Thanks, nwr.
I'm only 2/3rds of the way thru.
Dyson is not worth reading.
Venter's stuff is awfully darn fun to read. The Sorcerer II expedition, the rhodopsin microorganism he found, the genome transplant, etc. In fact, Venter was quite down to earth. Practical even. He indulged in no flights of fancy.
Church was all over the place. And kinda boring. But the synthetic polymerase stuff was neat.
So was all of that mirror-image protein/sugars stuff.
Shapiro kicked the ever lovin snot out of previous abiogenesis research. I loved it!
He (Shapiro) is clearly not buying into the "life starts with RNA/DNA/replication" ideas.
I don't know of an abiogenesis researcher who thinks RNA/DNA just appeared and life began.
His idea is that it started with simpler reactions, and that RNA arose out of something simpler. That make some sense to me.
I don't know of an abiogenesis researcher who thinks otherwise.
Shapiro is as far as I've gotten.
That said, so far, the only person way off in la la land is Lloyd (and I haven't read his whole section yet).
Even Dyson doesn't indulge in the kind of goofiness that you suggest characterizes the whole book.
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