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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 - 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 bestselling 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?… (more)
User reviews
At the heart of the book is Charles Darwin and in revolution in thinking that he sparked. The book ends with an examination of Victorian society and concludes that Darwin's great insight was an almost inevitable part of an ongoing process.
The alternating chapters written by Pratchett and Stewart and Cohen are equally wonderful. The humour is funny and the science engaging.
What I did not like was the chapter about how great Victorian England was. I do not doubt, that what the authors explain there is right, it is just boring to read about three pages worth of
I like the "intelligent design" bashing, though. :-)
A brilliant read that needs reading twice to take in some of the science.