Book description
Roundworld is in trouble again, and this time it looks fatal. Having
created it in the first place, the wizards of Unseen Univeristy feel
vaguely responsible for its safety. They know the creatures who 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 spaceflight 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? Either
way, it's no easy task to change history, as the wizards discover to
their cost. 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, author of the
Discworld
series, is one of the most successful authors in Britain today. Ian
Stewart is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and won
the Royal Society's 1995 Michael Faraday Medal for outstanding
contributions to the public understanding of science. Jack Cohen is a
biologist and science writer and long-time collaborator of Ian
Stewart's.
