Greg Bear: Darwin's Children

Published more recently, and going into more detail, Ernst Mayr’s summing up of a life’s work, What Evolution Is (2002, Perseus Books) makes another clear and unyielding statement of the paradigm of modern Darwinism. There will probably be no finer exponents of the old view of Darwinian evolution.

The new view is emerging even as we speak.

Stephen Jay Gould is unfortunately no longer with us. I recommend all of his learned and impassioned books and essays, but in particular the flawed, and for that reason no less fascinating and instructive, Wonderful Life (Norton, 1989).

A good bridge to a larger understanding of the turmoil in evolutionary theory is Niles Eldredge’s Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory , Wiley, 1995. Eldredge and Gould are currently credited with a particular view of evolutionary leaps known as punctuated equilibrium , but the idea can be traced back at least to masters such as Ernst Mayr, and even back to Darwin. Wherever it comes from, punctuated equilibrium was one of the key stimuli to my writing Darwin’s Radio. Gould and Eldredge should not be blamed for my elaborations, however.

Peter J. Bowler’s The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (1988, Johns Hopkins) is scholarly and entertaining at once.

A fine introduction to genetics is Dealing with Genes: The Language of Heredity by Paul Berg and Maxine Singer, 1992, University Science Books. Though a decade old, its information is still useful and its attitude is forward-looking. It could prepare the reader for the following books.

Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan have published an excellent critique of neo-Darwinianism in Acquiring Genomes: A Theory on the Origins of Species , 2002, BasicBooks. Margulis is a pioneer in thinking about cooperative and symbiotic systems, and she and her son Dorion make up the single most stimulating popular writing team in modern biology.

More radical still, but just as polite and level-headed as Margulis, is Lynn Caporale, whose Darwin in the Genome: Molecular Strategies in Biological Evolution (2003, McGraw-Hill) is a clear and thoughtful examination of how genomics will shape and mutate the debate on evolution.

Lamarck’s Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin’s Natural Selection Paradigm , by Edward J. Steele, Robyn A. Lindley, and Robert V. Blanden (1998, Perseus Books) focuses on one possible cause and arbiter of genomic variation.

A key text in modern biology is Retroviruses , edited by John M. Coffin, Stephen H. Hughes, and Harold E. Varmus, 1997, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Mostly for professionals, this rigorous and pioneering collection of monographs is filled with useful information.

Of particular relevance to my two novels is Lateral DNA Transfer by Frederic Bushman, 2002, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, is an important synopsis of what is currently known about DNA transfer through viruses, transposons, plasmids, etc. I think it is one of the most significant biology books published in the last decade.

James V. Kohl’s The Scent of Eros (1995; reprinted in a revised edition, 2002, Continuum) is a rich source of information on pheromones, human communication through smell, and the influence of scent on sexuality.

There’s a wealth of fine writing on these topics in many other popular science books, textbooks, and magazines. Searching on author names and topics in online bookstores can be a good way to leapfrog through diverse subjects. Which leads us to a very small sampling of Web sites.

Searching on key words in Web engines such as Google (“HERV,” “Retrotransposon,” “Barbara McClintock,” “ Homo erectus ,” “Mitochondria,” etc.) can lead the curious reader into a combination paradise and mine field of articles peer-reviewed and otherwise, research goals and updates, opinions, and quite a few rants of varying degrees of erudition. Caveats abound—there are dozens if not hundreds of Creationist and other religiously motivated, anti-evolution sites that seem to discuss evolution and genetics with some lucidity, for a while. Generally speaking, the science here is dubious at best.

Nevertheless, searching on Google is how I located excellent articles by Luis P. Villarreal. In particular, I was influenced by Villarreal’s “The Viruses That Make Us: A Role For Endogenous Retrovirus In The Evolution Of Placental Species,” available on the Web at http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~faculty/villarreal/new1/erv-placental.html

(Dr. Villarreal, Eric Larsson, and Howard Temin should not, however, be blamed for all the uses their ideas are put to in this novel.)

James V. Kohl’s Web site, www.pheromones.com, provides a number of links to articles and other sites that discuss the biology of smell. The Web site of the Molecular Sciences Institute, www.molsci.org, is filled with interesting news and developments. The International Paleopsychology Project, www.paleopsych.org, is a clearing house of fascinating ideas with many links to other Web sites.

Periodically, I will post bibliographical updates on www.gregbear.com, as well as comments from readers about the theoretical underpinnings of the Darwin novels.

Hegira

Beyond Heaven River

Strength of Stone

Psychlone

Blood Music

Songs of Earth and Power

Eon

Eternity

Legacy

The Forge of God

Anvil of Stars

Queen of Angels

/ (Slant)

Heads

Moving Mars

Dinosaur Summer

Foundation and Chaos

Star Wars: Rogue Planet

Darwin’s Radio

Vitals

Collection

The Collected Stories of Greg Bear

New Legends

Darwin’s Children is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey ®Book

Published by The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright © 2003 by Greg Bear