Evolution FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
It's 2031, and human-induced climate change is wreaking havoc on the earth and all its inhabitants. Mass extinction of species is occurring at a record pace. Major coastal cities are completely flooded; tens of millions of people are displaced. Civilization is crumbling. In large part due to the actions of humankind, the depleted and polluted earth is dying -- along with almost every organism that lives on it. The brightest scientists from around the world gather at an ecological conference to try and figure out a way to stop the imminent extinction event. Paleontologist Joan Useb has the answer, but it may already be too late.
With Useb's story as a loose framework for this epic Darwinian drama, Baxter goes back 65 million years to the Cretaceous period, when the ancestors of humankind were small, nocturnal, rodentlike creatures living in fear of predatory dinosaurs. Every million years or so, Baxter revisits the descendants of those early primates and follows the slow evolution of humankind from squirrel-like tree dwellers to tool-making hominids to the very first agriculturists. Then Baxter goes episodically 500 million years into the future. What humankind eventually evolves into is both tragic and, in an odd way, triumphant.
There are good books, there are great books, and there are Significant books -- profoundly powerful works that actually change the way a reader looks at the world. Stephen Baxter's Evolution is one of those rare novels that will touch readers on a much deeper, more permanent -- I daresay spiritual -- level. It's disturbing, depressing, chilling, and, in the end, compelling. Like Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and Baxter's own Manifold trilogy (Manifold Time, Manifold Space, and Manifold Origin), Evolution examines where humans came from and what we could possibly evolve into. Ambitious, apocalyptic, and awe-inspiring, Evolution is a must-read if there ever was one. Paul Goat Allen
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgotorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human image forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate?" A generation from today, a group of concerned scientists - distant descendants of that primitive Purgotorius - gathers on a remote island to discuss that very question. The ceaseless expansion of human civilization has triggered an urgent environmental crisis that must be solved now, if the Earth is to survive as a hospitable place for human life. But just when a peaceful solution seems within reach, two acts of shocking violence set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events that will expose the limitations of human intellect and adaptability in the face of the blind and implacable processes of Darwin's dangerous idea.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
Evolution, by Stephen Baxter, is a work of outrageous ambition. Baxter's goal is nothing less than to dramatize the grand sweep of primate development, beginning with a rodentlike Eve scrabbling for survival in the dinosaur-dominated forests of North America 65 million years ago and extending to an imaginary whimper some 500 million years in the future.
To say that Baxter's reach exceeds his grasp is to state the obvious. What is astonishing is how successfully he brings to life a wide range of facts and conjectures, and how entertaining as well as informative this book -- an episodic novel with evolution as its protagonist -- manages to be. — Gerald Jones
Publishers Weekly
Taking a page from SF saga writers like Kim Stanley Robinson and Brian Stableford, British author Baxter (the Manifold trilogy) portrays humanity's origins, growth and ultimate disappearance in a loose-knit series of brutal vignettes spanning millions of years of evolution. Beginning with the gritty slice-of-life tale of a small, ratlike proto-primate called Purga (short for species Purgatorius), the story travels from the end of the Cretaceous through the millennia as primates slowly evolve into creatures more and more recognizably human, learning to make and use tools, developing language and the ability to feel empathy-the trait that Baxter selects as definitive of true humanity. Resonating with that theme, the vignettes are linked by a thin near-future frame about scientists meeting in the midst of ecological and political chaos to find a way to save humanity from itself through the "globalization of empathy." More concerned with technical detail than character or plot, the book rises above its fragmented narrative and frequently repetitive violence to reach a grim and stoic grandeur, which (despite a tendency toward preachiness) clearly has humanity's best interests at heart. Here is a rigorously constructed hard SF novel where the question is not whether humanity will reach the stars but how it will survive its own worst tendencies. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
As a group of scientists gathers in the South Pacific for a conference to save the human race from extinction, their actions represent the culmination of millions of years of struggle by their primate ancestors to survive in an ever-changing world. The author of the Manifold trilogy (Manifold: Time; Manifold: Space; Manifold: Origin) uses a modern-day story as a frame within which he relates a series of vignettes tracing the history of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth, from its mammalian beginnings in the Cretaceous era to the present. Spanning more than 165 million years and encompassing the entire planet, Baxter's ambitious saga provides both an exercise in painless paleontology and superb storytelling. Highly recommended for sf as well as general fiction collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Bulky assemblage-it's a stretch to call this a novel-of animated dioramas endeavoring to illustrate the story of primate evolution. The token frame here concerns the journey of two friends, paleontologist Joan Useb and primatologist Alyce Sigurdardottir, to attend a conference in Darwin, Australia, in 2031. The planet's ecology and climate are threatened, the huge volcano on nearby Rabaul is close to exploding-and to cap it all, terrorists attack the conference. Meanwhile, robots on Mars succeed in replicating themselves. Baxter (Icebones, 2002, etc.) intersperses this with dramatic paleontological reconstructions and speculations. Proto-primates beat the competition in the Cretaceous. Brainy dinosaurs, unknown in the fossil record, become extinct in the Jurassic. Primates evolve and adapt swiftly during the Tertiary. Monkeys arrive in the New World. Dinosaurs survive on Antarctica until ten million years ago. Five million years later, apes descend from the trees. Hand axes become popular about 1.5 million years ago. Politics, murder, and beer are invented before 10,000 b.c. Fifth-century Rome seethes with treachery. Finally, in 2031, the volcano explodes, devastating Earth. Mars, meanwhile, is eaten up by the replicating machines, which go on to colonize the galaxy. A millennium after the volcano, a group of British servicemen awaken from cryonic suspension to find that primitive post-humans have already lost the power of speech. Devolution, thereafter, continues rapidly. The last primates, half a billion years hence, subside with barely a gasp.
Infotainment: glum, dyspeptic, and depressing.
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