. . . and this is why I love David Brin
The newborn world liquefied under pummeling asteroid impacts. Heavy elements sank, generating still more heat, and a dowry of radioactive atoms kept the planets interior warm even after the surface cooled and hardened. Eventually the inmost core crystallized under intense pressure, but the next layer remained a swirling metal fluid, a vast electric dynamo. Higher still congealed a mantle of semisolid minerals - superdense pyroxenes and olivines and lighter melts that squeezed up crustal cracks to spill forth from blazing volcanoes. Heat drove the circulating convection cells, jostled the plates, drove the fields. Heat built continents and made the Earth throb. Heat kept some water molten at the surface. Preorganic vapors sloshed in solution, under lightning and fierce sunbeams . . .
The process started taking on a life of its own . . .
In the new world's earliest days, there was no one to speak ill of carbon dioxide, or methane, or even hydrogen cyanide. Under lightning and harsh sunlight those chemicals merged to stain the young ocean with amino acids, purines, anenylates . . . a "primeval soup" which then reacted still further, building complex, twisting polymers. Mere random fusings would have taken a trillion years to come up with anything as complex as a bacterium. But something else was involved beyond just haphazard chemistry. Selection. Some molecules were stable, while others broke apart easily. The sturdy ones accumulated, filling the seas. These became letters in a new alphabet. They too reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued . . . the first genetic words. And so on. What would have otherwise taken a trillion years was accomplished in a relative instant. Sentences bounced against each other, mostly forming nonsense paragraphs. But a few had staying power. Before the last meteorite storm was over or the final roaring supervolcano finally subsided, there appeared within the ocean a chemical tour de force, surrounded by a lipid-protein coat. An entity that consumed and excreted, that made copies of itself. One whose daughters wrought victories, suffered defeats, and multiplied. Out of alphabet soup there suddenly was told a story. A simple tale as yet. Primitive and predictable. But still, a raw talent could be read there.
The author began to improvise.
The process started taking on a life of its own . . .
In the new world's earliest days, there was no one to speak ill of carbon dioxide, or methane, or even hydrogen cyanide. Under lightning and harsh sunlight those chemicals merged to stain the young ocean with amino acids, purines, anenylates . . . a "primeval soup" which then reacted still further, building complex, twisting polymers. Mere random fusings would have taken a trillion years to come up with anything as complex as a bacterium. But something else was involved beyond just haphazard chemistry. Selection. Some molecules were stable, while others broke apart easily. The sturdy ones accumulated, filling the seas. These became letters in a new alphabet. They too reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued . . . the first genetic words. And so on. What would have otherwise taken a trillion years was accomplished in a relative instant. Sentences bounced against each other, mostly forming nonsense paragraphs. But a few had staying power. Before the last meteorite storm was over or the final roaring supervolcano finally subsided, there appeared within the ocean a chemical tour de force, surrounded by a lipid-protein coat. An entity that consumed and excreted, that made copies of itself. One whose daughters wrought victories, suffered defeats, and multiplied. Out of alphabet soup there suddenly was told a story. A simple tale as yet. Primitive and predictable. But still, a raw talent could be read there.
The author began to improvise.