Darwin's Watch: The Science of Discworld III
Written by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
Narrated by Michael Fenton Stevens and Stephen Briggs
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The wizards discover to their cost that it's no easy task to change history.
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 that 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 space flight, 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?
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?
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.
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Reviews for Darwin's Watch
222 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent story, and it pulled no punches when discussing real world advanced science and mathematics. Very enjoyable!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I finished rereading this yesterday. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as the first Science of Discworld book, but the overview of evolution and tidbits about Darwin are good, and the story of how the wizards of Unseen University intervene in the affairs of their little Round World project is entertaining.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bugrit..!.....I came to write my review and find that austcrimefiction (below) has written exactly what I wanted to say about the book already (except for her last para' , of course).A brilliant read that needs reading twice to take in some of the science.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Subtle humour, some interesting insights into evolution, cosmology, science in general, even timetravel.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 information on over ten, especially, if the information is not really relevant.I like the "intelligent design" bashing, though. :-)
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Despite the title the science covered here ranges far beyond evolution. Much space is given over to discussions of time travel, parallel universes and cosmology, including one of the best summaries for the layman of string theory - not just what it is, but why it seems to work better than other theories.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.