SOURCE: Sugrue, Thomas. “The Phenomena of the Beginning.” Saturday Review of Literature 26 (27 March 1943): 22.

In the following review of Darkness and the Deep, Sugrue observes that Fisher successfully employs the medium of fiction to popularize scientific theories about the evolution of humanity.

Vardis Fisher has chosen for his very considerable literary talents a very considerable fictional task. He has decided to write a family saga encompassing the history of man, beginning with prehistoric nomads and ending with whatever is left of contemporary humanity after the present military engagement. He doesn't know whether he will have the time and energy to finish the epic, but he's going to go as far as he can. In this first volume he gets the earth created and cooled, brings life out of the sea, gets our ancestor down from the trees, and gives him a club.

It is his contention that the great...