Darwin from Descent of Man to Emotions Darwin from Descent of Man to Emotions Between 1868 and 1872, the life and work of Charles Darwin from "Descent of Man" to "Emotions" continued with aspects of his intended "Big Book" on evolution through natural selection. He had by then hurriedly published an "abstract" of this work as "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, and following the immediate reaction to Darwin's theory his earlier work included demonstrating the utility of the flowers of Orchids in directing insect pollination to achieve cross fertilisation, and a summing up of thirteen years of experiments in "The Variation of Animals and Plants
The Man in the Moone as one of the first works of science fiction, there is no general agreement that it is even "proto-science-fiction". Early commentators recognised that the book is a kind of picaresque novel, and comparisons with "Don Quixote" were being made as early as 1638. In structure as well as content "The Man in the Moone" somewhat resembles the anonymous Spanish novella "Lazarillo de Tormes" (1554); both books begin with a genealogy and start out in Salamanca, featuring a man who travels from master to master seeking his fortune. But most critics agree that the picaresque mode is not sustained throughout, and