Vassilev, Fogarty, and Miller provide a solid mathematical background for the study of fitness landscapes. First, they present the algebraic aspects of fitness landscapes, including landscape mutation and recombination operators, characterized correlation functions, Fourier transforms of landscapes, and characteristics determining a landscape’s smoothness, ruggedness, and neutrality. Second, analysis of landscapes is discussed, with a focus on the interrelationship of smoothness and ruggedness versus neutrality characteristics, and with references to developed techniques. Random walks in landscapes are also described, considering them as ensembles of sets of objects, each with an information function that is used to estimate the change in entropy that corresponds to an increase of neutrality. Third, an example is presented of circuit evolution under the prism of landscape structures. The chapter concludes with a short discussion, an appendix, and a note that the area of evolutionary computation is still under development.

This chapter represents a complete and contemporary reference text, with an example, appropriate for postgraduate students in computer science and engineering. There are no exercises. The text could be more descriptive, and include examples, but it is advanced and well organized, presenting the latest research results. The physical form of the text is satisfactory, and includes references covering previous work, but there is no index. The best feature of the text is its ability to examine all of the major information on the topic, while its weakest feature is its length; more detailed examples could have been included. The text is recommended as a reference.