The previous book was about neo-Dolphins, this one is about chimps. And it is very good.

Ultimately, it is a book about slavery and ecology. What do we owe to our planet? Can we take "lesser" races and bring them sentience and sapience? Should they be allowed to develop their own culture? What can we do to prevent "alien" cultures from influencing us? Despite its slightly preposterous setting - it presents a plausible view of how humans might attempt to colonise new worlds and new minds.

There are a few clichés - "what is this human emotion you call… 'love'?" being the most egregious - but it is all barnstorming fun. Brin has an amazing ability to construct alien Aliens. They aren't mere ciphers for humans, but well crafted cultures which behave very differently to us.

It is somewhat long and meandering. But it's lovely to spend time in a universe which has such a rich seam of stories.

Brin is also slightly wordy. You'll need your e-Reader's dictionary to decipher some of the archaic language on display.

A worthy end to the trilogy.

This is the sequel to David Brin's "Sundiver" - and the 2nd part of the Uplift series. And - BAM! - it goes straight into the action. Very little needless exposition - just spaceships running away from an Extra-Terrestrial menace, crash-landing, and having to escape. All good sci-fi fun. Especially with a crew of cyborg dolphins, a few telepathic humans, and one super-intelligent ape.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable adventure - and almost certainly impossible to film. It pairs nicely with David Zindell's "The Idiot Gods" in its treatment of cetaceans as deserving citizens of Earth. The poetry of the dolphins is a particularly pleasing literary device.

It is a door-stop of a book, possibly a bit too long for my tastes. Because of the huge crew, I found there was a bit of information overload trying to remember who was who, and which character belonged to which species.

I completely understand how this won every award going. It's everything sci-fi should be - weird, alien, exciting, and breathtakingly fun.

In all the universe, no species has ever reached for the stars without the guidance of a patron — except perhaps mankind. Did some mysterious race begin the uplift of humanity aeons ago? And if so, why did they abandon us? Under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history, a journey into the boiling inferno of the sun... to seek our destiny in the cosmic order of life.

An absolutely crackling sci-fi story. One of the rare novels which has the aliens being alien. No human-sized and -shaped creatures acting as thin allegories for human races.

It's always amusing seeing what writers from the 1980s predicted the future would look like. We get laser beams, retinal scans, and holography. But people don't have mobile phones and rely on landlines for calls! Important documents are printed off, and books have to be shipped across the solar system. They are charming anachronisms, and more than offset by the progressive gender politics and bonkers plot.

You may be familiar with this meme:

dustin Couch

@Dustinkcouch

nasa employee: oh hey u guys are back early

astronaut: moon's haunted

nasa employee: what?

astronaut: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* moon's haunted

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In Sundiver, one of the characters literally says "The Sun is haunted." And so, off on a merry jape we go! Spaceships! Aliens! Intrigue! Laser battles! Constitutional politics about library archiving practices and the rights of indentured servants. There is a lot going on, but it's written in an episodic way to keep everything zipping along.

There's half a dozen books in the series, and I'm going to enjoy spacing them out.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

LazyWeb! Someone told me about a sci-fi book series where species are ranked by how many degrees of separation they were from the founders of a galactic federation(?). Humans were the first species to have found their way there independently.
Any clues what book I'm on about?

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David R. MacIver

@DRMacIver

@edent I think you're thinking of David Brin's uplift series?

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