It seems that the official publication date for Searching for Dragons will be early in 2012, but this is really the third edition of Searching for Ropens. For those who were offended at the religious overtones in the first two editions, or those who would have been offended if they had read one of those editions, this new edition is being promoted as a nonfiction book in pure cryptozoology genre.
Portions of an early version or versions are being leaked out, but I will not try to review what is now available, for reviews should be in plenty when the actual book is in print. According to normal publication procedure, review copies will be in print long before the official publication date. That is what makes it possible for back covers to have glowing praises for a book that is only just published, according to that official date.
Probably nobody expects this new version to be singing the praises of Charles Darwin, even if Biblical interpretations are not actively promoted. But why should we read only what agrees with Darwin’s common ancestry? At any rate, one paragraph of the title page does mention Darwin:
“Believe what you will about Darwin’s writings on the common descent of all life on earth. But these pages extol the credibility of natives whom Darwin would have thought less evolved than himself, natives some Westerners consider superstitious and unworthy of belief when their testimonies appear to contradict the extinction assumptions that support Darwin’s ideas. Believe what you will about Darwin, but most native and Western eyewitnesses that we have interviewed have been found credible.”
Since this is a new edition of Searching for Ropens, with a new title, readers can expect much of the content to be about expeditions in Papua New Guinea, including the one that the author himself led in 2004.
Official Web Site of Searching for Dragons
Whitcomb . . . disputes an old idea that they are misidentifications of . . . fruit bats, for in an early expedition in Papua New Guinea, two natives were interviewed and they described a ropen holding itself upright on a tree trunk (fruit bats hang upside down from branches). Whitcomb’s book also describes . . . [a] bioluminescent glow that may help the nocturnal ropen catch fish at night.
