Henry Gee

In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.

4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe. Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.

Misunderstandings of Human Evolution

The Accidental Species

AShort History of Life on Earth

Eine (sehr) kurze Geschichte des Lebens

(Very) Short History of Life on Earth

"The Universe is dying from within. No one knows how to save it, so the Elders give a young Drover a last ditch chance to stop the rot. If only she knew where to begin. Unaware of the threat to the universe, Ruxhana Fengen Kraa, Admiral of the 17th Rigel Fleet, is about to be cashiered for a stupendous tactical error. But Special Ops has an important and most bizarre job for him. Eons away in time, Jack Corstophine is an archaeologist on Earth with an intuition about the land that he can't put into words--until the beautiful and brilliant Jadis Markham comes into his life. Together, they discover that the landscape of Europe is far from natural. The Earth bears the scars of an ancient civilization that goes back millions of years--and has terrible implications for the future of mankind."--Cover, p.4.

Siege of Stars: Book One of the Sigil Trilogy

A collection of one hundred short stories--each about eight-hundred words long and originally published between 1999 and 2006 in Nature--by notable scientists, journalists, and science fiction authors offers speculation about the world of the future, in works by Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl, Stephen Baxter, Nancy Kress, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others. 30,000 first printing.

Futures from Nature

100 de povestiri scurte despre viitor si cum va fi el. Autorii sunt oameni de stiinta jurnalisti si scriitori SF celebri: Arthur C. Clarke Bruce Sterling Cory Doctorow Greg Bear Gregory Benford Rudy Rucker Greg Egan Stephan Baxter Frederik Pohl Vernor Vinge Michael Moorcock Kim Stanley Robinson s.a. Povestirile acopera o gama larga de subiecte legate de viitor adoptand forme dintre cele mai diferite de la satire scheciuri pana la recenzii despre carti fictive sau articole de stiinta. Antologia cuprinde povestiri publicate initial in prestigioasa revista Nature intre anii 1999 si 2006. Este o carte unica conceputa deopotriva de scriitori si oameni de stiinta care se adreseaza oricarui cititor interesat de speculatiile despre viitor. "

Antologia viitorului   - Editura Nemira

"[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson, The Washington Post In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.

In this exciting work on the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, Henry Gee, Chief Science Writer at Nature, tells the story of a recent revolution in palaeontology. For the first time, all of us can share in the wonder of a deceptively simple idea known as cladistics, the science of comparison. The cladistics revolution is transforming almost everything we know about the science of life in Deep Time -- the billions of years in which life has evolved on this planet. It provides insights and solutions to questions about ourselves ordinarily considered beyond the realm of science. What can we truly know of the awesome dark chasm of Deep Time that separates us from the beginning of life on earth? In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a bizarre world that is truer to the facts -- and far stranger -- than many Darwinians and certainly any Creationists ever imagined. Scientists used to categorize life forms according to how similar they looked. If an animal had a wing, it was a bird; if it had a fin, it was a fish. But then, is a penguin a bird? Is a whale a mammal? While the answer to these questions is yes, it doesn't mean much scientifically. The real answers to how life evolved and how life forms are related come from cladistic analysis, from measuring the tremendous variety of genetic and anatomic variations between species and juggling them with computer technology. Because of cladistics, scientists have come to believe that hippos are more closely related to whales than pigs. We have learned that the old way of understanding nature, in which we squashed the teeming variety of life on earth into our own haphazard andarbitrary categories, must be replaced by understanding precisely how similar, and how different, each species measurably is. Rather than a hierarchical tree of life with ourselves at the apex, we now see a bush with evolutionary branches intertwining in strange and surprising ways -- mushrooms really are closer cousins to us than plants are. Gee journeys among the scientists who are making the breakthrough discoveries about the evolution of life. He travels to a fossil dig in Kenya with Meave Leakey of the pioneering palaeoanthropology family that made the Rift Valley in East Africa famous as the origin of modern humans. There he finds a small fossilized skull, and considers whether anyone could ever know if that fossil was the remains of Gee's great-great-great-great-great, etc., grandfather. The answer is clearly no. There are no knowable ancestors in Deep Time. Beyond the last few dozen generations, all individuals in the entire animal kingdom, indeed all individuals throughout the epochs of Deep Time in all the kingdoms of life on earth, are cousins. Whether in Eastern Africa or in his native London with palaeontology's "Gang of Four", Gee offers lively explorations of the idea that there is no knowable descent of man. Throughout, he displays the crackling wit and exceptional command of his field that readers of his articles in Nature have admired for years. He takes you to the places where science is happening and becomes the perfect guide to a scientific adventure of the mind. In Search of Deep Time shines a light on age-old controversies about fish with fingers and dinosaurs with wings, but also reveals the scientific facts of problems we have only begun thinking about. Forinstance, how will we recognize life inside a rock on another planet if we should ever find it? Cladistics ultimately leads Gee to a surprisingly profound question: What if there were another hominid species to compare ourselves with? Perhaps the science of comparison, cladistics, is the only way we will ever really come to terms with who we are, because real knowledge can only be based on comparison. Gee illuminates a shift in the history of science that is happening now and is changing our understanding of what scientific knowledge is. More deeply, it is changing our understanding of who we are.

Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life

In Search of Deep Time

In Deep Time, Henry Gee, assistant editor of Nature, shows us that everything we think we know about evolution is wrong. He also reveals the scientific proof of what came first - the chicken or the egg. It was the egg. For a long time, popular scientists have told us that by looking at a fossilized bone we could tell whether it belonged to our ancestors or not. This is not true.

Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution

Deep Time

Print edition of the concluding volume to Henry Gee's incredible Sigil Trilogy! The Universe is still dying from within and the young Drover tasked with stopping the rot is still racing against time. For fifty years, former textile merchant Mr Haraddzjin Khorare has been Chancellor of a Kingdom unequalled in brutality. And it's about to get a whole lot worse. Dogfinger is a boy orphaned when his village is razed by Stoners. One day, he knows, the time will come for revenge. Domingo-scientist, Priest and Pope-is watching, helpless, as the world circles to its doom. What we need, he thinks, is a miracle. Will his prayers be answered? The Plague has forced Jadis Markham and Jack Corstophine to give up their research in favour of survival. But there are always questions left to answer. Their son, Tom, now himself a noted anthropologist, has an encounter that will force him to confront his own nature-and the very nature of the universe, as the stars themselves begin going dark. Rage of Stars is the climactic third volume of The Sigil, Henry Gee's epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, religion and love. Praise for THE SIGIL TRILOGY: "Great stuff. Touches of Douglas Adams, Barrington Bayley, David Britton and Steve Ayelet only emphasise the splendid originality of this book. Henry Gee is thoughtful, funny, original. And pretty thoroughly mind-expanding in the tradition of Wells, David Lindsay, Stapledon and Clarke. In fact everything you yearn to find in a very good contemporary SF novel. Really enjoyed it!" -SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock "Coming to a science fiction novel by Henry Gee I was expecting a work knowledgeable about the world and all its ways, but who would have guessed it would also reveal Henry to be a visionary space voyager of the first order? The Sigil is in the grand tradition of Stapledonian space opera, and provides not only an explanation for why this universe is the way it is, but gives us the many vivid wild adventures on the part of some (very appealing) conscious characters acting to make it that way. Awesome stuff, and a true pleasure to read page by page." -Kim Stanley Robinson, award-winning author of Red Mars "Fast-moving, insanely inventive science fiction in the grand manner-seldom has the fate of the galaxy been handled on such a large scale. Gee draws on archeology, geology, physics, and biology to create a rich tapestry with surprises woven into every thread." -Nancy Kress "Siege is compelling, grandiose, and breathtaking in its spacetime and its characters are intriguing, personal, and complex....This book of Henry's is going to be high on the charts." -scienceblogs.com "Echoes of Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C. Clarke, with more interesting characters than either of them." -John Gribbin "Cosmically deep and sensually rich, here is a very warm, enthusiastic and human book about great issues of our own world and of the whole universe, beautifully written. What can I say but: Gee Whiz! (unless somebody already has...)" -Ian Watson "One of the very best books I've ever read." -Critique.org "Henry Gee serves up a tasty stew of sex, science and space opera. Or should that read romance, rationality and retro-SF? Either way, the book is great entertainment." -Vaughan Stanger "A great very-wide-screen story, with many interesting characters I cared about...the writing-and the palaeontology-are beautifully executed" -Jack Cohen, author of Wheelers and Heaven "wildly imaginative... personalities and relationships drive the story forward as much as its grandiose scale, making "Siege" difficult to put down." -Alex Shvartsman "Henry Gee's crackling prose and fast-paced storytelling pull the reader right in, but it's the vividness of his characters that creates such a sense of intimacy in this large-scale cosmic tale. It's an impressive fiction debut, a page-turner that delivers the goods!" -Mercurio D. Rivera, World Fantasy Award nominee

Rage of Stars: Book Three of the Sigil Trilogy

Cecilia Fitzsimons

S. McCormick

The Pocket Reference Guide to Fossils is an ideal compact identification guide to the plant and animal fossils which can be found in the countryside, quarries and along the coasts of Europe. It provides a fascinating insight into life on earth millions of years ago. From ammonites to trilobites, brachiopods to graptolites, an easy-to-follow system of colour-coded bands and symbols designating major zoological or botanical groups, leads rapidly and easily to the correct section of the book. Detailed full-colour illustrations and concise, informative text detailing characteristic features, geological age and principal locations, allow you to identify accurately the most common fossils found in Europe.

The Most Common Plant and Animal Fossils of Europe Described and Illustrated in Colour

Fossils

Print edition of Book Two of Henry Gee's incredible Sigil Trilogy! The Brethren of a remote and lonely monastery are preparing for the Apparition of the Goddess, a festival that happens once every 2,058,416 years. But will the Goddess arrive in time to save them from an apparition of an altogether more hostile kind? Mr Haraddzjin Khorare, Trader in Textiles from the Very Great and Ancient City of Axandragor, is on a routine business trip. But when his vessel is attacked by pirates, his adventure takes an altogether more astonishing turn. The discoveries of Jack Corstorphine and Jadis Markham have stunned the world. But more is to come, With their adopted son Tom, their student Shoshana Levinson, their colleague Avram Malkeinu, and their mentor, scientist-priest Domingo, they are about to witness at first hand the full horror of the War of the Last Days. Scourge of Stars is the second volume of The Sigil Trilogy, Henry Gee's epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, religion and love. Praise for THE SIGIL TRILOGY: "Great stuff. Touches of Douglas Adams, Barrington Bayley, David Britton and Steve Ayelet only emphasise the splendid originality of this book. Henry Gee is thoughtful, funny, original. And pretty thoroughly mind-expanding in the tradition of Wells, David Lindsay, Stapledon and Clarke. In fact everything you yearn to find in a very good contemporary SF novel. Really enjoyed it!" -SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock "Siege is compelling, grandiose, and breathtaking in its spacetime and its characters are intriguing, personal, and complex....This book of Henry's is going to be high on the charts." -Greg Laden, scienceblogs.com "Echoes of Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C. Clarke, with more interesting characters than either of them." - John Gribbin Cosmically deep and sensually rich, here is a very warm, enthusiastic and human book about great issues of our own world and of the whole universe, beautifully written. What can I say but: Gee Whiz! (unless somebody already has...) - Ian Watson "One of the very best books I've ever read." -Critique.org "Henry Gee serves up a tasty stew of sex, science and space opera. Or should that read romance, rationality and retro-SF? Either way, the book is great entertainment." -Vaughan Stanger, author of Alternate Apollos "A great very-wide-screen story, with many interesting characters I cared about...the writing-and the palaeontology-are beautifully executed" -Jack Cohen, author of Wheelers and Heaven Reminiscent of Peter F. Hamilton's SF epics in its scope and ambition, "The Siege of Stars" is a wildly imaginative book set against the vivid locales scattered throughout time and space. Gee masterfully paints his protagonists in engaging, realistic and very human light. Their personalities and relationships drive the story forward as much as its grandiose scale, making "Siege" difficult to put down. - Alex Shvartsman "Henry Gee's crackling prose and fast-paced storytelling pull the reader right in, but it's the vividness of his characters that creates such a sense of intimacy in this large-scale cosmic tale. It's an impressive fiction debut, a page-turner that delivers the goods!" -Mercurio D. Rivera "Henry Gee paints a stunning, thriving universe in which readers will delight." -Shelly Li "Siege of Stars is terrific - a highly original mash-up of wild archaeology and advanced aliens, with sympathetic characters, comedy and tragedy. Scientists (and Nature editors) can write science fiction." - Ian Stewart "The Sigil Trilogy is magnificently panoramic in breadth - a quirky, erudite and often hilarious tale of adventure mingling epic science fiction, archaeology, palaeontology and romance. Vividly entertaining!" -Cecilia Dart-Thornton, bestselling author of the Bitterbynde series "SIEGE OF STARS is a fascinating story from start to finish, with great ideas, neat set pieces, and interesting characters. Gee knows his stuff." - Eric Brown, author of Engineman

Scourge of Stars: Book Two of the Sigil Trilogy

Book Two of Henry Gee's incredible Sigil Trilogy!The Brethren of a remote and lonely monastery are preparing for the Apparition of the Goddess, a festival that happens once every 2,058,416 years. But will the Goddess arrive in time to save them from an apparition of an altogether more hostile kind?Mr Haraddzjin Khorare, Trader in Textiles from the Very Great and Ancient City of Axandragór, is on a routine business trip. But when his vessel is attacked by pirates, his adventure takes an altogether more astonishing turn.The discoveries of Jack Corstorphine and Jadis Markham have stunned the world. But more is to come, With their adopted son Tom, their student Shoshana Levinson, their colleague Avram Malkeinu, and their mentor, scientist-priest Domingo, they are about to witness at first hand the full horror of the War of the Last Days.Scourge of Stars is the second volume of The Sigil Trilogy, Henry Gee's epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, religion and love.

Book Two of The Sigil Trilogy

Scourge of Stars

Over the past decade, fossil finds from China have stunned the world, grabbing headlines and changing perceptions with a wealth of new discoveries. Many of these finds were first announced to English speakers in the journal Nature.Rise of the Dragon gathers together sixteen of these original reports, some augmented with commentaries originally published in Nature's "News and Views" section. Perhaps the best known of these new Chinese fossils are the famous feathered dinosaurs from Liaoning Province, which may help end one of the most intense debates in paleontology—whether birds evolved from dinosaurs. But other finds have been just as spectacular, such as the minutely preserved (to the cellular level) animal embryos of the 670 million-year-old Duoshantuo phosphorites, or the world's oldest known fish, from the Chengjiang formation in southwestern Yunnan Province. Rise of the Dragon makes descriptions and detailed discussions of these important finds available in one convenient volume for paleontologists and serious fossil fans.

Readings from Nature on the Chinese Fossil Record

Rise of the Dragon

All three volumes of The Sigil Trilogy in one print book: Siege of Stars, Scourge of Stars, and Rage of Stars. From Nature Editor Henry Gee comes a story of breathtaking scopeand beloved characters.Spanning millions of years and the breadth of the universe,The Sigil Trilogy is an epictale that explores the nature of humanity, belief, and love. The Universe is dying from within. No one knows how to save it, so the Elders give a young Drover a last ditch chance to stop the rot. If only she knew where to begin. Unaware of the threat to the universe, Ruxhana Fengen Kraa, Admiral of the 17th Rigel Fleet, is about to be cashiered for a stupendous tactical error. But Special Ops hasan important and most bizarre job for him. Eons away in time, Jack Corstophine is an archaeologist on Earth with an intuition about the land that he can't put into words--until the beautiful and brilliant Jadis Markham comes into his life. Together, they discover that the landscape of Europe is far from natural. The Earth bears the scars of an ancient civilization that goes back millions of years--and has terrible implications for the future of mankind. The Sigil Trilogy traces the lives of compelling characters--people... entities... and... species...--through time and space. It's magnificent in background, beautifully written, and with the most memorable characters. The Sigil Trilogy is spellbinding, funny, thoughtful, and touching all at the same time. Complete with complex mysteries, massive battles, romance, hot aliens, steampunk cities, good scotch, armageddon, it's all here--you won't be able to put it down. Praise for THE SIGIL TRILOGY: "Great stuff. Touches of Douglas Adams, Barrington Bayley, David Britton and Steve Ayelet only emphasise the splendid originality of this book. Henry Gee is thoughtful, funny, original. And pretty thoroughly mind-expanding in the tradition of Wells, David Lindsay, Stapledon and Clarke. In fact everything you yearn to find in a very good contemporary SF novel. Really enjoyed it!" --SFWA Grandmaster Michael Moorcock "Siege is compelling, grandiose, and breathtaking in its spacetime and its characters are intriguing, personal, and complex....This book of Henry's is going to be high on the charts." --Greg Laden, scienceblogs.com Cosmically deep and sensually rich, here is a very warm, enthusiastic and human book about great issues of our own world and of the whole universe, beautifully written. What can I say but: Gee Whiz! (unless somebody already has...) --Ian Watson "One of the very best books I've ever read." --Critique.org "Henry Gee serves up a tasty stew of sex, science and space opera. Or should that read romance, rationality and retro-SF? Either way, the book is great entertainment." --Vaughan Stanger, author of Alternate Apollos and The English Dead "A great very-wide-screen story, with many interesting characters I cared about...the writing--and the palaeontology--are beautifully executed" --Jack Cohen, author of Wheelers and Heaven "Henry Gee paints a stunning, thriving universe in which readers will delight." --Shelly Li "I got so engrossed in it that I could not put it down." --Lee Gimenez, bestselling author of The Nanotech Murders "The Sigil Trilogy is magnificently panoramic in breadth--a quirky, erudite and often hilarious tale of adventure mingling epic science fiction, archaeology, palaeontology and romance. Vividly entertaining!" --Cecilia Dart-Thornton, bestselling author of the Bitterbynde series "SIEGE OF STARS is a fascinating story from start to finish, with great ideas, neat set pieces, and interesting characters. Gee knows his stuff." --Eric Brown, author of Engineman

The Sigil Trilogy

The elizabethan prayer-book and ornaments, by henry gee

Colin Sullivan

100 writers - including Neal Asher, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, Tobias Buckell, Brenda Cooper, Kathryn Cramer, David Langford, Tanith Lee, Ken Liu, Nick Mamatas, Norman Spinrad, Ian Stewart, Rachel Swirsky, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Ian Watson - offer their take on what the future will look like in Nature Futures 2, an anthology of sci-fi short stories from the award-winning Futures column in the science journal Nature.

Science Fiction from the Leading Science Journal

Nature Futures 2

The concluding volume of Henry Gee's incredible Sigil Trilogy!The Universe is still dying from within and the young Drover tasked with stopping the rot is still racing against time.For fifty years, former textile merchant Mr Haraddzjin Khorare has been Chancellor of a Kingdom unequalled in brutality. And it's about to get a whole lot worse.Dogfinger is a boy orphaned when his village is razed by Stoners. One day, he knows, the time will come for revenge.Domingo--scientist, Priest and Pope--is watching, helpless, as the world circles to its doom. What we need, he thinks, is a miracle. Will his prayers be answered?The Plague has forced Jadis Markham and Jack Corstophine to give up their research in favour of survival. But there are always questions left to answer.Their son, Tom, now himself a noted anthropologist, has an encounter that will force him to confront his own nature--and the very nature of the universe, as the stars themselves begin going dark.Rage of Stars is the climactic third volume of The Sigil, Henry Gee's epic tale that explores the nature of humanity, religion and love.

Henry Gee

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