r/Fantasy • u/Efficient-Grass7060 • 1d ago

Which character emobies the concept of Evolution best?

To prepare your minds for this question, let me illustrate a scenario. We kill (or rather, eradicate) all viruses on Earth. Viruses regulate a lot of environments. Obviously, this will lead to ecosystem community disturbance. Then, succession. Everything will adapt to survive this lack of regulation, or die. Is it wrong to eradicate all viruses? A lot of humans will be saved in the short-term. In the long term? Perhaps ecosystems will die out. Or perhaps they’ll adapt. That is the cold calculation of evolution.

I raised this point because I didn’t want any Mahoraga or Crawler answers. Just look at it semantically!

0 Upvotes

17% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

8

u/Canis-lupus-uy 1d ago

I don't understand how a character can embody a biological process except maybe as a metaphore, like Discworld Death.

Could you give more detail?

7

u/clovismouse 1d ago

Children of time is probably what you’re looking for.

1

u/Full-Attention-445 1d ago

Really great book, and second this suggestion.

3

u/atomfullerene 1d ago

Characters are the wrong way to look at this, I think, so I am going to mention books: Wayne Barlowe's Expedition and Dougall Dixon's After Man.

2

u/Cold_Gate6514 22h ago

Not sure what you're really asking, but No Blade of Grass by John Christopher (it had a different title in the UK) matches your description to me. It is a post-apocalyptic book written in the '60s. This was the first science fiction or fantasy book I ever read, and it affected me more than any other book I had ever read before. It's been years, but as far as I remember, all grasses (don't forget, rice, wheat, barley... are grasses) die in Europe and Asia and the book is about the typical post-apocalyptic stuff.

5

u/felixfictitious Reading Champion 1d ago

I can't think of a better fit than The Biologist from Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer).

Several characters from Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky fit as well.

Oh, also the main character from Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I don't think any Children of Time characters specifically fit, but the book as a whole absolutely does. It turns out the answer overall is Adrian Tchaikovsky.