Evolution

An extemely imaginative book. Very well written. Very interesting to people who enjoy reading about evolutionary forms other than primates. Very interesting speculations. My only criticism is that the closer we get to modern humans the more sterotyped the individuals become. I began to correctly predict the outcome of various encounters. The consequenses of the modern time disaster were predictable, but not believeable.

Most of the other reviews have covered both the good and the bad about this book, so I just wanted to mention one thing: time. I have never read a book, either fiction or non-fiction that so successfully conveyed the utter enormity of time within which we evolve. With his story lines of various animals and people and then a few million years later their genetic relatives and the changes, or lack thereof, evokes such a profound sense of the immensity of time. I felt, as a conscious, abstract-thinking, tool-using, relative of all life that has proceeded me, a sense of great humility and insignificance. But this was also accompanied by such a profound sense of awe: that all of this life simply is; immense unending Being, becoming.

I would recommend that you not finish this book. The foundations of the book, with it's historical, geological/biological background, are interesting: Baxter builds upon true science and tries to give interesting reasons and logic to the development of life.

However, I suggest that you just stop reading once you get to the modern era, as you will probably be disappointed with the change in tone of the book otherwise. Without the historical scientific backing to make his story believable, Baxter fails to use a rigorous logic and science and the story becomes inplausible.

The next section talks about the shortcomings of the books final chapters, and as such may reveal things about the story (the chapters are all relatively independent, however, so there isn't really much to spoil):
If enough humans survived to split into at least 4 different species, enough would have survived to rebuild civilization, even if they didn't remember any of their technology and had to start from scratch. Baxter doesn't give any reasoning for the change, and seems like he just wants to gloss over the current period of Earth's history. After arguing for the benefits of brain size for all mammals during the 'tough times' of the ice ages, it is difficult to accept that humans would give up the feature that made them the dangerous predator in Earth's history.

I feel the biggest mistake on Baxter's part, however, was trivializing the events on Mars. I expected that he would talk about the posibility of a machine ecosystem, evolving along the same lines as a biological system, over millions of years. However he glosses over the possible story and has them fly off on fusion drives they somehow invented in a few thousand years. I believe that this part of the story deserved a few chapters instead of the few paragraphs it got, and would have been a much more satisfactory ending. Either that or an exploration of humanity's more likely path of evolution: where we control our own genes and progress.

Overall, the ending seems like a few chapters of detritus tacked on to a solid 80% of a book.

In novel form, Baxter presents here what everyone should understand, our origins, wrote in an interesting and entertaining way, in contrast to textbooks that are often wrote in a dry, academic style. Beautifully written, Baxter traces our mammalian past, beginning with a small primate Baxter named Purga, living in the time of the dinosaurs, and then on up to the present time and into the future as well. Each chapter is a story about an animal(s), and how it has evolved and interacts with others and it's environment. These stories are fascinating indeed, little glimpses into our primate past, and how evolution has shaped us into what we are now through the relentless selection process. As millions of years pass after the great extinction event caused about 65 million years ago by a great comet (most likely), each story is about an animal or groups of animals as they become more and more human.
Mammals in later times entered into group living to help ensure their survival, the corresponding social dynamics did spurr the development of larger and more complex brains, eventually giving rise to full consciousness. Baxter did a great job here, as everywhere in this novel, and his illustration of the concept of deceit as a by-product of consciousness was brilliant.
At least one other reviewer speculated as to what message Stephen Baxter is trying to get across to us. One reviewer wrote that perhaps the message is that if we don't master spaceflight and get off this planet we will de-evolve into lower life forms. Well, mabe, but even though I am a supporter of our space program I think perhaps not. I believe the primary message is to dramaticize the 'fact' of evolution to the general public with a well written and informative novel, teaching the fundamentals in an entertaining way, a refreshing breath of rational thought. Indeed, in our world there are many influences pulling us this way and that, the vast majority are not worthy or rational, Baxter seems to me to be trying to counter this. We live in a society where the vast majority of people are incapable of true independent thought, lead around by our so-called 'leaders' who themselves are largely incapable of independent thought, as they were put in power by the ignorant masses in the first place. The recent movie FAHRENHEIT 9-11 is a great expose' on this. In my own community there are even people who believe that the Earth is only about 6000 years old and that the extinction of the dinosaurs was aided from hunting by humans!!! I know this sounds harsh, and it is, I believe Baxter's primary message in this novel is to get through to at least a few people with the truth about our past, that our time is but a snapshot in a vast era of billions of years, and that, if you believe Baxter to the fullest, we are just animals, however intelligent, imbedded in an ecosystem as we always have been. Baxter also covers the emergence of 'belief' systems due to evolutionary advantage, and our propensity for them, well done here also.
Sometimes, after finishing a book, I am left with a feeling that I wasted my time having read it. You will not have that feeling after reading this book. This book would make a great movie, if anyone would dare to, in the conservative age in which we live.

Why is it so hard to imagine humanity devolving? You think there is some mystical god who is going to save us from ourselves?

I'm frankly much more willing to believe in humanity (d?)evolving into primates who form a symbiosis with trees.

And yeah, tool using dinosaurs. I don't find the idea all that out there; I mean, don't chimps use crude tools? Guess what, the book is clearly labeled science fiction and Baxter even included a note at the end explaining that this was largley conjecture.

"The long shadow" was easily the most awesome chapter out of the book, and the one that has made me think most. 1000 years seems like a hell of a long time, but in the grand scale it is nothing... assuming you believe the Earth is older than 12,000 years, that is.

This is currently my favorite book, one that I've read probably 10 times now.

90% of EVOLUTION (published in 2002) is superb. I was fascinated by the coverage of the lives of the different primates/homonids in the human evolutional chain.

But 10% of the book is rotten. Luckily, the way the book is written, it is easy to simply ignore the rotten parts of the book, which involve modern-day interactions involving politically-correct angles on subjects like Global Warming, Globalization, Terrorism, which are contrived to be combined with a catastrophic event occurring during a "global scientific convention" to discuss these topics... and "strangely", these EXACT subjects and themes are superbly covered in full in Michael Chricton's STATE OF FEAR (2004).

If you're looking for "intelligent design", then read this book ... This is REAL Science Fiction (and mostly Science Fact). A frequent whinge by reviewers of all Baxter's books is that his characters are one-dimensional and that the plot and dialogue are often secondary to the science. Well, dare I say it, that's the POINT ... that's exactly what hard SciFi devotees have been starved of for decades, stories with a solid scientific base, which explore fringe possibilities, serving to expand the mind and inspire creative thought! To me, Baxter is like a modern-day Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, and his writing is a welcome return to foundational Science Fiction as it should be written. People who are looking for a rollicking good space yarn, a bit of escapism, should just stick to the fantasy genre.

Funny, although I enjoyed Stephen Baxter's ideas of our early ancestors and how they might have lived, and hypothesized their ability to make tools and reason, I thought that his projections to be more interesting. I can't look at my town's footprint now without thinking about what kind of heavy metals and poisons are soaking into the soil--only to be present and inflicting damage for eons beyond human life. I found the ending to be realistic; resembling a martian landscape which makes geologic sense in that the mountains do degrade into flatlands over time. This story sticks with you; once you read it, you can't forget it. Our human impact on Earth becomes even more relevant.

This book starts slowly and is a bit repetitive at first but it gets better and better. Baxter is a great writer and I look forward to reading more of his work. He really makes his readers think. If you enjoy this book read the Manifold series and Light Of Other Days.

The impact that killed the dinosaurs, the first apes coming out of the trees, the invention of agriculture, the end of human civilization and even the end of the earth, you all witness it in less than 800 pages. It makes you aware how futile our lives are when looked upon from a cosmic perspective, but simultaneously shows how relevant little things are when seen through the eyes of an individual. You'd wish more people read Baxter instead of thousand year old books....
I found Evolution absolutely mind-blowing, the best book I've read from him. I'd give Baxter stars if I could.

That's what Mr. Spock, of Classic Star Trek fame, would say! This is one of the best, most consistent sci-fi books dealing with the "birth" of humanity onward to future humanity that I'd ever seen. It is definitely equal to my other sci-fi/high-tech/cyberpunk favorites like: "Digital Fortress", "Deception Point", "Altered Carbon", "Ringworld", "Ringworld Engineers", "Prey", "Neuromancer", "Darkeye: Cyber Hunter", and so forth.

A long book that cover millions of years of biological evolution in a quasi-fictional way. As a professor of Biology, I have recommended it to my undergraduate "Evolution" class. The focus is on past (and future) human evolution, but there are plenty of other critters co-existing with the primates. An imaginative look at how things probably were and a rather depressing (but realistic) look at what they might become. Recommended to all educated people with well-developed attention spans!

A long book that cover millions of years of biological evolution in a quasi-fictional way. As a professor of Biology, I have recommended it to my undergraduate "Evolution" class. The focus is on past (and future) human evolution, but there are plenty of other critters co-existing with the primates. An imaginative look at how things probably were and a rather depressing (but realistic) look at what they might become. Recommended to all educated people with well-developed attention spans!

This book takes the reader on a nearly billion year journey accross time on planet earth. The book offers the reader a sense of mortality that is not just for oneself but for all of life as it forces the reader to witness early life, the Earths likely end and everything in-between. A work of fiction merged with fact that will have you doing research to learn more. This is what good science fiction is about.

This is one of the greatest science fiction stories of all time, you travel through a mind expanding amount of time with a handful of intriguing stories from different eras, I finished the book feeling as if I had a momentary glimpse into the mind of god. One of the few books I would read again.

Though the novel is long and descriptions are in-depth, I could have read 500 more pages. I thought it was a facinating take on evolution, and enabled me to visualize prehistoric worlds and the daily struggle of life. I wanted more, especially in the evolutin of mankind.

The most interesting idea to come from this book is the evolved state of a dinosaur species, which subsequently was eliminated via a meteor impact. The idea of dinosaurs evolving as Baxter proposed has a lot of potential grist, yet Baxter eliminates this possibility with the meteor impact. Too sad the high point of this evolution story ended early on. Still, I'm a Baxter fan, here looking for more of his work.

I love Stephen Baxter's work.

This book certainly took a lot of it to complete.

However, as hard as I try, I simply can't seem to make headway with it. There's simply too much detail and play-by-play of every event that you feel like you are following human evolution as it occurs in real-time.

Unless you enjoy reading the dictionary, I would steer away from this one.

-shannon norrell

My emotional investment with Darwin's four laws is apparently exactly the wrong one for reading a novel- really a collection of short stories- about significant evolutionary events in mankind's past and future.

So, the science is not bad. I found a couple of solid points I disagree on, but that's probably because we're in different fields. He's still clinging to the type-specimen paleontology crap, and several of my teachers were kind enough to beat that out of me, and then I read Wallace. And he had an animal that violated the r r^2 r^3 principle to make a point. (Most of the fossils we see are from low moist areas, not the fossils of mountain species.)

Actually, that one bugged me. It was a giant pteradon- 100 m wingspan!- that lived in the stratosphere, eating stuff that had blown up there. It made me want to yell: That is REALLY BIG! There is NOT ENOUGH AIR in the stratosphere! Something that big cannot live on WAYWARD MIDGE SWARMS! Having them mate and nest on mountaintops doesn't work: the tallest mountains in the world now barely scrape the BOTTOM of the stratosphere, and the Indian subcontinent HAD NO HIMALAYAS when this was going down.

There were the toolmaking language using raptors. I aknowledge that there might have been sentient animals before humans- I'd like to hope that there are some now. However, the feud between the raptors and the sentient brachiosaurs was like bad fanfic for the Land Before Time.

Then there was the "missing link" story. It's about a tribe of functionally modern homonids- they have fire and trade, but lack a real language. It's the end of the era of ten thousand homonid subspecies- these happy few are the ten or so people we are all descended from. They're in the Rift Valley. They are the source of all of human diversity. One of them is called Sunset because he's a redhead.

I bet you could shove a whole bunch of dried peas into his skull.

The forebearers of humanity already had a gene that today is found only in the descendants of the Celts. That extra-special pigment that we see only in descendants of Northern Europeans and Spaniards. However, the effects of said gene are only visible if you also have very little melanin. All this means that according to Mr. Baxter, the ancestors of all humanity were white.

Don't read this book.

Well, I made it through the first 24 pages before I fell asleep. I just couldn't face another 534 pages. Its not good fiction and it sure as heck isn't good science. Boring, boring, boring. A 65 million-year-old mammal called Purga? It might as well have been a fish called Wanda. Now that at least was funny. He had his all star cast though, headed up by a savior woman from Africa. All he was missing was a gay Asian doctor, a white Texan cowboy overseer, an Inuit paleoanthropologist, and a lesbian Hispanic pilot.

How is it possible that ANYONE not simply throw down this book in horror at the mention of a belt wearing, whip wielding, spear carrying dinosaur? I am completely amazed at the number of reviews that call this book good science. PLEASE! Just Google ornitholestes. All I can say is one big WOW, as I chuck this piece of ridiculous junk in the garbage. Air Whales, right! I love SciFi, but to call this good science is alarming in so many ways.