Why does the gene behave like a hedge fund manager? Why are mutationslike a gambling scam? Why does nothing ever become top dog in life and winforever? Humans only arrived after 99. 99% of the time there's been life onearth. So what was here before us? And how did these species, and theevolutionary process that created them, end up with the unpromising creaturesthat were our ancestors? In this, the first book of The Secrets of Lifequartet, SS O'Connor brings his outsider's, questioning eye to reveal thegreat forces that lie behind life: from the laws that arose with Big Bang,through to the 'decisions' that organisms make to determine their chances. Buthow did everything come about? And what made some life forms succeed - whileothers would join the 99. 9% of species that appeared, yet went on to becomeextinct? The story goes right back to our single-celled forebears - the onlythings that were on the planet for 80% of its existence, and then continues asit lays out the ways that successive transmissions built increasingcomplexity, and how the resulting species found their synergistic ways ofcoexisting. In an easy-going, conversational style, O'Connor explains inlay-man's language how the gene is the great conductor of life's orchestra,how it helped millions of life forms to refine themselves - yet why it alsosees failure, death and extinctions as opportunities rather than disasters. Lastly, the book tells the story of the men who unpicked the mysteries, whatthey meant by fitness and 'the fittest', but why they continued to be baffledby organisms that broke the rules by helping each other. Why would some evenchoose to be sterile when producing the next generation was the overridingcompulsion in life? And how does the answer to this question explain whyaltruism is the proof for the 'gene-based theory of evolution' - and whycooperation would become the strongest force in life?