short, the clock of the long now is a Big Idea. An idea that forces us to think about our place in the universe.
It is the sort of idea Stephen Baxter seems to come up with every other week.
The Big Idea at the heart of Evolution is a doozy. "Evolution follows the ebb and flow of one stream in the great river of DNA," states the blurb. "It turns the story of Darwinian evolution into a constant drama, a daily life and death struggle. It is a story that transcends species, mankind and, in the end, the Earth itself."
In practice this means that although nominally a novel, at times the book reads more like a collection of short stories. It is made up of many segments, each closer to the present than the previous instalment, and each focusing on a primate one step closer to humanity. Indeed, from a purely narrative point of view it would be entirely possible to skip any given segment. This structure is perhaps the only practical way to dramatise evolution, but it gives rise to the book's two significant flaws. Firstly, the quality is less even than you might otherwise expect from a novel, since the quality of each segment is independent of the surrounding segments. Secondly, there is inevitably a degree of repetition, as successive generations grapple with similar challenges. After all, the current era of frenzied progress has lasted only 100,000 years or so, and Evolution covers a great deal more history than that.
But if some of the parts are weak, the whole is hugely rewarding. The narrative glides between tight third-person and omniscient perspectives, at times feeling like the natural history program you wish the BBC could make. 'Walking with Hominids,' if you will. The themes arise from anthropology, evolutionary biology and sociology. This is a story about humanity: How we are, and how we came to be this way. At times, the story is bleak; at others, it is strangely uplifting. The very best segments of the book - such as the bittersweet 'Mother's People', perhaps the crux around which the story turns, perhaps the moment when hominids truly become humans - are when it is both.
Evolution opens with the biggest bang in our history: The KT boundary event, the great dinosaur-killing rock. It ends, as it must, with a far distant futurity to rival the dreams of Stapledon or Wells. In between, there are wonders to ruin the imagination and moments of painful, visceral humanity.
Evolution is our story. Understand it.
On the upside, I did finally get the review of Stephen Baxter's Evolution out of my head and on to paper. So here it is. Please excuse the fanyboyishness. :-)
-----
Have you heard of the clock of the long now?
The clock of the long now will be built in Nevada, on land adjoining Great Basin National Park. When completed, the clock will tick once a year, with a century hand that advances once every hundred years. Every millennium, a cuckoo will come out and sing.
The clock of the long now will be built to chart the depths of the future, to force us to think about timescales - to really think. Not just about the next year, or the next decade, or the next century, but about the next millennium, and all the years after that. The clock is being designed to last ten thousand years. This one artefact is intended to last as long as humanity's entire technological history to date. In short, the clock of the long now is a Big Idea. An idea that forces us to think about our place in the universe.
It is the sort of idea Stephen Baxter seems to come up with every other week.
The Big Idea at the heart of Evolution is a doozy. "Evolution follows the ebb and flow of one stream in the great river of DNA," states the blurb. "It turns the story of Darwinian evolution into a constant drama, a daily life and death struggle. It is a story that transcends species, mankind and, in the end, the Earth itself."
In practice this means that although nominally a novel, at times the book reads more like a collection of short stories. It is made up of many segments, each closer to the present than the previous instalment, and each focusing on a primate one step closer to humanity. Indeed, from a purely narrative point of view it would be entirely possible to skip any given segment. This structure is perhaps the only practical way to dramatise evolution, but it gives rise to the book's two significant flaws. Firstly, the quality is less even than you might otherwise expect from a novel, since the quality of each segment is independent of the surrounding segments. Secondly, there is inevitably a degree of repetition, as successive generations grapple with similar challenges. After all, the current era of frenzied progress has lasted only 100,000 years or so, and Evolution covers a great deal more history than that.
But if some of the parts are weak, the whole is hugely rewarding. The narrative glides between tight third-person and omniscient perspectives, at times feeling like the natural history program you wish the BBC could make. 'Walking with Hominids,' if you will. The themes arise from anthropology, evolutionary biology and sociology. This is a story about humanity: How we are, and how we came to be this way. At times, the story is bleak; at others, it is strangely uplifting. The very best segments of the book - such as the bittersweet 'Mother's People', perhaps the crux around which the story turns, perhaps the moment when hominids truly become humans - are when it is both.
Evolution opens with the biggest bang in our history: The KT boundary event, the great dinosaur-killing rock. It ends, as it must, with a far distant futurity to rival the dreams of Stapledon or Wells. In between, there are wonders to ruin the imagination and moments of painful, visceral humanity.
Evolution is our story. Understand it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-11-06 07:47 am (UTC)This should be of interest then...
A scientific study on the evolutionary biological advantages of maternal grandmothers to the survival & success of children.
id: 'ousfg'
password: 'flyingmonkey'
---
Okay, probably old hat for those of you who read Nature on a regular basis, but still this is suitable. Does Baxter involve this dynamic?
Re: This should be of interest then...
Date: 2002-11-06 05:03 pm (UTC)