Just finished Armand Marie Leroi’s Mutants. I’d seen the last episode of Leroi’s documentary series so I kind of knew what the punchline was, and in a way I was frustrated that the ideas which are brought up towards the end of the books (basically; when is a mutation a polymorphism and a polymorphism a speciation and stuff about inherited characteristics which aren’t subject to natural selection) weren’t touched on earlier, but I suppose that keeping the philosphical debate to the sidelines for the most part is understandable as it allows a clearer exposition of the current state of the art wrt our understanding of genetics and avoids having to get involved too heavily in the somewhat dodgy ethics of some of the research under consideration (not saying it’s not a topic worth talking about you understand, just that it would have been distracting here). Anyway, well worth a read, and I espescially enjoyed the glimpses of how the place of mutants in our mythology has changed over time, there’s a whole book in that I reckon.

Mr Leroi aslo wrote this

In related news, this is going to be pretty cool.