Book Reviews: Book Review of Evolution, by Stephen Baxter -- Blue Rectangle

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Evolution

Stephen Baxter

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"I read Evolution: A Novel because I'm interested in evolution and science fiction, and this is clearly within the category of science fiction. It traces the evolution of mankind from about 65 million years ago, up to the time that the dinosaurs became extinct, until the present, and then projects it into the future. It was interesting to see it from both points of view and interesting to see how much he got into the point of view of our pre-human ancestors and our post-human descendants. It is character-driven within each epoch, so it has one main character -- it comes as close as you could get, I think, to putting yourself in the point of view of a creature that's not quite human. In some cases, the farther back you go or the farther in the future, very different from human. One thing that it does I think is to dispel the idea that evolution is a constant upward journey because if you think of intelligence alone, for example, then it's just been an upward journey through our species; but it's not necessarily going to continue going in that direction in the future. I think it sort of helps to plant the idea that intelligence is not a one-way street -- not intelligence, evolution -- is not a one-way street toward intelligence or any other one characteristic. It depends greatly on the circumstances. I would give it four stars. I would have trouble giving any science fiction story five stars, I think, because I could always find things that are not going to hap -- they don't happen in the story the way I think they would actually happen."