Hello, My first book will be out very soon—what do you think about the blurb & cover? Thanks for your comments. SMIRCH - God is Gambling to Survive Conscious creatures appeared on Earth 542 million years ago. 132 million years later, male-female organisms adopted the pointless habit of intercourse. By then, things were severely messed up. On Tuesday, August 12th, 2025, a smirch lands on Earth and latches onto the right jawbone of a clever human named Adam. No, she’s not an alien. She recruits Adam, his family, and the neighbors’ underage daughter to launch a hostile takeover on billionaire Egon Mars’ business and ensure humanity fulfills its cosmic role. Adam is ecstatic: he’s always felt special—now the universe acknowledges his specialness. But alarming evidence of a forgotten 500-million-year-old catastrophe confirms someone instilled defects in our ancestors. The smirch must fix us. Will Adam and the smirch discover who hacked our evolution? Is humanity qualified to fulfill its cosmic role? Could an ancient couscous recipe help? And why is the smirch suddenly talking funny?
Wow, it really sounds like one heck of an intriguing story! Just thinking to make the blurb a little more engaging: In the evolutionary record, consciousness appeared on Earth about 540 million years ago. A hundred and fifty million years flew by, and then sexual intercourse made its debut. It all made for a very confusing state of affairs. Fast forward to Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. A smirch—not an alien—lands on Earth and latches onto the right jawbone of a clever human named Adam. She has an invitation, for Adam, his family, and the neighbours' underage daughter. Would they help humanity fulfill its cosmic role and join her in a hostile takeover on billionaire Egon Mars? Adam is titillated at the prospect of the universe acknowledging his specialness. But there is more the smirch must fix, like a forgotten 500-year-old catastrophe, which left our ancestors defective. Will Adam and the smirch discover who hacked our evolution? Is humanity qualified to fulfill its cosmic role? Could an ancient couscous recipe help? And why is the smirch suddenly talking funny? I have to mention -"defective" is too general of a term. Can you state in more specific terms how humanity is defective?
---------- Hi Louanne, Thanks a lot for sharing your take on my blurb! I really like it! So, those 'defects', as the smirch views them, are traits like intercourse, emotions, and especially morality - they hinder our survival as a species, but they are what makes us human. The smirch tells Adam that emotions and morality are counterproductive to evolution. In fact, they exist nowhere in the universe except on Earth. But the anomalies go back way before the first humans walked the Earth. One of the most curious things about the evolution of life on Earth is that male-female species somehow managed to dominate the planet! From the cold perspective of Natural Selection, male-female mating is the 'lousiest' mating method conceivable. So, how did we end up this way? Why aren't we, for example, hermaphrodites like snails? So many strange things happened throughout our evolution - things that were simply not supposed to happen! What caused them, against all odds? In the book, the answer slowly unravels. Although all these are very heavy existential questions, I tried to build this book as sort of a lighthearted mystery in the spirit of 'The Da Vinci Code', spanning not several hundred years but several hundred million years: the Cambrian Explosion, which is believed to be the dawn of conscious life on Earth, was 542 million years ago. 410 million years ago was when prehistoric male-female fish first engaged in intercourse when mating. Here's a quote from my book about the curiousness of intercourse - I know some people might find this somewhat inappropriate, but this contributes to the understanding of the reasoning behind the plot. there's an important political and social statement that becomes apparent only at the end of the book - so I'm willing to take the risk of appearing somewhat 'politically incorrect'. I hope you'll like this quote. Please share your thoughts:
You are very welcome. It looks like it covers themes I would really enjoy exploring. Here's a truism - everything about us had some sort of evolutionary advantage - gave us a leg up in the evolutionary ladder - and that goes for sexual reproduction, emotions, and morality. Their net affect has been positive. Do they have a cost? Sure! Evolution is a process that weighs costs to benefits - and if the benefits outweigh the costs - that's the direction in which evolution goes. We know sexual reproduction, emotions and morality may have a down side, but the fact that they increased in frequency as populations reproduced tell us that they had greater benefits than costs. So I'm not sure how you are framing your story - but it may be more biologically sound to attempt to perfect these traits, rather than eliminate them. But, on that note, I'm not sure morality is in the same category as sexual reproduction and emotions, which are both instinctual in nature. Morality is more a by-product of other forces at work. Hmm ... that's not how I understand it. With the introduction of sexual reproduction, we see an enormous increase in the genetic variation each generation, and with it the explosion in diversity of life on earth.
-------- OK, obviously it is my duty to explain the claims I've made: My statement, as absurd as it might seem initially, is that moral humans are a mutation - an anomaly - not a species. Morality, a strictly human trait, that relies on emotions as a precondition (whereas emotions exist in other animals), was 'invented' less than 4000 years ago - not even a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. But we want to continue living a moral life. We want to preserve our mutant selves. Morality is a frail mutation, which could become extinct in the long run. So, we must cherish it and protect it from the destructive force of evolution. And this is where the political connotation is made - but I'm not sure if political discussions are allowed on this site... Furthermore: 1. Modern science cannot explain how male-female species came to dominate the Earth. One Finnish Evolutionary Biology expert recently showed how none of her computer simulations, which begin with both male-female AND non-male-female species, ever managed to converge into a situation where male-female species dominate. So, this is statistical unlikeliness. The reason is that you have two genders, you need to spend energy finding a mate, and only one gender is practically capable of reproducing, so the energy spent on raising males is partially wasted (the scientific term for this is 'the twofold cost of males'). 2. About morality: I'm sure you'll agree that making safe contraceptives available to the general public (in the 1960s) was a morally sound decision: it gave women the freedom to decide what to do with their bodies and allowed families to plan ahead and balance between self-fulfillment and caring to the next generation. But look at the below graph - would you say that this move will be advantageous for the survival of the human race in the long run? (Elon Musk, by the way, thinks that this is the most severe risk to humanity today):
The blurb reads well - but, as someone with a science background, I can't agree that sexual reproduction has been pointless. It is obviously a winning evolutionary strategy, as evidenced by the fact that 99.9% of the planet's eukaryotic species engage in it. It allows a far greater degree of genetic variation, which in turn natural selection can act upon, and so we see a lot more complexity evolving with sexual reproducers, and that's why we are us and bacteria are still bacteria. Is there a biological cost to sex? Of course. As I mentioned, every step forward in evolution occurs with both costs and benefits, but if the benefits are greater, that is the direction in which evolution will go. And as far as the human population is concerned - it was less than 100,000 one million years ago - and has grown to over 8 billion. So that's a pretty successful evolutionary story. But in the end, it's your story, and you've obviously given it a lot of thought, and you have chosen very interesting themes. I'd love to read your opening chapter once it's ready, if you feel comfortable posting it to the Workshop. I think you're going to write a very interesting story, indeed.
------ Thank you very much! And - I feel fortunate that I have the chance to have this discussion with you! I want to clarify: you are obviously right about sexual reproduction and the advantages of diversity. But... I'm talking not about all kinds of sexual reproduction - I'm talking about human-like dioecious reproduction: exactly two genders, one individual of each gender is mandatory for mating, only one gender can have offspring - and if that's not enough: individuals cannot change their gender during their lifetime, and females cannot self-fertilize. The only significant advantage usually associated with this kind of mating is diversity. But - when hermaphrodite snails mate, don't they achieve an adequate level of diversity? And, because a snail-mating event may result in two pregnancies - isn't that orders of magnitude more cost-effective? And what about female turkeys, that can self-fertilize in extreme situations? And what about species with more than 2 genders? All the above fall under the category of sexual reproduction. But, alas, the human-style mating is THE MOST LIMITING of them all! (Obviously, I wouldn't see myself 'mating' any other way than the human way - after all, that's how my 4 precious kids came to be! ) But that's not even the strongest claim I'm making here: it is established that male-female species evolved from hermaphrodites or other classes of species (presumably due to some individuals being sterile). Now, think about the very first male-female mutations: they must have been severely outnumbered! It's reasonable to assume, for example, that some of their predators had more effective mating methods. So - how did the first male-female mutations survive ages of instability and manage to gain the critical mass that would eventually result in them becoming the dominant species? Based on my research, this specific question remains unanswered to this day. And about the current drop in fertility rate: the problem is that the trend has reversed - and the reason is artificial, not natural. Soon the population will start to decline. Now - back to the book: I realize that the word 'pointless' seems too harsh - but in the plot, the smirch reveals to Adam that Earth is the only place in the universe where male-female species are the most developed cognitively - wherever there's life elsewhere, male-female mutations repeatedly became extinct! She explains that 542 million years were more than enough time for life on Earth to become much more advanced cognitively, and those 'malfunctions', like our prehistoric ancestors evolving as male-female species, were the reason for the setback in our cognitive advancement. The book is currently in the final round of editing - due November 15th. I'd be glad to get your opinion about it when it's ready. Thanks again!
