clew's reviews: a book log

Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson

I might say that Wilson starts with an Arthur Conan Doyle plot, connects it to Edgar Rice Burroughs, notices that neither makes sense in light of current science, distracts us with a classic gaslight-era Destruction of London, explains the destruction with science-fiction reminiscent of Greg Egan's Permutation City, explains that with an enormous nod to Cordwainer Smith, makes the whole feel like the snakes-and-spiders Change War of Fritz Leiber; and haunts all of it with a World War I that never happened, so the Wilfrid Owen horror is phrased in Civil War melancholy. And I'd enjoy saying it. I enjoyed the novel, too.

ISBN: 0-812-56662-9