Metamorphosis – Frank Ryan ****

Every now and then a theory comes along that challenges mainstream thinking in a scientific field and all too often the established scientists are not great at taking on board the new mode of thinking. Of course the theory could be incorrect – but often the scientific establishment don’t even take the trouble to really think about the idea, or dismiss the theory out of hand because it breaks with orthodoxy.

This has always happened. Newton’s first submission to the Royal Society on light and colour was pushed aside by Robert Hooke, who later admitted that he didn’t really bother to read it properly. I’m not saying that the biological establishment haven’t bothered to read the theory that is a major part of Frank Ryan’s book, but they certainly have shown signs of sticking with the standard approach without really thinking about the alternatives, as if Darwin’s support for an idea makes it inevitably right. Come on guys, even Einstein got it wrong occasionally.

The theory in question is that of British biologist Donald Williamson. Williamson has suggested that some (perhaps all) organisms where the animal goes through a metamorphosis from a very different larval stage (think caterpillars and butterflies) is the result of hybridization between different species, where an animal that initially had a straightforward lifecycle had blended in the early forms of another animal.

Because this runs counter to basic Darwinian theory (without in any sense countering the basics of evolution or its mechanisms) the idea’s supporters have really had to fight for it to get it noticed – and yet the more you think about it, the better the idea is.

Williamson’s isn’t the only story that Frank Ryan covers in this wide-ranging book about metamorphosis (he even identifies puberty as a sort of partial metamorphosis in humans), but it is the central thread. In terms of the story, the characters, the theory – this is a brilliant book. But it has a couple of flaws. One is the lack of illustrations. Each chapter has a picture as a heading, but that’s it. There are many points in the book that really cry out for illustrations to make it clearer what is being described.

The second problem is that Ryan isn’t a great writer. His style is approachable but he can be long-winded. For example he takes 3 pages to tell us that insects have to moult because their rigid exoskeleton doesn’t grow. And some of the detail he gives can be a little mind-numbing. But it is perfectly possible to see past any style issues to discover a superb story, some excellent scientific insights and a fascinating theory. Recommended.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...

Search This Blog