Helpful votes received on reviews & lists:
84% (4,877 of 5,839)
Nickname: dalittrell
Location: SoCal
Birthday: 11 Nov (Saved Remind mePlease RetryPlease Retry)
In My Own Words:
I've begun a story blog on Google. Here's the link: http://storiesofdennislittrell .blogspot.com/ The first story is “Soar Legs” which is a bittersweet tale of a little guy in the world of pickup basketball in the South Bay of Los Angeles, set in the late seventies or early eighties when I played a lot of pickup basketball. It's a bit of a science fiction story, rather familiar in some respects… Read moreI've begun a story blog on Google. Here's the link:
http://storiesofdennislittrell.blogspot.com/
The first story is “Soar Legs” which is a bittersweet tale of a little guy in the world of pickup basketball in the South Bay of Los Angeles, set in the late seventies or early eighties when I played a lot of pickup basketball. It's a bit of a science fiction story, rather familiar in some respects but very precisely written if I do say so myself. I wrote it perhaps 13 or 14 years ago.
The second story "Jug Chablis" actually won a third place prize some years ago in a literary magazine competition. It is one of the “Dana Point” stories that I wrote in the late seventies and early eighties. There are perhaps a dozen of them, some of them are pretty good.
The idea was what I called “participatory journalism” after the manner of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and others except that it would be fiction. I did some on the street research but I imagined all the action.
In “Jug Chablis” Dana has placed an ad in the "SoCal Singles Tabloid" looking for “ordinary extraordinary people.” I won't spoil the story by saying any more.
--Dennis Littrell
dalittrell@yahoo.com
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Reviews
Reviewer Rank: 27 - Total Helpful Votes: 4877 of 5839
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This book is unusual in that most of it was written prior to something like 1980 and put aside until its author passed away and then it was edited and published just this year by the author's son, Nick Gretener who is a lawyer.
The author Peter Gretener was a Professor of Geology at the University of Calgary, Canada. The species referred to in the title is human and Gretener's prognosis is a question mark. What I think is interesting is that much of what he worried about is the same today as was thirty years ago: pollution, war, ignorance of the masses, academics in ivory towers, rampant greed (especially corporate), too many people, energy shortages to come, etc… Read more
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I thought the first part of the book which was actually about the prehistory as newly discovered through DNA analysis was very interesting. I was less thrilled with the chapters on Race, Language and History. The wrap up chapter on Evolution was good, if a bit repetitious.
Wade writes extremely well and does a good job of summarizing the latest (circa 2005) research, much of which has come from analyses of the descent of the Y chromosome (from men) and mitochondrial DNA handed down through the female line. The question of our relationship with the Neanderthal--long a thorny question--is more or less resolved with DNA extracted from Neanderthal fossil bones that has been… Read more
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The main difference between this and other science anthologies that I have read is 1) the essays are original, written especially for this volume; and 2) the scientists are relatively young not yet at the pinnacle of their careers.
Max Brockman believes that "it's important to engage with the thinking of the next generation, to better understand not just what is going on in our own time but what issues society will face in the future. This exercise is especially valuable in science, where so many of the important discoveries are made by those in emerging generations." (p. xiii) Consequently he "approached some of today's leading scientists and asked them to name some of the… Read more
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