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In novel form, Baxter presents here what everyone should understand, our origins, wrote in an interesting and entertaining way, in contrast to textbooks that are often wrote in a dry, academic style. Beautifully written, Baxter traces our mammalian past, beginning with a small primate Baxter named Purga, living in the time of the dinosaurs, and then on up to the present time and into the future as well.
Each chapter is a story about an animal(s), and how it has evolved and interacts with others and it's environment. These stories are fascinating indeed, little glimpses into our primate past, and how evolution has shaped us into what we are now through the relentless selection process. As millions of years pass after the great extinction event caused about 65 million years ago by a great comet (most likely), each story is about an animal or groups of animals as they become more and more human.
About Author
Stephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is coauthor (with Sir Arthur C. Clarke) of Time’s Eye the first of two SF novels linked to Clarke’s bestselling Space Odyssey series.