Just Read: Darwin's Children, by Greg Bear 


Darwin's Children Book Cover
Ok. I didn't really read it, I listened to the unabridged version from Audible.com. And thank God I did that, because otherwise this thing would be taking up valuable shelf space in my library instead of lurking around on my hard drive. I read and loved Darwin's Radio, the predecessor to this book. Mr. Bear is obviously a very intelligent person, and likes to put a lot of research into his "hard sci-fi" books, going so far as to solicit corrections from scientists involved in the fields. In Darwin's Radio, he used this research to great effect, weaving the science in tightly with the plot. However, in this sequel, his efforts just kind of sat there. None of the science portions of the book had *any* effect on the plot whatsoever.

Basically, what you have here is a short and boring story about political infighting in D.C. and xenophobia. Surrounding this boring story is 500 pages of fluff that doesn't have anything to do with .. well .. anything at all. You've got page after page of description, medical and scientific explanations and super MRI "action scenes" for someone's feeling that God is present with them. Wonderful. Except that this didn't move the story forward at all, didn't effect that character's actions, and was completely extraneous.

Another example - in the beginning of the book, the virus children are getting sick and dying at incredible rates. Sounds like the start of a medical mystery. Except that the whole lead up to this event, all the time spent on the scientific explanation of humans making the kids sick just kind of goes away. You turn the page, and suddenly, it's as if it hasn't happened. All the remaining kids are healthy, years older, apparently immune to the viruses that attacked them, and it's never mentioned again.

While listening to this book, it seemed as if most of the stuff you were getting information on was fed into a huge machine and then completely different situations are developed with little or no explanation of how we got there or why. Just turn a page and suddenly we're years down the road and things are Just Different Now.

All in all, a bad book. Good science research, but poorly integrated with the plot and characters. 

 

Posted: Fri - November 5, 2004 at 10:15 AM          

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