2011 Book Blog – Darwin’s Radio

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear left me liking it despite the fact that I completely disagree with Charles Darwin. Bear takes the theory of evolution and goes through the motions of what might happen in the world should a leap be made during our lifetime.

We start off with three stories. The first concerns Mitch, an anthropologist with a not-so-brilliant past, who, with the help of some not-so-great friends, finds a cave up in the Alps with Neandertals in it. A male, a female with a spear wound in her belly, and a baby. On their way back down the mountain, a blizzard stirs up, Mitch’s “friends” are killed and Mitch awakens to find himself with a broken leg in an Innsbruck hospital.

Story two involves Kaye, an brilliant biologist with a little background in forensic science, called upon by the UN to investigate some graves in the Republic of Georgia. The graves are primarily filled with women, all of which were pregnant.

Story three involves Christopher, a brilliant “virus hunter” for the CDC who briefly runs into Kaye in Georgia, on his way to check out a new virus.

Bear weaves all three stories together, with the three people eventually meeting, their stories all meshing together to form a new scientific discovery: a new virus is causing all mothers to abort their babies.

The center of the story revolves around Kaye, who, with her husband have a small biotech company they’re trying to get off the ground. Saul, Kaye’s husband, suffers from depression, so when the news comes in that the deal they were counting on with a company in Georgia falls through, Saul commits suicide.

Kaye, twelve years her husband’s junior, is torn between anger for Saul doing this to her on the eve of a discovery, and yet relieved to be out of such a strained marriage. She takes up a job with a big pharmaceutical company, working as a liaison (of sorts) with the CDC on this new retrovirus that is causing mothers to abort their children.

Within a year Kaye finds herself at odds with the CDC, with the pharmaceutical company, taken up a lover, (supposedly married him by pledging their undying love for each other in a park), living on the run, and decides to get pregnant to prove everyone wrong.

I think Bear intended for Kaye to be a sympathetic character: nothing goes right for her, she’s been so self-centered, until Saul’s death, blah, blah blah. Then she hooks up with Mitch and she’s happy. Problem is, she’s still self-centered and is really the same person she was at the beginning of the story. I’m one of these people who think characters should grow, mature, even change during the course of a novel. Kaye doesn’t. She’s just put into “happier” circumstances.

Anyway, Kaye is the one who believes that the virus isn’t necessarily a virus, it’s an evolutionary leap. Every mother who aborts is instantly pregnant again. Somehow the body is trying to produce a new homo sapien that is more adapted, or better evolved, to live in our over-stressed world.

The story itself is clever and well written. However, I don’t believe in Darwin’s theory – which I wrote about in January/February 2010, and I didn’t like that Bear portrayed every Christian in the book as either maniacal or evil or simply stupid or crazy. There wasn’t a lot of it, but enough to make me roll my eyes at such naivete on the author’s part. It is obvious he did a lot of research into biology, retroviruses and Darwin’s theory, but he didn’t take the time to understand true Christian values, nor really the values of any religion. But, I digress.

It is a good book, a definite page-turner. Mitch, Christopher, and Oliver (an English journalist) are all likeable characters and you want to know what happens to them. There is a lot going on with everyone, but aside from some of the complicated scientific explanations, things are presented in such a way that the reader doesn’t get lost in who is doing what and why. Bear keeps that part of the story pretty basic, though full of twists and turns.

If you’re not easily offended by misrepresentation of religion, I’d recommend it. Darwin was a hack, but this story is good.