Humanity has reached the stars. The fact that we have reached a sufficiently advanced technological phase in our development without the aid of a patron race i.e. a race which is already space faring is a bone of discontent amongst some certain patron races. Jacob Demwa our hero/sleuth is offered a place on the Sundiver project. A top secret project positioned on Mercury which is performing with the aid of a small entourage of aliens and alien technology navigated descents into the Sun's chromosphere. Humans are viewed as a wolfling race by the long established patron races and since Jacob Demwa's arrival things have taken a turn for the worse. It is up to our hero who still suffers emotionally from the loss of his wife and appears to exhibit schizophrenic tendencies to sort out the cloak and dagger espionage and motives of all the major players onboard. It is an easygoing novel to read mixed with aliens I found a difficulty to care for,technological aspects which in the twenty third century seem commonplace today and the uplifting of native fauna(dolphins and chimpanzees)to sentience akin to ours which is hinted at but never fully portrayed. I enjoyed reading Sundiver but the action felt to confined and claustrophobic and Jacob Demwa's deductive capabilities were nothing short of ridiculous and overbearing brilliance. Not a bad first novel from David Brin and I will be reading more of the Uplift Saga.
The second installment of the Uplift Saga sees a space crew majority of uplifted dolphins, humans and an uplifted chimpanzee hiding in mortal fear beneath the oceans of an alien planet. Not knowing the importance of their discovery of an abandoned fleet of moon sized ships stationed in space the crew very naively report their discovery through open channels back to Earth. This news is of such importance that the spaceship Streaker is ambushed by no less than five patron races and in the ensuing game of cosmic cat and mouse the Streaker just makes it to a planet, supposedly fallow, and wait while in orbit the fleets of various patron races figure out how to obtain the information regarding the whereabouts of this fabulous fleet from the humans whilst trying to prevent other races from that exact same goal. So begins a space battle involving all patron races in orbit. Beneath the waves all is not well. The dolphin crew captained by Creideiki is under tremendous stress while the human occupants try to figure out away of this impossible quandary they face. Having decided that the planet must be explored all manner of mishaps, adventures, misadventures, political maneuvering within the space fleets and the Streaker results in many dolphin deaths. Slowly the storyline reveals a very fractured and unsavoury element of dolphin kind. This novel excels in drawing the reader to the machinations of all sentient beings, good and evil, and slowly releases the restraints that those beings have been under for so long. The action packed flow of this read swings from a multitude of viewpoints. Human consensus is that no matter how great the odds appear to be against them, no race will ever be their patrons. The sheer barefaced disrespect this motley crew of wolflings and their neo-dolphins shows only reinforces the warring races that mankind is a race whose natural evolved intelligence is both an insult that must be addressed. These patronless species will benefit from their patronage. It smacks of cosmic hubris and I loved it. Humanity still has that indescribable of knack of anthropomorphically giving all things a homo sapiens frame of reference and this does not go unnoticed by both the dolphins and the lone neo chimpanzee onboard. Brin didn't delve to deep in this onboard dynamic as it is all too obvious that no matter how well we treat each other or our uplifted planetary neighbours we will still be seen as a race of lowly savages by almost all patron races, who are all to eager to tamper with our genes and make us something in their graven image. And as a race of beneficial master apes trying to atone for past atrocities to our fellow Earth relatives. It is a compulsory purchase.
The events involving the Streaker and its crew from Startide Rising is beginning to have a domino effect. The Gooksyu-Gubru clan which is unfriendly towards Earth and its wolfling races has launched a surprised attack on the planet Garth.Garth,a planet whose ecosystem was devastated by an uplifted species is now under Human guidance and supervision. The Gubru mistakenly believe that the inhabitants will have some information regarding the fleet discovered by the Streaker and begin a policy of rounding up all homo sapiens onto prison islands and allowing the neo chimpanzees restricted freedoms while they seek some form of compensation for their foolish and unwarranted foray on Garth. Such recompense is sought in the patronage of the fabled Garthlings,a semi sentient race believed to have escaped the eco-system holocaust. Their is some backlash against the invaders in the shape of guerrilla warfare populated by free neo chimpanzees,championed by Robert,the only free Human left on the planet and Athaclena, a Tymbrimi who has some psychic powers which allow insight into what all those around are feeling. The Gubru is ruled by a triumvirate which as well as overseeing a calamitous invasion is at constant odds with each other over the proper ways to handle the situation which is slowly worsening and deepening the tension amongst their separate groupings. A very fast paced novel combining political maneuvering both alien and Human,character portrayal magnificently fleshed out and certain smaller subplots which are not revealed until the last one hundred pages. I was tempted to give this third slice of the Uplift Saga full marks,but I felt the read was just drawn out a little too long. At over six hundred pages in length this novel will demand your attention but will entertain and at the same time uplift your spirits.
Six exiled races living on Jijo all with reasons for being on this backward planet have coexisted in harmony for generations. All races though fundamentally different in appearance,social structure,point of origin and religious beliefs have one shared ineluctable fear. The fear of being found living alive on Jijo by the star faring races. Their fear is justified. As beings who willingly set foot on a planet which was recently let to lie fallow by the departed Buyur they have become "sooners".Sooners are regarded as nothing more than pariahs on the civilized galactic way of life.Then one day soon after a "starman" is found trashing wildly in a swamp and rescued by the sooners. Soon a star ship settles on a glade near a sooner town. Has judgement day arrived? If so who or what will mete out the punishment on the sooners and what will that punishment be?Brin's fourth book of his Uplift Saga does not at first seem to bear any relevance to the events of the previous episodes of Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The races which occupy Jijo all live in a slightly uneasy time of great peace. Brin's depiction of Hoon,Traeki,Qhueuens,Noor,Urs and Humans and the interspecies history which the six exiled races have shared on Jijo in a two millennium period is both laced with a sense of hubris and hope. Those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. All six races have learned from their mistakes and times are good. The threat of being found out is always prevalent and the spaceships arrival soon opens old mistrusts,hatred's and points to be settled amongst bands on the six who fear the wrath of the spacegods. This novel is as per usual from Brin very well written,with both believable characters and circumstance which push savage beings as the technologically bereft sooners into extraordinary circumstances. This novel is not what I would consider as space opera but more of a tale of social unrest and political upheaval. Savages versus spacemen, seems likes their's no contest. Well you'd be wrong in justifiably assuming that all to obvious fact. The aliens which visit are nothing more than space criminals and the savages of Jijo are not wholly without means of self defence. Brin writes a novel which throws more twists and subplots at you in a very self deceptive manner across a cast of characters of all six races which at first seems to be a jumbled miasma of loosely interconnecting stories but in fact is a wonderfully crafted tale of deceit ending with both definitive conclusions and a sense of wonder which awaits in the next installment of his Uplift Saga. Riveting stuff.
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