Roundworld
is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having
created it in the first place, the wizards of Unseen University
feel vaguely responsible for its safety. They know the creatures
who lived there escaped the impending Big Freeze by inventing
the space elevator - they even intervened to rid the planet
of a plague of elves, who attempted to divert humanity onto
a different time track. But now it's all gone wrong...
In
Darwin's Watch Victorian England has stagnated and
the pace of progress would embarrass a limping snail. Unless
something drastic is done, there won't be time for anyone
to invent spaceflight and the human race will be turned into
ice-pops.
Why,
though, did history come adrift? Was it Sir Arthur Nightingale's
dismal book about natural selection? Or was it the devastating
response by an obscure country vicar called Charles Darwin,
whose best-selling Theology of Species made it impossible
to refute the divine design of living creatures? Either way,
it's no easy task to change history, as the wizards discover
to their cost. Can the God of Evolution come to humanity's
aid and ensure Darwin writes a very different book? And who
stopped him writing it in the first place?
Yes,
the follow up to The
Globe
is just as wild and wacky as we've come to expect from this
series. From time-travel to philosophical dilemmas, quantum
physics to the 'cause and effect' effect, Terry Pratchett,
Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen turn the latest scientific research
into an easy-to-understand journey through the development
of the planet Earth and the human race.
This
book tracks the history of geology and DNA, explaining the
concepts of black holes and infinity and refuting some of
the top theories of current scientific thinking (from James
Barbour's timeless probability mist to the mathematical resolution
of Zeno's Arrow paradox via Hamiltonian mechanics).
And
that's one of the impressive things about this release - it
brings science down to a level (without been patronising)
that everyone can understand.
Another
fantastic addition to the Science of Discworld series.
Pete
Boomer
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