Darwin鈥檚 Radio by Greg Bear, HarperCollins, 拢16.99, ISBN 0002257319
INTELLIGENT science fiction on a colossal scale is Greg Bear鈥檚 forte, and he
handles biology as adroitly as physics. His 1985 breakthrough novel, Blood
Music, even made plausible the possibility that North America鈥檚 entire
biomass could be rearranged into one supremely resourceful blob. Darwin鈥檚
Radio is a tense techno-thriller, somewhat in Michael Crichton鈥檚 vein. But
it鈥檚 got a disturbing and unusual twist, applying the evolutionary theory of
punctuated equilibrium鈥攊n which periods of relative stasis are interrupted
by bouts of speciation鈥攖o humanity. This is profoundly unsettling:
evolutionary change, we secretly believe, isn鈥檛 something that happens to
us.
In Bear鈥檚 weird new world, sudden species creation has been looming for
decades. The catalyst is a 鈥渘ew鈥� virus that鈥檚 actually ancient, a stowaway
within our own DNA. It鈥檚 no coincidence that its contrived acronym
SHEVA鈥擲cattered Human Endogenous retroVirus Activation鈥攕uggests the
destructive Hindu deity Shiva. SHEVA is initially welcomed by big health
business as a scare that will boost government funding. Its first effect,
鈥淗erod鈥檚 Flu鈥�, invariably causes pregnant women to miscarry. So pandemic SHEVA
could end the human race鈥攁nd in a way, it does.
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Bear imagines a not-so-blind watchmaker as an emergent phenomenon of human
DNA worldwide, analogous to the Gaia concept of the biosphere as an emergent
property of organisms. He has human genomes exchanging information through
subtle chemical signals known as 鈥淒arwin鈥檚 radio鈥�. SHEVA, the genome鈥檚 tool for
triggering a new species, is flawed. But then it mutates . . .
Naturally the world collapses in panic. Gurus of scientific orthodoxy,
paralysed by over-fast change, turn a blind eye to the shocking evidence. There
are riots, flights to the hills, death cults, martial law, and superstitious
fear of the mask-like facial growths that appear on adults as the old version of
humanity is retrofitted for communication with the coming race. But despite some
knotty biological info-dumps, Darwin鈥檚 Radio is solidly readable
science fiction.