Book 1

Darwin's Radio

by Greg Bear

Published 4 May 1999
The human race is about to give birth to a new species ...World War III will be the war against our extinction. Christopher Dicken, 'virus hunter' of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, joins an emergency Taskforce on the order of the President. Around the world, what were thought to be ancient junk genes in human DNA have been stimulated to assemble encoded proteins and RNA into an infectious virus which attacks only women -- and it kills unborn children. It's called SHEVA, an apt name for a killer. Dicken needs Kaye Lang on his team. She's the scientist who predicted the emergence of SHEVA. She knows more about SHEVA than anyone...Except for one other scientist, a paleontologist, who has intuited even more. But, Mitch Rafelson has no credibility whatsoever. The sin of overwhelming curiosity has left him an unemployed outcast -- and revealed to him something nobody else knows, not even Kaye Lang. Our place on the ladder of evolution is not where we thought. All other wars in history have been in some way between the forces of good and evil. Not this war. Like a signal on Darwin's radio SHEVA is broadcasting an extraordinary truth about the origin of species.
SHEVA confirms Darwin's view of 'blundering, low and horribly cruel works of nature'. There are those who will want to control human destiny, and others who will fight them. The Descent of Man is at hand. At once a gripping thriller on the grandest scale and a tender love story, this is a uniquely controversial and thought-provoking page-turner.

Book 2

Darwin's Children

by Greg Bear

Published 1 January 2003
In Greg Bear's stunning new thriller, nature is more of a bitch goddess than a kindly mother, and evolution is no longer just a theory -- it's an urgent and dangerous fact. In DARWIN'S CHILDREN, human society is about to get a complete makeover. A new kind of humanity is growing up. Some call them the Virus Children. They are special children, equipped with significant natural upgrades that allow them to communicate and socialize in ways we can hardly imagine, or resist. Charming, gentle, persuasive, beautiful...in them can be seen a future that may make all of human history until now seem clumsy and brutal. As products of an extraordinary evolutionary event called SHEVA that swept through the population like a contagious disease over a decade ago, they carry ancient viruses that could cause our extinction, viruses that may be triggered at any moment by stress, anger...or puberty. The new children are being methodically rounded up and sequestered in special schools where they are studied, measured and biopsied. Stella Nova, the daughter of Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson, is one of them.
She is driven by instinct to be with her own kind, to establish a new kind of social order and discover her potential. Kaye and Mitch wish to protect her, but to do so, they must keep her isolated, stifled in a blanket of security that they all know must eventually be lifted. Despite their best efforts, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella are tracked by security forces that could break them apart as a family. The new children must be controlled, these forces believe; and the time may come when both species must either separate, or engage in outright war. In DARWIN'S CHILDREN, human society is about to get a complete makeover, and who will win is anyone's guess. For, as Kaye Lang discovers, silence is also a signal...