| Author: | Greg Bear |
| Copyright: | 1999 |
| Date Reviewed: | 7/22/01 |
| Rating: | 9.0 |
Synopsis: Mitch, one of our heroes, is an archeologist. Five years ago he got in trouble for stealing a human remains and returning them to the Indian tribes are their descendants. He has spend the time since trying to prove his worth to the scientific community. Tilde, a former lover, and Franco, her new lover, take Mitch ice climbing and show him a Neanderthal couple and baby frozen in a cave. They become lost in an ice storm. Mitch wakes in a hospital and learns that Tilde and Franco are dead and that Tilde had smuggled the baby out of the cave. The police think Mitch was involved in the theft given his dubious record. His career is almost certainly over.
Kaye Lang is a genetic scientist. Her and her husband created EcoBacter to market a new line of antibacterials. As we meet Kaye, she is in Georgia, formally part of the USSR, negotiating a cooperation deal with a company that has technology EcoBacter can use. The UN asks her to investigate a possible atrocity site in Georgia and she finds that it's only a few years old. All of the female victims were pregnant. Soon the UN are thrown out. It is apparent that there is a dark secret being protected. Back home, Kaye find that she has lost the contract with the Georgia company. Her husband, Saul, seems to take the news well, although he is prone to severe depression and mood swings.
A few years ago, Kaye did a paper predicting HERVs, ancient viruses hidden in human DNA. Now it appears that one of these, called SHEVA, is being triggered and causing women to miscarriage in many parts of the world. The fetuses do not look at all human. A report out of Innsbrook reveals that the child of the Neanderthal couple that Mitch saw was human and was injured before birth. Later DNA samples prove that the child was related to both parents. In many parts of the world there are reports of woman becoming pregnant without sex. Kaye is beginning to realize that SHEVA could be responsible for rapid evolution and may be out of control, causing so many miscarriages. Eventually scientists learn that the fetuses are born carrying eggs that can develop into a new fetus, after the daughter fetus is miscarried. Thus the cause of pregnancy without sex.
As Saul is trying to save EcoBacter from financial ruin, he suffers a depression incident, one of many during his life, and commits suicide. Before he died, Saul sold the company to pay off the Venture Capital's and left nothing to Kaye. Kaye goes to work at the CDC to help discover the secrets of SHEVA and the increasing occurrences of miscarriages. Mitch sees a connection between SHEVA, the miscarriages and the Neanderthals, which he does not fully understand. Americol HMO cooperates with the CDC and Kaye becomes a liaison between the two. This reduces her influence at the CDC, relegating her from a primary scientist to a meeting attendee.
DNA tests prove that the Neanderthal father had active SHEVA and that the child was Homo Sapiens Sapiens. There is growing evidence of the appearance of Herod's flu for hundreds of years, but in that time, most parents were killed as carriers of the Devil's children. That is what happened in Georgia.
As the numbers of miscarriages increase, social order breaks down. There are riots in many major cities demanding that the government do something to stop the epidemic. People don't understand that a woman can be pregnant with a second stage fetus which causes a schism between the sexes. It appears that men are carriers of the disease, further separating men form women. As the situation worsens, the government makes preparations for Martial Law and Sex Segregation. There is also a rush to provide a morning-after pills to contain the crisis. Christopher, Kaye and Mitch conjecture that the human species is a kind of neural net that controls occurrences of rapid evolution. A riot racks a science convention when it is learned that the first second stage child was born deformed and died. It had herpes and the mother was developing a mask. If there are no second stage births, the human species will die out.
Kaye and tall Mitch are lovers. Christopher, who Kaye met first, is too small. Christopher learns that SHEVA is mutating so he comes to believe that it really is a disease, not evolution. He throws his support to the government, frustrating Kaye and Mitch. However, eventually scientist discover that SHEVA is not mutating, it is expressing different copies of the virus, in case the first ones fail. The first one did fail, causing so many second stage still births. Mitch meets Dr. Brock from Innsbruck who also dreams. Dr. Brock reports that there is much fighting at the Innsbruck labs over rapid evolution. Dr. Brock favors this theory and was dismissed. They conspire to sell the evolution theory. Kaye fails to sell it to the taskforce and resigns.
Now out of government, Kaye contracts SHEVA from Mitch and wants to be impregnated, but Mitch says no. On the way west Kaye and Mitch pick up three hitch hikers. One is pregnant. The Government position, strongly against allowing rapid evolution to proceed, is to promote abortions. However, this is fought by grassroots opposition. The president is assassinated by the governor of Alabama who opposed abortion. Government plans to incarcerate second stage babies (if they live) and their mothers for fear of new diseases. The Government comes for a pregnant Kaye and Mitch but are stopping by Indian friends. As pregnancies progresses mothers and fathers grow masks and their tongues swell. In an Indian hospital, Kaye gives birth to a girl, named Stella Nova, who can talk, clearly a more advanced subspecies of Homo Sapiens. The changes that happened to parents of these children were done so they could better communicate with their children. However, the parents will never have the same advantages. Three years after her birth, there are still strong prejudices against the new sub species. Most have been sequestered where they can communicate pheromonly, and more efficiently than the older species. They also appear more serene.
Review: "Darwin's Radio" is a hard science fiction. However, where I am used to thinking of hard science fictions in terms of physics, space flight and math, this is the first one I've read that deals with genetics in such a detailed manner. I enjoyed it even more and though I had to work hard to understand the science, I'm glad for the effort and the knowledge. The juxtaposition of science and politics was also very interesting. This book would make an excellent movie. There are a lot of characters which adds to the complexity of the novel. At 524 pages, there is plenty of story to go around and I was sorry it had to end. The story left room for a sequel, for which I will eagerly await. My only complaints are quite minor. Greg Bear is great at describing the physical properties of each character but with so many of them, this eventually becomes tiresome. The doom and gloom about possibly loosing a whole generation came a little late in the story.