Frank Schätzing's "The Swarm"

EntwickelnCollin · Newbie Alert Joined: 27 Jun 2006 Posts: 4

I spent the last three weeks in Germany with a host family in Frankfurt, and I saw the father reading "Der Schwarm," by Frank Schätzing. I went to a bookstore in Frankfurt awhile later and found the book printed in English. Having finished it, I'd say it's one of the all time best science fiction books. It's a lot like a modern day version of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," only this time, it pits Earth against... Earth.

The Swarm, at Amazon.com

I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but I almost have to in order to discuss this book's relation to DarwinTalk. Essentially, Schätzing explores a possibility few have before: there is other intelligent life on Earth already, but it isn't alien. If you have already been convinced to read the book, ignore the section in-between the three stripes until you've read the novel cover to cover.

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The badguys of the book are in fact amoebas which group together and form a collective intelligence. They're so numerous that they compose giant cities of jelly at the bottom of the ocean, but they're also smart enough to stay out of humanity's spyglasses until the the time is nigh. Convinced that human beings are destroying their ecosystem, the "Yrr," as they're called, launch unprecendented attacks against their land-based rivals via ingenius methods that include: collapsing the Norwegian shelf and causing massive, unheard of tsunamis; flooding Australia and South American coasts with billions of genetically-engineered jellyfish; marching countless armies of plague-inducing crabs on America's East Coast; and even controlling whales to sink ships.

The intelligence of the amoebas is raw and fiercely logical. Even when the human beings manage to communicate with them, they do not cease to try to destroy them. Mercy and emotion is not known nor useful to the Yrr.
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Schätzing goes through more painstaking scientific research than any other author I've ever read. The list of scientists who helped him on a personal level with the book is three pages long. Some of the stuff he talks about is mind-boggingly difficult to grasp, and probably where the fiction really plays a roll in this science fiction book, but I'd like to see if anyone knows something in particular:

Genetic memory. I was beginning to skim the section on it, because it just didn't even seem within the realm of possibility, but to my understanding, it's where cells actually develop a blocker that stops DNA enzymes from fixing certain mutations. It basically allows a collective of cells to consciously evolve.

Arthwollipot · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject:

Dawkins goes on quite a lot about how the genes retain information about the environment in The Blind Watchmaker. Or is it Climbing Mount Improbable? I can't remember. He devoted a whole chapter to it.

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

politas · Tadpole Joined: 13 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

EntwickelnCollin · Newbie Alert Joined: 27 Jun 2006 Posts: 4

While reading the book, I got the feeling there wasn't any room to walk anywhere on any stretch of Australian coast without stepping on at least ten of the buggers.

Arthwollipot · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 2:41 pm Post subject:

That's pretty close. My family regularly used to spend Christmas at a place called Werri Beach, near Kiama on the south coast. I eventually stopped swimming in the sea because we never seemed to go there when there were no bluebottles.

Of course, not all jellyfish are the same. The Irukandji will kill you in seconds, while the bluebottle just leaves a nasty welt.