![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Finished: Startide Rising, by David Brin
Started: Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer
More thoughts and minor spoilery comments behind the cut tag.
Startide Rising is of course in the same universe as Sundiver, although a couple hundred years later, I believe. I think I liked it better than Sundiver, and can see why it won the awards where Sundiver didn't. Although I was still a little annoyed with the 'poetry-speak' of dolphins, overall the characters were interesting and found the action pretty cool. I was a little disappointed that although the situation they were in was resolved, we didn't get any real answers as to the mystery which got them into the situation in the first place. I kept waiting for it, and was disappointed nothing came of it. Maybe it's in the next book, The Uplift War. My other minor complaint was that there were times where I was having trouble remembering where everyone was and what they were doing, because there were like 4 different groups of humans/dolphins doing different things in different places, and sometimes shifting back and forth. Still, overall I liked it.
Hominids is by Canadian SF author Robert J. Sawyer, who has the distinction of being the only SF author I've ever met and spoken to. He came to my Science Fiction class to give a guest lecture, and afterwords sold and signed some of his own books. Overall he seems a nice fellow, and a good public speaker, although a teeny bit on the arrogant-sounding side. As a writer he's... okay. I don't think he'll ever be one of my favorites, but he's fairly enjoyable. Although he has good ideas he seems to include minor things that seem to rub me the wrong way for various reasons. I think I just get the sense that his plots feel a bit too much like television in places. Good television, certainly, with more scientific sophistication than most, but not great television. I don't get the feel of being in a great story.
As he's a Canadian writer, his stories usually take place in Canada, and often Toronto, which leads to some weird effects. In fact, I remember vividly one time where his main character was riding the subway, and he was on the same route I was while I was reading it. He's also mentioned a bookstore that I go to. (Perhaps that's part of the problem with immersion.. his world is too close to mine). In fact, part of this novel takes place at my own University. He's already thrown in a few references to things to show that yes, he's really been there (like the contract Pepsi made to have exclusive vending machine rights, or how the urinals flush... all this while describing the actions of a female character, mind you), rather than serving any particular story purpose.
In any event, Hominids is the story of a parallel earth, where Neandertal man rose to dominance and we died out, who, in the course of his research in quantum computing, accidentally travels to our world, winding up in the middle of the Sudbury Neutrino observatory. Like much of his work, it's a high concept 'idea' book, this one probably designed to look at potential differences in cultures if Neandertals were here instead of us.
Started: Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer
More thoughts and minor spoilery comments behind the cut tag.
Startide Rising is of course in the same universe as Sundiver, although a couple hundred years later, I believe. I think I liked it better than Sundiver, and can see why it won the awards where Sundiver didn't. Although I was still a little annoyed with the 'poetry-speak' of dolphins, overall the characters were interesting and found the action pretty cool. I was a little disappointed that although the situation they were in was resolved, we didn't get any real answers as to the mystery which got them into the situation in the first place. I kept waiting for it, and was disappointed nothing came of it. Maybe it's in the next book, The Uplift War. My other minor complaint was that there were times where I was having trouble remembering where everyone was and what they were doing, because there were like 4 different groups of humans/dolphins doing different things in different places, and sometimes shifting back and forth. Still, overall I liked it.
Hominids is by Canadian SF author Robert J. Sawyer, who has the distinction of being the only SF author I've ever met and spoken to. He came to my Science Fiction class to give a guest lecture, and afterwords sold and signed some of his own books. Overall he seems a nice fellow, and a good public speaker, although a teeny bit on the arrogant-sounding side. As a writer he's... okay. I don't think he'll ever be one of my favorites, but he's fairly enjoyable. Although he has good ideas he seems to include minor things that seem to rub me the wrong way for various reasons. I think I just get the sense that his plots feel a bit too much like television in places. Good television, certainly, with more scientific sophistication than most, but not great television. I don't get the feel of being in a great story.
As he's a Canadian writer, his stories usually take place in Canada, and often Toronto, which leads to some weird effects. In fact, I remember vividly one time where his main character was riding the subway, and he was on the same route I was while I was reading it. He's also mentioned a bookstore that I go to. (Perhaps that's part of the problem with immersion.. his world is too close to mine). In fact, part of this novel takes place at my own University. He's already thrown in a few references to things to show that yes, he's really been there (like the contract Pepsi made to have exclusive vending machine rights, or how the urinals flush... all this while describing the actions of a female character, mind you), rather than serving any particular story purpose.
In any event, Hominids is the story of a parallel earth, where Neandertal man rose to dominance and we died out, who, in the course of his research in quantum computing, accidentally travels to our world, winding up in the middle of the Sudbury Neutrino observatory. Like much of his work, it's a high concept 'idea' book, this one probably designed to look at potential differences in cultures if Neandertals were here instead of us.
