The novel “Darwin’s Children” by Greg Bear was published for the first time in 2003. It’s the sequel to “Darwin’s Radio“.
Mitch Rafelson and his wife Kaye Lang live underground with their daughter Stella Nova to prevent her from being interned in a special school opened fro the children born after the activation of a endovirus which led to an evolutionary leap. Very few cases of diseases transmitted from the children to the common homo sapiens caused a psychosis, skillfully exploited by many governments to establish a police state.
In the USA, democracy no longer exists and Washington is a land of tough power struggles also affected by occasional terrorist attacks. With a forceful action, it’s decided to capture Stella Nova and frame Mitch to put him in jail. Kaye can only resume her biological research to show that the new children are the future of humanity hoping that she could one day reunite with her husband and daughter.
“Darwin’s Children” picks up the story started in “Darwin’s Radio” a few years later. In many ways, the structure is the same as the first novel, which focuses mainly on Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson with the addition of their daughter Stella Nova. Greg Bear further expands the topic of biological networks, giving continuity to the story from a scientific point of view. For these reasons, you have better read the first novel first in order to fully understand the development of the characters in a story that has been going on for many years and contains a lot of scientific information.
Greg Bear focuses on what happens in the USA a few years after the birth of the new children. Things are getting worse and worse in a country where the majority of the population agrees to be substantially deprived of their freedom in exchange for an alleged protection from the potential dangers of infection caused by those children.
In fact, there are very few cases of people who contracted the virus from the children but they’re enough to create paranoia and fear, fed by those who want to exploit the situation to strengthen their power. The situation shows parallels with the real USA post-September 11 and arrives to a potential future in which the American democracy doesn’t really exist anymore.
The humanity shown in “Darwin’s Children” is often cowardly, unable to accept the new children so much as to accept a police state in order to keep them segregated. Faced with such a situation, the minority who’d like the children to be accepted is powerless.
Greg Bear puts together a story in which the scientific component is crucial with political and social elements. Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are further developed, in this case especially in their family dimension, along with their daughter Stella Nova. In this second novel, there are many other characters but the three protagonists are definitely the best developed ones.
These characters live many dramatic moments that lead them to have emotions even extreme. Stella Nova’s story allows Greg Bear to see the new children’s point of view, especially when they reach adolescence, to better understand the characteristics of this new human species. This is in my opinion the best part of the novel.
The main problem of “Darwin’s Children” in my opinion is that Greg Bear tries to expand too much the biological networks theme. In “Darwin’s Radio” the scientific speculation was complex but ended up focusing on the biological mechanisms connected to evolution. Instead, in the second novel the author not only expands this theme but also includes a different type of biological network in subplots that sometimes seem to go nowhere.
I think that especially Kaye Lang’s personal story ends up becoming a burden rather than an enrichment for the novel. Her experience of a different kind of biological network becomes almost mystical even though she’s a scientist so she tries to analyze it in a rational manner. Unfortunately, in a long novel that due to its characteristics tends to have a slow pace, this part seemed to me really not very useful.
For these reasons, “Darwin’s Children” is a quite controversial novel and it doesn’t help that its tones are mostly dark. In my opinion, its merits outweigh its flaws so it’s till overall a good novel even if not among the best by Greg Bear. If you liked “Darwin’s Radio” I think it’s worth reading this sequel as well.
