In Allen's 1988 novel, now back in print, the bones of an australopithecine are found in Mississippi, and are dated to the period just before the Civil War. As the evidence mounts that australopithecines are alive in the present day, the question of what it is to be human assumes a new urgency. According to Jim Foley's paleoanthropology fiction page at www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hom/fiction.html, Orphans of Creation also comments on the creation/evolution controversy. Reviewing it on Amazon.com, Robert J Sawyer (whose Calculating God is described above) gives it five stars, adding "It impressed the heck out of me."