Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

I can’t say enough about this book.   It’s funny, it’s smart, and, yes, it’s sexy.   It can also get scary.   Insects, ducks, and sharks, oh my!   They are frightening when they do the deed.   Also, there are a couple typos, like ‘to the deed’ instead of ‘do the deed’, but only a couple that I noticed, and not enough to knock off even half a star.  

John Long is far more than a competent writer; he’s a competent storyteller, which I don’t normally say about non-fiction writers.   But then again, Long doesn’t confine himself to a linear narrative, nor does he only care about listing facts.   (Please note that truth and facts are of tantamount importance to him, and you can tell this even when he talks about the research that he did for the book.   However, he seems in it to entertain, as well, throwing around cheeky wordplay, and real life funny moments, and this is what I mean.)

I never found myself wishing to get to a linear story for two reasons.   The first was that I laughed so much, so even stories that seemed like tangents weren’t bothersome or something to skim through until he got to his line of thought.   The other reason was that after a couple chapters, I started to get the feeling that Long tied everything together, and that everything would be relevant in the end.  (I felt it was in the end.)

This is a story about Long finding fossils that show the start of copulation, but it’s intertwined with stories of sexual habits of all sorts of creatures in the modern day world.   It’s informative, funny, and also doesn’t bog you down with too many technical terms.   (Most are explained.  In a rare case of cultural misunderstanding, I was thrilled to discover a dork was a whale penis, only to be disappointed by the revelation that dork is, in fact, Australian slang for a penis in general.   I was gonna call all my dorky friends whale penis, and chortle when they looked at me funny, but luckily a friend pointed out that I’d be making a massive fool out of myself.   Thank you for the intervention.)   What is most impressive about the book is the sheer scale of it, which would have intimidated me had I known about it before I started.   This book doesn’t just tackle the origins of sex, it tackles the whole evolution of sex.   It uses examples from the present, and similarities to fossilized animals, to explain why our best guess is most likely how those animals mated in the past.   

Also, I have to say I love Long for not being pompous about his finds.   He admits, in a couple places, that we will continue to find out more and more about dinosaurs as more fossils are revealed and studied with more depth, and technology that continues to advance.   I get the feeling that if he were to be proved wrong, he would take it with aplomb based on the fact that he mentions this multiple times, and came off as rather humble when waiting to hear if his discovery would be published.   They were important finds, and colleagues have said so, important institutions have made this clear, but he never came off as a braggart, or someone who had to be correct all the time.   (In fact, I get the feeling he would be gracious if he were ever to disproved.  I don’t think he will, at least not in our lifetimes, as he also came off as far too meticulous not to do as much research as possible before publishing.)