Darwin's Paradox

I met Nina briefly in Paris and we got her book, Darwin’s Paradox, into the hottest bookstore there: Shakespeare and Company. This bookstore, which offers shelves of books from a variety of genres and topics–and all in English–is situated in the Latin Quarter, which for centuries has been the centre of bohemian Parisian creativity and intelligentsia.

For over fifty years, the bookshop has housed numerous writers and hosted readings by published and unpublished authors. Run by Sylvia Whitman, daughter of the legendary George Whitman, the bookstore looks like something in a Harry Potter movie, with stacks upon stacks of all sorts of literature. Upon entering, you’ll find yourself in a place Henry Miller described as “A wonderland of books”.

Shakespeare and Company is open evey day from 10:00 to 23:00. If you’re touring Paris go check it out. The selection of English books is impeccable, with many by local writers.

If you’re a young traveling writer looking for a place to crash, Sylvia might put you up too!
While I was there, we briefly toured the city, including the impressive Tuillerie Gardens on the Right Bank.

Nina took me to her “outdoor” office, located in Place Saint-Michel on the Left Bank with a great view of Notre Dame Cathedral. I asked her how she liked Paris over a pastis (anise-based liqueur) and cafe creme.

“I love Paris,” she said. “I love everything about it, the food, the people, the architecture, the streets…The street performers who sing with feeling…the couples kissing on every street corner…that quiet reserve that just melts once they recognize that you are lost… their reverence for art and literature… Parisians know how to live. They have no problem waiting at length in line for fresh croissants at their favorite patisserie or will linger over lunch at a cafe to discuss the finer points of life over an espresso or cheese and wine. They are so civilized.”

I asked her how her research was going.

“I confess that I have done some of my best work here… that pastis can be very inspirational!” Nina confided to me with that typical impish smile of hers.

Brian Brown of Dragon Page recently reviewed Nina’s book, Darwin’s Paradox.  This is what he had to say:

The Gist: Julie Crane has a lot of skeletons in her closet. She had the unleashed the Darwin virus on the world, murdered a government official, and then ran away from all the chaos she had created.

That is what the history books say, but often history is changed, twisted and confused from what really happened.

Julie fled into the wilderness outside of the cities with her husband. Outside of the influence of everyone and everything Julie learned to live in this wilderness. She gives birth to her daughter Angel and looks forward to living a life with nature.

All of this is shattered when Julie discovers that she is being hunted again. She makes a journey back to the city, alone. Julie’s daughter convinces her father to go after Julie and they too make their way to the city.

Back in the city Julie is confronted with the political intrigue, societal differences, and the mass of humanity she left behind.

It’s up to Julie, her family and new friends to unravel what is true and what is false and set things right for the future

The Good: This is a book of heavy, heady concepts in this book, chaos theory, human neurophysiology, ecosystems and sustainability, viruses, AI’s and more. It really gives some oomph behind the story of Julie and the other characters.

The vision of the future is well done and I’m a sucker for near future stories that have all of the elements of political intrigue, cybernetics, rebels against the system, AI’s going wonky, and a glimpse at future life.

The Bad: The human story elements seemed a bit weaker than the world itself and the concepts of humans living in the future. It seemed that Julie was moving on a very linear path through the world and not really deviating. For me, some of the supporting characters seemed more interesting, like her daughter Angel or the quirky, sleazy ex-Mayor.

It’s a bit confusing at the start with the barrage of the background information you get at the beginning.

The Ugly: Nothing really ugly to report.

Nina Munteanu weaves a good story that has some large concepts peppered through it. The story does have warts but they are easy enough to gloss over and dig into the main story. There are some nice twists and turns and rabbit holes to follow the tale down. I hope that future books have more about the world, the citizens who inhabit it, and the politics of city states.

I easily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a nice mix of science fiction, political intrigue and some big scientific concepts. Go pick it up!

Nina recently made signing appearances at two Indigo bookstores on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia. She met many interesting people and signed lots of books.

“I really enjoy meeting my readers and having stimulating discussions with people on topics of evolution, chaos theory, endosymbiosis and the like,” said Munteanu in a recent interview in a downtown bistro over a glass of red wine. “I find the readers at Chapters to be generally very intelligent with a diversity of backgrounds and interests. It doesn’t matter whether they buy the book or not; they always have something interesting to say about these topics. For instance, I met Tove Peterson, a scientologist who writes poetry and belongs to the Northshore Writers Club. There’s Stephen who’s favorite author is Wilbur Smith. There’s Martin, a physicist who builds solar power projects; then there’s Joanna, a keen evolution student at Langara College; and Phil who went to Ryerson with Robert J. Sawyer. As Forrest Gump said, ‘you just never know what you’re gonna get’.”

Nina continues her local booktour with signings in March at the Langley Chapters (Langely Centre on March 9th), the Surrey Chapters (Strawberry Hill on March 15th), the Vancouver Chapters (Broadway & Granville on March 22nd), and the Burnaby Chapters (at Metrotown Centre on March 29th). She then takes her booktour abroad to Europe and finally ends in Eastern Canada (Ottawa) in April.

Does ‘Dark Matter’ to Philip Pullman?…Dark Matter… “Dust” … call it what you want… It makes up 90 percent of our universe, according to astronomers. This makes the kind of matter that you and I see rather exotic; while we must accept the existence of the most common element, dark matter, on … well … faith. You see (oh, another bad pun!), dark matter doesn’t emit or reflect light and doesn’t interact with what we think of as ordinary matter. Yet, this invisible particle is faithfully being credited with playing a crucial role in shaping the visible cosmos. Dark matter is some form of matter theorized to exist that cannot be observed by radio, infrared, optical, ultraviolet, x-ray or gamma-ray telescopes and is theorized to be MACHOS, WIMPS, or GAS (see this site for more info on this incredible particle).
Dark matter only reveals its presence by its gravitational effects, guiding the evolution of the early universe and still affecting the motion of galaxies, according to astrophysicists.

Discover Magazine (Jan, 2008 issue) reported that “scientists now believe that during the early universe, dark matter provided the gravitational scaffolding on which ordinary matter surrounding them should have clumped together into hundreds of small satellite galaxies, most of which should have survived today.” But the observed number of satellite galaxies is only a fraction of what the theory predicted. Astronomers call it the missing satellite problem.

So, what does author Philip Pullman have to do with dark matter and why should he care?…This is the Philip Pullman of the His Dark Materials trilogy with his first installment, The Golden Compass, now a deliciously controversial major motion picture (which I will be reviewing as soon as I see it–very soon)… Well…Consider the title of his series, His Dark Materials. While Pullman certainly borrows his title as well as his overarching theme from Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, Pullman’s title and his magical particle, Dust, also takes the concept of dark matter from real science. The mysterious material called “Dust”, which ‘speaks’ through Lyra’s aletheometer is also known as “dark matter” in an alternative ‘parallel universe’ of Pullman’s book.

I find it rather curious and ironic that The Golden Compass opened this past December (2007), so close to Christmas, a religious holiday when Christians all around the world are gearing up to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The irony lies in the fact that so many Christian weblogs have been vilifying Pullman as not only being an atheist (which is anyone’s prerogative, after all) but for promoting anti-God sentiments and atheism to children. However, despite the fact that Pullman adamantly opposes religious authoritarianism, his books uphold the important values of love and sacrifice. And faith (I’ll get back to that later). What I both enjoy and find compelling in a controversy (and Pullman’s particularly) is that at its core lies a challenge to ALL parties to re-evaluate their position amidst new information. A controversy is ultimately a learning experience for all involved. Controversies, like good art, invite the collision of diametric opposed ideas, and provide a nexus point for discussion, change, and—if all are respectful—eventual redemption and reconciliation.

According to Mike Todd of the Vancouver Sun (Dec. 8, 207) three major themes in Pullman’s books enmesh potential controversies surrounding science, art and religion. For instance, Pullman meant for the sinister organization known as the “Magisterium” to represent all ideology-driven theocracies or dictatorships, including secular ones. The concept in Pullman’s book of the “Authority”, who the two child protagonists help to defeat, led to accusations that Pullman advocates the “death of God”. I don’t think he meant this at all. Donna Freitas, a Catholic feminist professor at Boston University calls Pullman “a liberation theologian”, freeing Christians from the traditional church image of an all-powerful tyrant God who “rules from the clouds.” (Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, Dec. 8, 2007). Then there is “Dust”, elemental particles (resembling dark matter) that appear to contain a kind of conscious energy, experiments on which the church (in the book) prohibits. Pullman’s own ‘faith’ in these particles can be suggested in his admission to following “panexperientialism”, a philosophy that suggests that all living things, even molecules, have traces of consciousness (shades of Sheldrake’s ideas, autopoiesis and local fields). Another author who explores this concept is SF author, Greg Bear (see his Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children).

Donna Freitas, in Killing the Imposter God, suggested that Dust acted in Pullman’s trilogy as the “divine fabric of the universe.” Could Dark Matter do the same?… Aren’t we all creatures of light…and dark, after all?…

Posted under Nina Reviews. Tags: Golden Compass, Philip Pullman, books, movies, fantasy, science fiction, dark matter

I just wanted to share with you a most wonderful book review from Tricia Ares at Modern Matriarch…

Book Review: Darwin’s Paradox
November 19, 2007 — Tricia Ares
Munteanu, Nina. Darwin’s Paradox. Dragon Moon Press. 320 p. ISBN-10 189694468X (ISBN-13 9781896944685) $19.95

If you read the acknowledgements at the front of Nina Munteanu’s latest book, you’ll realize Darwin’s Pradox is more than just a fast paced eco-thriller. Among others she thanks her high school English teacher, A.E. Whittal, for teaching her “the importance of metaphoric writing.”

The Victor Frankl quote at the front of the book, “What is to give light must endure burning,” is the first indication of the numerous paradoxical references you’ll find throughout the book, as Munteanu sets the stage for a story on the verge of transcending its genre.

In Darwin’s Paradox, Julie Crane is civilization’s darkest pariah and only hope. The alpha patient who carries a highly evolved virus, she is blamed with the death of thousands and the murder of law enforcement officials who tried to detain her.

We first meet Crane in the wilderness where she ekes out an existence with her husband and daughter. However, her reoccurring nightmares and the desire to protect her family agitate her growing sense of restlessness. When her highly evolved senses warn her that they are being followed, watched, perhaps even hunted, Crane decides she has no choice but to face the past.

Returning to a populous devastated by the virus that still resides deep within her, Crane finds a civilization struggling in the grip of a new uprising. Proteus is not a passive virus but an intelligent one, and it has joined forces with the ‘artificial’ intelligence that keeps the city running. In order to save her family, Crane must join forces with the manipulative individuals who ruined her life.

Like any ambitious eco-thriller, there is a lot of science underscoring the plot, but Munteanu does a great job of breaking it down into bite size portions that even the uninitiated can swallow.

The page turning pace subtly weaves expositional elements through a storyline propelled by action and mystery. Blurring the line between good and evil, Munteanu creates characters as paradoxical as the storyline itself.

Darwin’s Paradox also boasts a cast of exceptionally strong and complex women whose relationships intertwine and evolve like the deadly virus that binds them together. From the chair of the governing body, to Julie’s daughter, each of these characters serve pivotal roles throughout the book.

To give it depth, Munteanu has built her eco-thriller on a solid foundation of natural philosophy and symbolic allusions that meld pulp fiction with literary sensibilities. In doing so, Darwin’s Paradox delivers a story that is both entertaining and metaphoric, creating a layered effect that will engage even finicky readers.

Allusions to the French utopian movement founded by Etienne Cabet and the 19th century anti-industrial movement in Great Britian, underscore the conflict between nature and technology, while references to cooperative rather than competitive evolution hints at possible resolution.

Munteanu’s vision of the future is both frightening and inspiring, embracing the dark/light dichotomy dominating Darwin’s Paradox. Icaria’s vee-set wearing society, with their mechanical movements and vacant stares, resembles the disconnected iPod population of today. The contrast between the sterile environments of glass towers and the rubble of the inner city mirrors our own growing economic tensions. But just as Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortal man, Julia Crane carries the key that can transform civilization as we know it.

Darwin’s Paradox is a fascinating look into the future where man ceases his attempt to subjugate nature, while embracing its ability to adapt.

Darwin’s Paradox is on sale now at leading bookstores and at amazon.com. Visit us tomorrow for a one on one interview with the author, Nina Munteanu.

Posted in Book Reviews. Tags: Book Reviews, Darwin, Darwin’s Paradox, Evolution, Nina Munteanu, Science Fiction, SF, speculative fiction.

You can visit her inspiring blog here:

http://modernmatriarch.wordpress.com