Who Did It?

Even in my early days at University, I still did not understand natural selection. I remember thinking and saying that, if a part of an organism performed a function, then it must have been designed to perform that function.

Hard sf is based in a scientific understanding of cosmogony, cosmology and evolution. Poul Anderson imagines the evolution of:

Diomedeans

Starkadians

Ythrians

Didonians

Talwinians

t'Kelans

Throrans

See Speculution (Speculative Evolution).

This issues hits characters in SM Stirling's Lords Of Creation series when they find Terrestrial organisms almost (or exactly?) duplicated on Mars and Venus. Dr Feldman, paleontologist and ethnologist, loathes:

"'...the God-did-it crowd...'"

-SM Stirling, The Sky People (October 2007), CHAPTER TWO, p. 26.

But Marc Vitrac and his companions begin to find evidence for:

"'...the aliens-did-it stuff...'"

-CHAPTER NINE, p. 201.

Yes. Feldman, Marc etc inhabit a hard sf universe.