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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book has made a Jack London fan out of me.,
By
This review is from: Before Adam (Paperback)
This is a fascinating, fast-paced story about Man just before he became Man. I loved being taken back to our origins by the totally plausible "time-machine" of genetic memory as presented by Jack London. The story literally shows us the stuff our dreams and we ourselves are made of. This is the first Jack London I've ever read and I'm looking forward to more. I somehow missed having to read Call of the Wild in my school days. I find the style crisp and concrete, and the "far out" premise of the story very believable. I would recommend this to any thoughtful junior high school student and to all adults.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very unusual, very interesting,
By Tom Bruce (East Moriches, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Before Adam (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) (Paperback)
I have never read a book quite like Jack London's "Before Adam." It would be interesting to learn what his target audience for this book was -- young teens, high school students, adults? In it, London sets the premise for the reason of common dreams we all have, such as the dream of falling through space. He attests that it comes from our pre-man existence when we lived and slept in trees and falling meant almost sure death. He takes this theory a giant step forward through the narrator of the book who claims he has pre-historic dreams in which he sees himself as a pre-historic tree and cave dweller named Big Tooth. He creates a fascinating world for Big Tooth to inhabit, and delves into early evolution and survival of the fittest. There are a few holes in his logic, but mostly the story holds together well with several exciting chase sequences. The world of Big Tooth is horrifying, and I think for young teens who are susceptible, it could induce additional nightmares beyond falling. There are dramatic scenes of killing, torture, wife beating, and mass exterminations which are quite explicit. I'm glad I read it, for the book has given me much to think about.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To Sleep, Perchance to Remember,
By
This review is from: Before Adam (CD-ROM)
Nightmares plague the narrator's childhood. In these dreams he relives the pre-stoneage life of one of his proto-human ancestors. Each night is a different episode from his ancestor's life, and the episodes are lived and relived in a jumbled, non-chronological order. The narrator places the episodes in chronological order and tells his ancestor's biography. What emerges is an action-packed, engaging saga of adventure and romance at the dawn of humanity. London got the science of genetics wrong as he tried to explain how the narrator could have such memories, but he seems to have gotten one thing right. Modern paleo-anthropology posits that for most of prehistory, the earth contained several coexisting species of hominids. London peoples his world with three hominid species. His description of the interaction between these species probably gives an accurate depiction of ancient man's inter-species interaction.
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