I did a double-take in the library last week. I was scanning the shelves of audio books, looking for something interesting, when I saw one called The Sixth Extinction. Ahh, such a good book – Elizabeth Kolbert did such a great job with – WAIT – This one has “James Rollins” listed as the author. It wasn’t Kolbert’s book. It was a different The Sixth Extinction. The full title is The Sixth Extinction: A Sigma Force Novel. It’s an adventure novel, the tenth in a series I had not been aware of. Out of a sense of curiosity, I checked it out. It’s basically a thriller -a pulp adventure novel without much to redeem it in terms of intellectual stimulation. However, I think it’s worth mentioning here, briefly, because it does weave in numerous scientific threads that are worth exploring. One idea that features in the novel is the idea of XNA, an information-containing nucleic acid with a backbone built of a substance other than the sugars deoxyribose or ribose. The novel opens at Mono Lake, California, site of the most famous “arsenic life” controversy from a few years back. The novel unfortunately relies on the trope of the “mad scientist,” in this case a conservationist with geneticist chops, who basically wants to replace the Earth’s biosphere with something more robust – an ecosystem of genetically engineered creatures whose genes are written in XNA. Surprisingly, there’s a hidden ecosystem based on XNA hidden in caves beneath Antarctica. Anyhow, the rest of it is pretty much to be expected: good guys, bad guys, a fetish for guns and military culture, romance sub-plots, gruesome deaths for bad guys but not good guys, etc. Unremarkable in that regard – very much cut from the same cloth as Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels. This Sixth Extinction is popcorn; a beach read. You’re much better off if you read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction instead.
I have read a good number of James Rollins novels – some in the Sigma Force series, a few not. I gave up on the Sigma Force series a few novels ago as the plot lines were all from the same “formula”. Some of the his non-Sigma Force novels are much better. But yes, good for the beach but not much else.
Now the Pendergast series from Lincoln and Child – now that is a good series of books. There are some good tie-ins to science in this series as well. And the twists are usually very clever.
I read the book by James Rollins and I found it to be very informative. The Sixth Extinction did answer a question that has been in my head for quite a while about other life forms which has a different sequence of genomes than the ones which science says is not possible. I know that most people find his books not to be informative and interesting, but I keep an open mind about his books. What if there is a possibility of a life form which does exist in Antarctica right now, which could be turned loose upon the planet once all of the ice melts? People are doing irreparable damage to the planet by their greed and arrogance.