I have just finished reading Stephen Baxter's 2003 book, _Evolution_,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345457838/qid=1133464929/sr=2-3/ref=pd
_bbs_b_2_3/002-3648352-5792861?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
or
http://tinyurl.com/dpsor
and thought I'd share some brief remarks with the group about it. If
you've read the book, great. Perhaps we can discuss what you liked or
didn't like. If you haven't read the book, and you're interested in
creative interpretations of the distant past and distant future,
perhaps you'd enjoy it.
++++++C A U T I O N +++++++
PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW
+++++++++++++++++++++
First, it is important to note that _Evolution_ is a novel. It is
fiction, but it is based on hard science and it attempts not to make
too many unfounded assumptions.
Second, not only is the book fiction, but it's science fiction. The
last chapter of the book takes place half a billion years from now,
telling the story of the last primate to walk the face of the Earth. It
is a sad, bleak chapter because, according to Baxter, humanity never
quite managed to establish itself outside the bounds of its birth
planet.
In a nutshell, _Evolution_ is the full story of the development of
primates, hominids, humans and their ancestors, over the course of 650
or so million years. It's a big bite, but Baxter manages to pull it off
with only an occasional flight of pure fantasy. The writing is crisp
and professional, in a style that does not jar the senses or detract
from the stories.
The first chapter takes place 65 million years ago, telling the story
of one of the earliest known proto-primates, the rodent-like "Purga,"
and her chance survival of Chicxulub, the event that lead to the great
extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. "Purga" is short for
_purgatorius_, the scientific name given to this creature. Baxter uses
this convention throughout the book. Our earliest ancestors did not
give themselves names, so he assigns familiar labels to them based on
outstanding physical or behavioral traits.
Scientific purists will cringe at some of Baxter's liberties. For
instance, he devotes a small chapter to an unknown species of dinosaur
that lived 80 million years before purgatorius, had a big brain, its
own language, made primitive tools, and used other dinosaurs as pack
animals. Ludicrous? Perhaps. But how would we know of such a creature
had it ever existed? All of its tools (wood & leather) would have long
since turned to dust.
In subsequent chapters we meet Plesi, a 63 million year old plesiapid,
Noth, a 51 million year old notharctus, Roamer, a 32 million year old
anthropoid, Dig, a 10 million year old lemming-like primate, then Capo,
the first true hominid at 5 million years BP. In Capo we see the
earliest glimmers of conscious thought, of empathy and the ability to
plan ahead that is more than pure instinct.
We meet Far, a Homo habilis female who loved to run, then Pebble, a
robust australopithicine, and Harpoon, a sophisticated tool-maker from
127,000 years ago. We are treated to the beginnings of spoken language
and to interbreeding among hominid species. Sex is frequent, as often
for dominance as for affection. Death is swift, painful, grisly and
random. It is, indeed, nature red in tooth and claw. Baxter uses the
phrase "panic *****" more than once to describe the awful rawness of
existence for so many of our ancestors. Bathroom functions (primarily
the lack of hygiene) figure prominently in some of the stories.
Finally at mid-book we meet Mother, in the Sahara, North Africa, 60,000
years ago. The first modern human and, according to a theory of
mitochondrial drift popular a few years ago, the mother of us all, the
true "Eve."
Baxter calls her "Ja-ahn," a word that means mother in the character's
language. In subsequent chapters, "Ja-ahn" morphs into "Ejan," "Jana,"
"Jo'on," "Jahna," "Juna," and finally "Joan," a contemporary of you and
me. Through this progression we see the expansion of humans into
Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. We see the demise of the
Neanderthals, the rise of trading cultures, of agriculture, villages,
towns, cities, organized warfare and politics.
In the first half of the book, the stories are only loosely tied
together by lineage. That is, Purga is the implied ancestor of Noth,
who is the implied ancestor of Capo, who is the implied ancestor of Far
and Harpoon. But, in the second half of the book, the lineage is
direct, female to female, from Ja-ahn to Joan. Nevertheless, each
chapter stands on its own and can be read separately from the rest
without any jarring plot shifts.
The last third of the book concerns our future, and Baxter tells an
unsettling tale. There are no happy endings. There are just . . .
endings. In a place and time not told to the reader, a group of
soldiers emerge from a kind of suspended stasis that was supposed to
last no more than a decade or two at most. Instead, their sleep has
lasted several dozen millennia. Civilization as they knew it is gone;
cities have crumbled to dust, the forest has reclaimed roads,
factories, dams. Even the constellations are different. Worse, they are
alone. They detect no hint of humans. It's as if mankind has been wiped
off the face of the planet, until the soldiers meet "Weena." Fans of
H.G. Wells will find some irony in this chapter.
30 million years later we meet "Remembrance." A ghost of what once was,
returned to the trees, fearful of the new dominant species on Earth:
raptor-like descendents of today's rats. Remembrance has company in the
persons of primate descendents that resemble ancient sloths in both
manner and commerce, as well as other interesting variations of
neo-humans. In a way, it appears to be a return to an Eden that never
really was, and isn't then, either.
Finally, 500 million years from now, we meet "Ultimate." And hers is a
truly strange tale indeed. Imagine the changes required in 65 million
years to turn a mouse-like creature into a human, and you have an idea
of how Baxter envisions the course of "human" evolution hundreds of
millions of years in the future. My only quibble is that it probably
isn't weird enough.
There is a great deal of detail throughout the book. You meet many
interesting creatures, both those we know of and those that exist only
in Baxter's imagination. It was interesting to read the early chapters
while in front of a computer, where I could look up "oxyclaenus" or
"elasmotherium" as Baxter introduces them into the story. The later
chapters were gritty enough to keep me interested, with NO romanticized
notion of life in some mythical Eden. Instead, as we know, life was all
too short, too brutal and too painful for our ancestors, to whom we owe
almost everything for our current comparatively trouble-free and
almost magical existence. The last few chapters surprised me with their
imaginativeness, even if they were somewhat depressing in tone. There
were no starships, no galactic empires or ages of peaceful coexistence
with intelligent crystals from Rigel 5. It's just us, carbon-based
critters in competition with all the other carbon-based critters on a
little ball of mud rolling around an average star in an averge galaxy
in a pretty big universe.
A fun read. Heartily recommended.
-chib
--
Member of SMASH
Sarcastic Middla Aged Atheists with a Sense of Humor
.
|
