When telling the stories of individuals and peoples, there are three questions the story must deal with: 1) Where did we come from? 2) Where are we going? and 3) What will become of us? In Evolution, Stephen Baxter tells the story of humankind itelf, ranging from humanity's nraw beginnings in Purga the Purgatorius, dancing around the feet of dinosaurs and just barely surviving the comet-strike on the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago; to paleontologist Joan Usub, on her way to participate in a conference of scientists with the hope that the results of that conference will save the world, in 2031 AD; to the life and death of Ultimate, Purga's last descendant, on a dying Earth half a billion years uin our future; with a side-trip to the ornitholestes Listener, a technologically sophisticated and intellectually gifted bipedal dinosaur, 145 years ago, in the depths of the Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era of Earthly life. Throughout he describes the likely and possible evolution of consciousness, intellectual capacities, and cultural creativity of the primate line leading to us and beyond us into an unknowable future.As Baxter himself says inn the Afterword to the novel, here he has tried to dramatize the story of human evolution, not define it. Hoping that his story is plausible, he nevertheless cautions that it should not be read as a textbook. He bases much of it on reconstructions of the past by experts in various fields, choosing what seemed to him the most plausible or exciting idea among competing scientific proposals. But, as he says, much of the story is based simply on his own speculations.The resulting story is a vivid, sometimes heart-wrenching, often dazzling complexity and poetic depth. No, it shouldn't be read as a textbook -- but read alongside the textbooks on paleontology, paleobiology, paleoecology, and astrobiology I've been studying over the years, it adds a profound depth and almost musical richness to the story not only of humanity, but of life itself that illuminates the textbook studies with a blazing, vividlly colored brilliance and beauty that places the reader him- or herself in the midst of the story of life, letting us identify with the various life-forms described in our studies and thereby come to know that we are truly one with all life on Earth, and always will be. A glorious literary feast, indeed.
how brilliant and illuminating this novel is .to see a beautiful painting you have to take some steps backwards , so that you can get the whole surface , you will not get any beauty or ideas from concentrating on the small details .it is astonishing to realize how tiny we are , how short our lives are compared to life itself.one of the questions that confused our kind from the beginning of conscious is who we are , why are we here , where are we going to , I thought about this alot and alot of time ,since my childhood , I asked a lot of questions , none of the answers were satisfying , until i began to read -in general not this novel- and some answers have begun to appear , of course it is way too far from the complete answer , but it is good enough to know we are on our way .we are animals ,just one kind of the lot of the beings that live on the surface on this planet , our life's goal is to survive and multiply , all this civilization , relations , inventions are only to help us survive , the morals and religions themselves are just to organize a society where we would have more chances of living .but we are not as intelligent as we think , we are leading ourselves to the end , we cant see the whole picture yet , we are looking under our feet , and life will not care how smart and advanced we are , as long as we think that we are masters of this universe and treat it like with such ignorance , as long as we dont realize our place as a Participant in this huge world , we will not stay for long time ahead , our existence here is not permanent , we should cooperate with the surroundings in order to survive , right now we are not aware of the true challenges ahead from us , but we are fighting each other for useless reasons , we are abusing our world in the worst way ever , we are not listening to the voices that try to advice us and direct us to the right way , i believe our end is closer than we think , our only way out is to put politicians away and bring scientists to the front .
What do You think about Evolution (2004)?
Nasty, brutish, long.The story of human evolution from 65my in the past to 500my in the future.First, it's poorly written. Frequently I found myself stopping and editing sentences and whole paragraphs as I went along, immersion breaking to say the least and it turns reading into a chore.Like many sf writers Baxter's best work is in his short stories - Vaccuum Diagrams is excelent 'hard' sci-fi - the format forces an economy of expression. 'Evolution' is bloated. Everything is explicitly told to us (I've done some research let me tell you about it!), the reader is given little credit, the results are patronising and didactic. The book's high points are when Baxter frees himself from the fossil record and engages in flights of fancy: Dinosaur hunters! Giant air whales! Otherwise too much rape and murder. Repetitive and, I thought, callously written. Yeah I get it, life is tough.Oh, and don't get me started on the 'characters' in the sentient human parts of the book, embarrassingly bad; walking political cartoons. On the back of my edition it says "deserves comarison with Stapledon's Last and First men" the comparison it deserves is "much much worse than Stapledon's Last and First Men"
—Tom
A good book but about 100 pages too long. The author dramatized mammalian evolution from the time of the dinosaurs until a future hundreds of millions of years from now. Having watched Cosmos this summer, I have been thinking about the incomprehensible spans of time that have passed since the formation of the universe, and since life began on this planet. Evolution serves as a reminder of just how brief our species' time in the sun really has been, and what remarkable arrogance human beings display when trying to explain the cosmos to each other. Climate change, volcanoes, asteroids and comets...over the history of our world, these events have hit the reset button over and over again. Hundreds of thousands of species have come into being, thrived, then vanished into oblivion. We are no different. In the eyes of earth, we are a minor flash in the pan. In the eyes of the cosmos, we are less than a speck of dust. And when we are gone..."there will come soft rains..."A good and troubling book. Bleak, I guess, but honest. I was struck by how much of what I was reading about I had learned in college--astronomy, biology, evolution, etc.--but then forgot because they are not things that I really think about on a day to day basis. Science keeps me very humble.
—Michael
This book is the clearest understanding I have ever had on the eons-long process of evolution, told in a fascinating novel from each creature's point of view from millions of years ago. I couldn't put this book down! The amazing settings bring each geologic age to life again, as it was when it happened. This author must have a prodigious science background and great imagination. This book is perfect for anyone with an interest in ancient and pre-historic history, geology, geography and sociology.
—Cobalt
