Darwin's Radio
by Greg Bear
Summary
A retrovirus that has been sitting dormant in human DNA for millions of years switches on. Public health calls it Herod's flu, because what it does is cause miscarriage: women infected in the first trimester lose a malformed female fetus, and then, without further conception, become pregnant again with something else.
The second child is a new species. Facial pigment that moves, a second vocal cord, scent glands, and enough genetic difference to make it a speciation event rather than a variation. Humanity is, in effect, giving birth to its successor, and it is happening everywhere at once.
Bear follows three people. Kaye Lang, a molecular biologist who published on endogenous retroviruses before anyone cared. Christopher Dicken, a virus hunter at the Centers for Disease Control who is tracking mass graves in Georgia. And Mitch Rafelson, a disgraced anthropologist who found a Neanderthal family frozen in the Alps with an infant that is not Neanderthal.
The politics are the horror. Quarantine, forced testing, a vaccine programme that cannot work, and eventually the question of what a government does about pregnancies it has classified as a disease.
Kaye and Mitch's relationship carries the last third, because she becomes pregnant with one of the new children and the two of them have to decide whether to hide, which converts a scientific argument into a domestic one.
Around five hundred pages, dense with real molecular biology, slower than a thriller, and heavy with committee meetings and press conferences.
Best for readers who want hard biological science fiction built on the actual literature, and an epidemic novel in which the disease is not trying to kill anybody and the danger comes from the response.
Historical Context & Significance
Darwin's Radio won the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Endeavour Award, and was a finalist for the Hugo and the Campbell.
The science is closer to real than it sounds. Roughly eight percent of the human genome consists of endogenous retroviruses, sequences left behind by ancient infections, and several are known to be active, including one essential to the formation of the placenta. Greg Bear built the novel on that literature and on the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution, in which long stasis is broken by rapid change.
Bear wrote hard science fiction at a consistently high level for four decades, won five Nebulas and two Hugos, and helped found the San Diego Comic Con as a teenager. He published a sequel, Darwin's Children, in 2003, and died in 2022.