Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).There are three books I’ve considered ‘honorary’ members of my Locus Quest reading list. In circumstances where books two and three of a trilogy are award winners, it seems only fair to read the first book in that series to understand the full story and context. Green Mars and Blue Mars are award winners – so I needed to read Red Mars, even though it wasn’t a winner. The Confusion and System of the World are award winners – so I needed to read Quicksilver, even though it wasn’t a winner. Startide Rising and The Uplift War are award winners – so I needed to read Sundiver , even though it wasn’t a winner. I wasn’t disappointed to read Red Mars or Quicksilver – they are both excellent books and essential parts of their series. Sundiver is not: it’s not an excellent book, and it’s not an essential part of the series. I’ve since read Startide Rising and The Uplift War – Brin came up with a great concept and it’s an interesting series which definitely picks up after this patchy start. Each book basically stands alone; they’re set in the same universe in a linear timeline, but on different worlds and with different characters. Startide Rising and The Uplift War are at least causally linked - the events of Startide Rising lead, by political chain reaction, to the events of The Uplift War. The same cannot be said of Sundiver . Events here are mentioned briefly in the following books, but are basically irrelevant.As I said – the concept for the series is excellent. The universe is filled with hundreds of sentient species, each intent on ‘uplifting’ pre-sentient races into spacefaring civilisations. They’re rewarded for their efforts with prestige and a thousand year patron-client (master-slave) relationship with their newly uplifted underlings. Every species can trace their patrons’ patrons like aristocratic ancestry back into the mists of time. Humanity is the only known species to reach the stars without a patron, to have uplifted itself! We are the ‘wolflings’, the rogue state, the fresh meat, the loose cannons! The stage is set – it’s a great concept.What gives The Uplift Saga a bit of extra spice is that humans have clients of their own. They’re not fully uplifted yet, but before we discovered the galactic civilization waiting out there in the stars, humans have already been meddling with the genes of our most intelligent fellow Earthlings: chimps and dolphins are close to full, independent sentience. It’s this thread which pays huge dividends in the rest of the series – Startide Rising focuses on a starship crewed by dolphins and The Uplift War is set on a genuine planet of the apes (populated by chimps themselves trying to uplift gorillas). Sadly, these mighty oaks are still acorns in Sundiver – we briefly meet a semi-sentient dolphin at the start, and a genius (but pre-vocal chimp) is a significant character – but we’re still keeping mankind front and centre.This is basically a detective story. Something kooky is going down in the Sundiver Spacestation (where humans are flying special ships deep into the sun) and our hero, a sort of zen-psycho, is called in to investigate. He stumbles into some galactic political machinations (some jockeying for control over humans, some fighting amongst themselves and using us as pawns) which are muddying the waters around a research breakthrough regarding lifeforms residing in the outer layers of the sun.Still sounds good, doesn’t it?Sadly the execution feels dated and… silly. There’s no other word I can think of. Of course the humans outwitted the aliens, we’re just better, duh! The alien politics are a long way from Machiavellian and their behaviour kind of juvenile. Our hero is an oddball I never came to love.It’s not terrible – but it’s awfully blah.The rest of The Uplift Saga is better – do yourself a favour and skip Sundiver ! Start with Startide Rising, you wont miss much.
First read October 17, 2008. (No review)Second reading review, April 23, 2010.There are as many origin theories as there are people to think about the origins of humanity. Like most reviews, I can't help but praise David Brin's Uplift concept. On one hand, the von Daniken-like idea of having a "patron" species that shepherded humanity toward sentience is comforting and resonates with our need to have concrete origins and a sense of belonging in a larger community. On the other hand, the Darwinian idea that humans evolved on their own—coupled with the even more interesting idea that we are special among the larger galactic community in this regard—is also attractive. Almost immediately, the latent question is: are you a Darwinist or a von Danikenite? Skin or Shirt?I'll be honest: I'm incredibly biased toward the Humans Are Special camp and hope we evolved on our own. But Brin doesn't take any sure stance, at least not in Sundiver. And there's a host of secondary mysteries mixed up in this larger one. These form the core of the plot of Sundiver. If humanity was Uplifted, then maybe the mysterious solarians discovered by the Sundiver Expedition are their patrons, or know who their patrons were. If humanity is a "wolfling" race, then maybe the solarians know why no one stumbled across us earlier. Either way, the answers lie past Mercury.Brin manages to meld together so many different aspects of story and science fiction that Sundiver becomes a very intense work of literature. It's an epic of exploration, a testament to humanity's struggle against adversity: we're going to conquer the Sun! It's also a mystery, multiple mysteries, with alien adversaries with their own inscrutable agendas. And it's a psychological thriller: is Jacob crazy or just very, very discerning?Of course, by trying to appeal to all these aspects, Brin walks a tight rope. He doesn't always pull off this fusion successfully. In particular, his characters tend to suffer from having to carry so much around on their shoulders. Jacob, despite his mental malady, is not a very interesting protagonist. Brin alludes to a past conflict in which Jacob emerged the hero (and which resulted in his subsequent psychological trauma); unfortunately, he manages to make it sound so interesting that I kind of wish it had been part of the story and not just a past event. But it wasn't.Where was I? Oh yeah, the characters. We never get to see what makes the characters tick, aside from maybe Jacob. They just act, especially the aliens, who conform to the species-stereotypes that Brin creates for them: Bubbacup is the ur-Pil, Culla is the ur-Pring, etc. The humans at least have individuality personalities; they just aren't very interesting ones. As a result, although Sundiver is primarily a mystery, it lacks the threat offered by a credible villain. There's nothing sinister about what happens so much as childish—dangerous, yes, but childish. The characters often allude to the political implications of various events, but we don't witness the fallout.So while there's a lot going on in Sundiver, it never really congeals into a satisfactory ending. The same goes for how Brin portrays post-Contact Earth. While he does a good job of portraying a "Confederacy" (of states) that shuns civil liberties, it's a very abstract and distant entity. We don't see an agent of it until the very end of the book. Worse still, however, is the apparent lack of contribution to the Sundiver Expedition from any government aside from the Confederacy. Apparently, at least in this future, America is still the only country that matters. . . .Sundiver has so much potential, but it shies away from the detail necessary to fulfil that potential. What rescues it from mediocrity is not a brilliant plot or convincing story but the sheer quality of Brin's writing itself:Lumps and streaming shreds of ionized gas seared thither and back, twisted by the forces that their very package created. Flows of glowing matter popped suddenly in and out of visibility, as the Doppler effect took the emission lines of the gas into and then out of coincidence with the spectral line being used for observation.The ship swooped through the turbulent chromospheric crosswinds, tacking on the plasma forces by subtle shifts in its own magnetic shields . . . sailing with sheets made of almost corporeal mathematics.I love that phrase, "corporeal mathematics." Brin, as a physicist, knows his science and wields it well. If only he were as strong with the fiction part of "science fiction."My Reviews of the Uplift series:Startide Rising →
What do You think about Sundiver (2010)?
Really fantastic, sci-fi that makes you think. I liked the aliens and the general mystery plot, but it was the other world-building details that stood out for me:- the technology behind the sun ships;- the anachronistic idioms used by one character who, due to relativistic time differences involved in her line of work, is from a much older time period;- the psychological/physical tests used to objectively decide that a certain proportion of humanity is too psychopathic/sociopathic to interact with the rest of the galaxy;- the espionage twists that crop up near the end;- the waxing philosophical/political on Aldous Huxley in the final chapter.I know that the next books in the series are set at a much later date, so I hope that the considerations the characters make in the final chapter have some effect on the setting in later books.Brilliant.edit September 2013: I've read a lot of sci-fi since then, including the next two Uplift books, and I'm revising my rating down to 4 stars. Most of the above applies still, but it's not reeeallly a 5 star book.
—Tom
I really disliked this book. This may have been due in part that I listened to the audible edition and I'm not a fan of George Wilson as a narrator.The protagonist in this book, Jacob, is tedious and unbelievable. The author builds him up as a world-weary, zen, super scientist, martial-artist with a Mr. Hyde-like split personality that he needs keep in check. Al the other characters in this book are diminutive to Jacob. The women in the novel are little better than 2-dimensional window dressing. Of course, the female captain of the Sundiver spaceship is fit, tough, incredibly attractive, lascivious and unapproachable. And, of course, it's only a matter of time before she let's down her guard and buries her head in Jacob's shoulder.I don't know David Brin's story, but Sundiver leaves me thinking that the author has a serious ego deficit that he needs to compensate for with his heros.I decided to read this in preparation to read Startide Rising, which won the 1983 Hugo award for best novel. Unless I hear differently, I may very skip that one.
—Mark
The Uplift books are tied for my favorite sci-fi series with Asimov's original Foundation series. This is sci-fi at its very best. Brin goes through an astonishing number of fascinating ideas and concepts, but leaves them for the reader to peruse or discard. Want racial allegory? Sure. Prefer religion? Plenty of it. Political intrigue? It's there by the truckload.When Brin goes into pretend-science he goes all in. One can almost sense his smirk going through this first book: that's right, this book has talking chimpanzees and dolphin haikus and spaceships flying into the sun. Wanna fight about it? It works, and the mileage he forces out of it is outstanding.And to top everything off he makes a point of tying off each book with an epic space battle, punctuated with a stunt humans come up with that surprises (or angers) their alien counterparts for sheer boldness and audacity. What's not to love?
—Will Caskey
