Recommendation: GHOST SPECIES by James Bradley

I have been fascinated with Neanderthals ever since I grasped that they were an entirely separate species of human. The one-and-a-half to two percent of Neanderthal DNA in my makeup proves that there was some interbreeding in humanity’s early days, but only one species survived to write history. Did our Homo sapien ancestors kill or outcompete Neanderthals to extinction?  

Neanderthals had medicine, cared for their sick, and collected seashells from beaches; they had empathy and appreciated beauty. They are even thought to be the kinder species. Put in the terms of our more distant cousins, the great apes, they are the gentle and nurturing orangutan to the sapient’s violent and cunning chimpanzee.

My speculative science fiction brain always imagined that a Neanderthal clone would be the modern Frankenstein tale of our time: bringing back another species of human from the Ice Age just when our glaciers were melting. Ghost Species by Australian writer James Bradley is that very tale and its beauty and magnitude exceed my imagination in the best of ways.

Set in the near future, with staggering technological advances and environmental decline, geneticist Kate Larkin arrives on the island state of Tasmania with her husband Jay. They reach a secluded compound and meet Davis Hucken, tech billionaire and founder of the latest social network Gather. Davis is privately funding several secret experiments to resurrect extinct species and re-wild them. Despite major misgivings, Kate agrees to lead a team with Jay to create a Neanderthal clone and implant it in a human surrogate. The ambitious scientist that successfully completes the clone’s genome sequence is the same woman that develops a sense of responsibility for the Neanderthal newborn Eve—and steals her to run away. After I finished this important book, I went back to read Kate’s thoughts in the prologue:

“But when they are here, isolated by the power or the wind, it is not time’s flight that frightens her; instead it is the knowledge that the child is alone, and that one day she will understand that. And so she does what mothers have done since the beginning of time, since before we were human: she draws filaments from the darkness and weaves them together to create meaning, purpose, shape, arranging the elements to reveal the world, or perhaps to make a new one.”

Ghost Species

Ghost Species was longlisted for the BSFA Best Novel Award, and was nominated for the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.