Darwin’s Watch

Darwin’s Watch: The Science of Discworld III by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen principally explores what Darwin was on about and how he discovered it.  The book uses a framework of fiction to launch into the nonfiction parts.  Basically the wizards of Pratchett’s Discworld had accidentally created round world (aka Earth) and were consequently invested in its preservation.  Circumstances indicated that somehow Darwin wrote a book called Theology of the Species (or The Ology) instead of the expected The Origin of the Species.  In consequence the round worlders failed to develop enough to escape the planet before its next catastrophic ice age.  The wizards decided to put things right and set about making Darwin write the right book.

The book jumps between the fictional parts where the wizards are trying to fix things and the non-fictional parts which explore concepts of evolution, mathematics, and physics.  The authors did an excellent job of introducing and explaining these concepts and the book, both fiction & non-fiction was very interesting to read.  I would recommend this to anyone and was in fact inspired by the book to seek out volumes I and II.