Darwin’s Children - Hardcover

Bear, Greg

3.65

5,486 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002257327 ISBN 13: 9780002257329

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2003

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In Greg Bear’s stunning new thriller, nature is more of a bitch goddess than a kindly mother, and evolution is no longer just a theory – it's an urgent and dangerous fact. In DARWIN'S CHILDREN, human society is about to get a complete makeover.

A new kind of humanity is growing up. Some call them the Virus Children. They are special children, equipped with significant natural upgrades that allow them to communicate and socialize in ways we can hardly imagine, or resist. Charming, gentle, persuasive, beautiful... in them can be seen a future that may make all of human history until now seem clumsy and brutal.

As products of an extraordinary evolutionary event called SHEVA that swept through the population like a contagious disease over a decade ago, they carry ancient viruses that could cause our extinction, viruses that may be triggered at any moment by stress, anger... or puberty.

The new children are being methodically rounded up and sequestered in special schools where they are studied, measured and biopsied.

Stella Nova, the daughter of Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson, is one of them. She is driven by instinct to be with her own kind, to establish a new kind of social order and discover her potential. Kaye and Mitch wish to protect her, but to do so, they must keep her isolated, stifled in a blanket of security that they all know must eventually be lifted.

Despite their best efforts, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella are tracked by security forces that could break them apart as a family. The new children must be controlled, these forces believe; and the time may come when both species must either separate, or engage in outright war.

In DARWIN'S CHILDREN, human society is about to get a complete makeover, and who will win is anyone's guess. For, as Kaye Lang discovers, silence is also a signal...

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Review:

'Bear plays to his strength – cutting-edge scientific speculation – in this riveting SF thriller about possible evolutionary apocalypse.' Publisher's Weekly

'A stunning read' Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

'Darwin's Radio is a tense technothriller in the Michael Crichton vein... evolutionary change, we secretly believe, isn't something that happens to us... The world collapses in panic. Gurus of scientific orthodoxy, paralysed by over-fast change, turn a blind eye to the shocking evidence. There are riots, flights to the hills, death cults, martial law, and superstitious fear... Intelligent science fiction on a colossal scale.' New Scientist

'Darwin's Radio delves into crucial questions about where we humans came from and where we're going. Along the way, the book shows how much and how little we've changed from our ancestors... Bear tells a good, character-driven story.' USA Today

'All the best thrillers contain the solution to a mystery, and the mystery in this intellectually sparkling scientific thriller is more crucial and stranger than most.' Amazon.com

About the Author:

Greg Bear was born in 1951 and published his first short story sixteen years later. His first novel was published in 1979, and his most famous novels, Blood Music and Eon, emerged during the eighties and have now become established classics.

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