- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Orb Books; First Edition edition (Sep 4 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0765319055
- ISBN-13: 978-0765319050
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14.1 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#148,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #85 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Alternate History
- See Complete Table of Contents
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In 1912, the entire European continent and all of the United Kingdom mysteriously vanished during the Miracle, replaced by an alien landscape known as Darwinia. Darwinia seems to be a slice of another Earth, one that diverged from our own millions of years ago and took a separate evolutionary path. As a 14-year-old boy, Guilford Law witnessed the Miracle as shimmering lights playing across the ocean sky. Now as a grown man, he is determined to travel to Darwinia and explore its mysteries. To that end he enlists as a photographer in the Finch expedition, which plans to steam up the Rhine (or what was once the Rhine) and penetrate the continent's hidden depths as far as possible. But Law has brought an unwanted companion with him, a mysterious twin who seems to have lived--and died--on an Earth unchanged by the Miracle. The twin first appears to Guilford in dreams, and he brings a message that Darwinia is not what it seems to be--and Guilford is not who he seems to be. --Craig Engler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
The heroes and villains of this surpassingly strange novel are not who they think they are. Though the style is rich, lucid and literate, the point is dizzyingly abstract. Wilson, whose last novel, Mysterium (1994), won the Philip K. Dick Award, uses cosmological physics to envision an intergalactic sentience, millennia old, that fights insect-like "psions," machine intelligences, for the survival of consciousness itself. We glimpse this struggle directly only in occasional brief "Interludes" until well toward the end of the book. Before that, it is the story of Darwinia, a primeval landscape that in 1912 appears on Earth in place of most of Europe, transforming world history. When photographer Guilford Law joins an exploratory expedition, he lands in the middle of nationalistic skirmishes that wipe out most of his party in the bizarre forests of Darwinia, teeming with beasts from alien lines of descent. His personal life, notably his difficult relationship with his young wife, is intimately related, but he eventually learns that he and everything and everyone on Earth are instruments of the cosmic struggle of which Darwinia and the murderous skirmishes are mundane correlatives. Earth is an archive of consciousness that he must help protect. Hideous creatures mass and threaten in an ending reminiscent of Stephen King. Wilson's two-tiered story structure reminds one of Michael Moorcock's work, but it is much more coherent and accessible. In the blurring of character identities, he is comparable to Philip K. Dick or to A.E. Van Vogt. He owes something to Colin Wilson and Lovecraft as well, in the discovery through dreams and archeological wonders of a hidden reality. That he is able to weld the two realities so fluently is remarkable indeed.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
The men who crewed the surviving steamships had invented their own legends. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The men who crewed the surviving steamships had invented their own legends. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kind of slow, but very good.,
By
This review is from: Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century (Mass Market Paperback)
It seems like there are more and more books where part of the Earth is mysteriously changed overnight. S.M. Sirling's Islands in the Sea of Time and Wilson's own Mysterium come to mind. In all of them that I have read, you simply accept this change as part of the setting of the story. Darwinia is different, in that the main character wants to find out why the change occured, and much of the story is dedicated to explaining that change, and this was why I liked this book better than I expected.The story was pretty slow at the beginning, and I almost gave up on the book. However, once Wilson started to explain how the change happened, it got much more interesting, if not much faster. I enjoyed the characters in the book, particularly Gulliford Law, who is curious about what happened to cause the change in the Earth, but once he finds out, wants nothing more to do with it. As I mentioned, the story is kind of slow, but I think it is worthwhile. I have read several books by Wilson, and they have never been quite what I was expecting going in, but I have enjoyed them all. I would recommend this book, and will look to read more of Wilson in the future.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enchanting Read,
By Sara Mangan (Plantation, FL, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century (Mass Market Paperback)
What seems, at first glance, like a simple adventure story in Robert Charles Wilson's "Darwinia" is actually anything but simple -- something you will learn as the book leads you deeper and deeper into a complex, rich, and hauntingly beautiful story. "Darwinia" takes place in a world left reeling after Europe was transformed over night into a foreign and unexplored wilderness. The story follows the journey of Guildord Law who explores this new world and learns about the land and so much more. The charecters in the book are vivid and you will come away feeling that you know each of them. It is science fiction at its best, full of surprises and powerfully written. One can't quite say enough about this book!
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weird and interesting,
By
This review is from: Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century (Mass Market Paperback)
Europe gets wiped out by a mysterious replacement continent called Darwinia (to mock people who trust science over miracles) in the 1890s. Most interesting part is how Wilson manages to explain his odd beginning (which I won't give away for those who haven't read it). Superb as that part is, Wilson confronts a problem that he really doesn't do a good job of resolving. Having created an excellent, even credible (within the explanation of the story) universe, he doesn't show the same creativity in working a plot in that universe. Instead it's a not too interesting good vs evil battle as the climax.The mystery was excellent. The rest needed help
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
