Disposable Lit Reviews

Ballantine Books, 2000
538 pp.
ISBN 0-345-43524-9

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For all the world, Darwin’s Radio looks like a variation on the “anthropological thrillers” that I’ve run across far too often. You know the ones: Recent discoveries shake the entire structure of anthropological theory and man’s place in it, with dire implications for the future. There’s also usually a really strong conspiratorial political angle, and stupid sexual politics. It’s science fiction dumbed down to the structure of a bad political thriller.

I’m overjoyed to report that what Greg Bear has produced here is not an anthropological thriller, despite the best efforts of the marketing team to make it seem so. It is, instead, a damned fine novel, and also damned fine science fiction.

The scientific premise is that many of the “junk” sections of our DNA are actually purposeful and intentional, though dormant — placed there throughout our evolution by the “emergent system,” the pseudo-neural net, of the species as a whole as an emergency response to selection stresses too extreme to be countered by gradual Darwinian selection. And just as a discredited archaeologist discovers that Neanderthals became modern humans through this kind of sudden-response, single-generation genetic change, women around the world start coming down with the so-called “Herod’s flu,” which leads first to spontaneous abortions of malformed fetuses, and then to pregnancies soon thereafter — even “immaculate conceptions” — of babies with bizarre but remarkably uniform birth defects. The reactive emergent system of species-wide genetics is trying out “upgrades” of human DNA to counter the unique stresses of 20th- and 21st-century society.

And as expected, the present iteration of humanity doesn’t want to accept the idea of obsolescence. It starts as a public health crisis, as miscarriages forbode the loss of an entire generation; it escalates into social crisis, as sex becomes known as the carrier of the flu, and as the fatherless second conceptions drive a wedge of mistrust between the genders.

And when some few scientists piece together the reality the flu’s effects, not as a plague but as a pivotal moment of “instant” evolution, they find themselves undermined and outcast from very human scientific establishments which can’t bear to face the social and political implications of announcing to the world that their next generation of children will be qualitatively different from them.

These are subjects of heady depth: Gender relations and conflict, intergenerational devotion and mistrust, biological imperatives vs. conscious social engineering. The whole book could easily have turned into a collection of talking heads, spouting speculations on human anthropology…. if Bear hadn’t also given us vibrant, sympathetic, human characters.

Molecular biologist Kaye Lang, emotionally isolated by the suicide of her bipolar husband and research partner. Anthropologist Mitch Rafaelson, whose mistakes in the treatment of important digs have twice made him a pariah in his field. Chris Dicken, government “virus hunter” who stays out of the bureaucratic spotlight to protect his flexibility and mobility, then finds himself too far down the chain of command to stop the coming policy trainwreck. These and many more bureacrats and scientists, both intellectual and deeply human, trying to balance the very real need for political and social influence with the demands of evidence and fact. Bear’s characters make the wideranging implications of his premise very real and personal, drawing the overwhelming “intent” of this genetic reboot down into the deep emotions and strong passions of the people who can glimpse the outlines of what’s really happening.

The book has won some honors — a Hugo nomination, selection by various trade papers as an annual Best Book — so my recommendation may seem paltry compared to theirs, but I’ll risk it: This novel is probably one of the least regrettable reading commitments you could make.

Nathan Shumate