2010-02 DARWINIA Read up to end of Book 1 + Interlude

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

Topic for discussion of the prologue, book 1 and the Interlude (so up to Book 2 basically).

I finished reading book 1 and the interlude last night. I was pretty sleepy when I stopped reading, and when I woke up this morning, I thought I might have dreamed the interlude. My goodness, talk about taking a left turn out of nowhere...

[Mawgojzeta]

Yes. That shocked me. What a twist!

[Peregrine]

Europe with all nostalgic connection removed, even the accuracy of the geography - that's a concept that had never occurred to me, nor have I ever come across it before. Even in stories set in prehistory, the reader knows that we're building towards now, the familiar (if only by armchair travelling). But Europe, ancestral land for many, me included, a Europe unfamiliar, strange in geology and biology, and with snakes and insects - the insects themselves creep me out, not even any reassuring mammalian presence. And according to the chronology of the book so far, I would not have been born, as my paternal grandfather would have disappeared at ten years old. Creepy thoughts.

[Ron]

I thought that Wilson left the geography largely the same, although one of the expedition's aims was to confirm that--but it has been quite a while since I read the book. Peregrine, if the idea of a world without Europe interests you, you might try Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" in which the premise is that the Black Death of the fourteenth century destroyed, not fifty percent, but ninety-five percent or more of the population of Europe. Robinson follows the development of this alternate world right into the equivalent of this century. Not so much a swashbuckler, more a thought experiment; a very different treatment of the idea.

[Peregrine]

Ron wrote: "I thought that Wilson left the geography largely the same, although one of the expedition's aims was to confirm that--but it has been quite a while since I read the book. Peregrine, if the idea of..."

Mostly the same, yes, but the path of the Rhine, for example, is noted as being different enough to give rise to theories as to why that might be. Thanks, Ron, for the book reference. I like SF thought experiments.