Darwin's Radio [Paperback]

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

‘Whatever Bear touches turns epic… awesome momentum… rarely have I felt so much the presence of great events’
The Times

‘He has a soaring control of the language and dreams that belong to the visionary… Bear’s books map the future. They are required reading’
The Encylopaedia of Science Fiction

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

'DARWIN’S RADIO': THE MISSING LINK THRILLER

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World War III will be the war against our extinction
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Christopher Dicken, ‘virus hunter’ of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, joins an emergency Taskforce on the order of the President. Around the world, what were thought to be ancient junk genes in human DNA have been stimulated to assemble encoded proteins and RNA into an infectious virus. It already has an in-house name at the Center For Disease Control: Herod’s influenza, because it attacks only women – and kills unborn children. It has also been assigned a technical name: SHERVA-DL3. That is, Scattered Human Endogenous RetroVirus Activation. Drop the R in retro for dramatic effect. That makes it SHEVA, an apt name for a killer.

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Natural Selection
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Dicken needs Kaye Lang on his team. She’s the scientist who predicted the emergence of SHEVA in a paper that brought her glory – but no money. Her brilliant but unstable husband Saul is not able to translate his genius into success, either. Kaye knows more about SHEVA than anyone …

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Divergence of Character
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… Except for one other scientist, a paleontologist, who has intuited even more. But, Mitch Rafelson has no credibility whatsoever. The sin of overwhelming curiosity has left him an unemployed outcast, pilloried in headlines: 'Scientist/Thief, Sole Survivor of Body – Snatching Alpine Expedition.' But he learned something on the mountain when he found the mummified baby, something nobody else knows, not even Kaye Lang.

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Our place on the ladder of evolution is not where we thought
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All other wars in history have been in some way between the forces of good and evil. Not this war. Like a signal on Darwin’s radio SHEVA is broadcasting an extraordinary truth about the origin of species. SHEVA confirms Darwin’s view of ‘blundering, low and horribly cruel works of nature’. There are those who will want to control human destiny, and others who will fight them.

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The Descent of Man is at hand
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“Whatever Greg Bear touches turns epic … rarely have I felt so much the presence of great events”
THE TIMES

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.