I had very high expectations for this book and was dissapointed that for the most part, they were not met. I loved Startide Rising. The pacing was fast, the action was plenty and the scope was incredible. The idea that a lone ship crewed mostly by dolphins had accidently happened upon a derelict fleet consinsting of thousands of moon-sized vessels was fascinating. That was the main reason I read on through Startide and then to Uplift War, to find out what exactly it was that they found. Unfortunately, as with Sundiver, Brin makes promises that he doesn't keep. He starts out with one idea that eventually transforms into something completely different and leaves the orignal idea unresolved. With Sundiver, it was the beings in the sun. They went on a mission to discover what they were but by the end, we don't find out and instead we learn of a Galactic plot against humans. In the Uplift War, a brutal (though it's hard to think of 4 foot squaking birds as brutal) alien race blockades the planet Garth, a fringe world leased to humans, to take hostages and try to get information from Earth as to what it was the dolphins aboard Streaker really found. By the end of the book, we don't learn anything new about that at all. It turns out that Earth doesn't know anything more than the Gubru do, so the book shifts coarse and focuses on the chimps and the Gubru's claim that they are not truly sentient. (I realize this is a bit of a spoiler, but for anyone holding expectations about this area, I think it is a good head's up.) This new dierection isn't uninteresting. I love Brin's universe. I find myself comparing other sci-fi universes to it because the idea of uplifing races into sentience is brilliant. This book focuses a lot on the moral implications of patronizing a new race and the consequences for taking that duty lightly. This was an entertaining subject, but it's not what I started the book intending to read. I don't want to call the book boring, but it definitely is long. I don't necessarily have a problem with lengthy texts, but here there seemed to be a lot that could've remained on the cutting room floor. In particular there was a scene with Fiben (a lead character chimp) trying to escape from a bar/eating establishment being run by the enemy, and accidently getting on stage and making a show and entertaining the crowd. This went on for pages and pages and got to be pretty cheesy, almost to the point that it was emberassing to read it. And for the length, the characters didn't seem as developed as I would have liked. Well, perhaps some were developed but I didn't really empathise with them. Robert for example, really the only human main character, wasn't a very interesting character at all. He was very knowlegable, very strong, good with weapons, a skilled tactitian, good with survival tactics, loved by women... yawn. I had a hard time not picturing him to look like a Native-American Rambo. The only time he seemed to be a human was when he was torn between his love for Athaclena and a human lover. Athaclena however, was an interesting character. She is of an alien species called Tymbrimi that greatly resembled humans but have strong empathic abilites and also the ablility to alter their bodies in subtle ways to adapt to environments and situations. Her character was complicated, always with conflicing emotions. She grew from the start of the book as a whiny teenage alien to a grown adult leading a resistance force. Her father and his hulking Thennanin friend were great characters as well. The chimps, while well developed, were to me, just too goofy to be taken seriously. Granted, they are chimps and they do chimp things like howl and pick parasites off one another. This is realistic but hard to believe in a starfaring race. I found a lot of the chapters revolving aorund them pretty boring. There is a fair amount of action in this book, though not as much as the title would suggest. There is a brief glimpse of space combat in the beginning, followed by some guerrila (and gorilla) warfare through the first half of the book that was pretty cool. From there, the action was moslty absent until the end, and even then not much is really described. The Uplift Intrigue might have suited better. So I liked this book, or I wouldn't have given it 3 stars, but it adds very little to the story that begun with Startide Rising. I haven't yet started the next the books, but I have a feeling that if I jumped from Startide to Brightness Reef, I wouldn't be missing much. It seems to be a pit stop on the way to the rest of the story. We go from a dozen alien races clashing in battle of the most important discovery in a billion years, to one race (and a rather silly one at that) holding a fringe world hostage that no one in the galaxy really cares about. The ending of Uplift War is a bit surprising and I liked it, but as a whole it didn't satisfy my expectations. Still, I like this universe and its concepts enough that I will continue reading. Brin is a good writer and I would still recommend him to fans of sci-fi.
David Brin has created an interesting universe for his "Uplift" novels. Billions of years ago, a spacefaring race known as the Progenitors helped lift other, more primitive species to sentience, space travel, and partcipation in galactic civilization. These races, in turn, sponsored other promising species on their upward paths, and so the cycle continued, proteges indentured to their patrons for ten thousand years, becoming sponsors in turn. But then an upstart,"wolfling" race appeared, which achieved sentience on its own, learned the secrets of space travel, and uplifted two species on its homeworld, all without the guidance and protection of a "superior" race. This risky, upstart wolf pack? Humans.Snobbish, conservative aliens, like the avian Gubru, regard humans and their clients, uplifted chimpanzees and dolphins, as misguided children or unreformed savages. More tolerant aliens, like the humanoid Tymbrimi, see our promise instead. Besides, the Tymbrimi ambassador, Uthacalthing, appreciates our sense of humor, especially the Three Stooges.At the opening of the novel, Humanity has been given the opportunity to rehabilitate the planet Garth. Two earlier alien species brought the planet to the brink of complete ecological collapse. Since humanity bareley averted a similar fate on Earth, perhaps they can nurture life on this damaged world.However, the scheming Gubru want the world for themselves. They believe a native species, the fabled "Garthlings," still survives on Garth. If they could find and uplift the Garthlings, the Gubru would gain stature in galactic society. They pursue this as part of a greater effort to put the younger, "lesser" races in their places, and elevate older species, which they see as closer to the ancient Progenitors' plan. The Gubru invade Garth, but are somewhat restricted by the galactic rules of war. A complex set of protocols limits them from outright slaughter, or wholesale destruction. They must at some point justify and defend their actions before galactic society. This doesn't prevent them from using "hostage gas" to render humans unable to fight. If they didn't get the mix quite right, and a number of humans happen to die, ah well, a regrettable accident.Thus, the main resistance to the invasion falls to a few humans who avoided the gas, the neo-chimpanzees, and the Tymbrimi ambassador's daughter, Athaclena. Most of the war in the title takes place offstage. The novel deals mainly with how the survivors respond to the invasion, how the Tymbrimi attempt to take advantage of the rigid Gubru mindset, and the adventures of neo-chimpazee Fiben as he becomes an unlikely hero for his people.I enjoyed the light hearted tone of the novel. Uthalcalthing and Fiben both have an irreverent sense of humor, cracking wise at the darkest moments. The author doesn't linger on violence. The Gubru and their Kwackoo servants both have birdlike ancestors, so it's hard to get too put out by squawking, strutting, feather-shedding villains. Chicken jokes do appear.I did find the novel a bit long and repetitive in parts. Also, Mr. Brin must have discovered a book of obscure words, since he used dozens of them in the book. They defeated my three dictionaries, so I made note of them and looked them up online. Many had less arcane synonyms. On pages 70-71, he uses the following words: brumous (foggy, or wintry), cachinnatous (laughing loudly or immoderately), atrichic (hairless), bromopnean (having halitosis), and applanate (flattened or horizontally expanded). Although I enjoyed the challenge, it brought my reading to a screeching halt, and kicked me right ot of the book. At one point, I did contemplate launching the book across the room. I deducted a star just for this.Overall though, a fun adventure with a fascinating setting.
What do You think about The Uplift War (1987)?
Although the ideas about environmentalism and uplifted species are powerful and the universe that Brin creates is interesting, this book, like the previous two in the series, fails to deliver on its promise. Brin repeatedly raises huge questions about the universe, evolution, sentience, and ethics, and he repeatedly defers them in favor of a more limited plot structure (in the first book, he tells a mystery story; in the second book, he tells an adventure story; and in this book, he tells a story of war and political intrigue).After the more than 600 pages of this book, I still have no more answers about the big questions that were raised in the previous two books. This is very frustrating. I would give the book a lower rating, but there are passages that are exciting or compelling in one way or another and there are characters and species types who are interesting. In short, this book (and series) is disappointing and frustrating in light of the larger issues Brin raises, but, from a more limited perspective, it is at least generally entertaining.
—Christy
Guerilla warfareHehHeh hehGet it?This book is pretty damn good, to summarize, due to the events of the previous novel Startide Rising (Which is reccomended, but not required reading for this one, mind you) various Alien races have declared war on mankind, and Humans inhabiting the planet Garth fall prey to the predations of the nasty Gburu race.Central to the setting is the idea of ''uplift'', or a sentient race elevating animals to sapience using a long, slow process of selective breeding and genetic engineering, the humans of this setting have ''uplifted'' both Chimpanzees and Dolphins in this fashion.This is a well put together novel, it neatly combines the military, political and sociological aspects of fighting an alien invasion, unlike most novels in the genre which generally have a disproportionately heavy focus on the military side of things.A common problem with Alien invasion stories is that they often fall into the traps of making so that humans are just naturally better than Aliens at everything. This story nicely avoids both by shining the main spotlight away from Human characters and onto Uplifted Chimpanzees and Alien allies of Humanity.One Gripe I have about this novel is that the author falls onto the old trope of ''unreasonably Human aliens'' with one of the main characters/ This is a little bit disappointing because I know that David Brin can write Alien Aliens well, and even does so in this novel
—Chris
Let’s get one thing straight. The Uplift War is not military science fiction. There is a war, yes, and there are some appropriately war-like moments, but the emphasis is, once again, on the ‘Uplift’ and not on the ‘War’. Arguably, one the greatest strengths of The Uplift War and its predecessors, is the alien element. Brin certainly went the whole hog when he was designing and imagining his Galactics. This is where these books shine. Each alien race has its own culture and corresponding cultural oddities, and some of them are quite bizarre. That being said, I had a difficult time of it imagining the Gubru as an intimidating warlike race, despite all their hardware. They always seemed to remind me of oversized chicks, or broilers, or canaries. Tweety with a laser rifle and an attitude?So, yes, the Gooksyu-Gubru have it in for earthclan. They really want to know what the Streaker spaceship found out in the star-lanes (see Startide Rising), so they set off for Garth (a planet leased by Earth in an attempt to undo ecological harm that has transpired there) on an official ‘crusade’. The galactic politics are interesting and at least come up with some plausible explanations why the aliens don’t just roast earth, which is obviously the grand prize if you think Humans are not worthy of their patron status, and be done with it. The ‘War’ is mostly concerned with the guerrilla efforts of the neo-chimpanzees on Garth to undermine their new, and unwelcome, rulers. Mostly. But this novel isn’t just about the war. It’s also about a lot of other things, most notably a Tymbrimi ‘practical joke’ that goes WAY beyond the average April Fool’s day.There is a lot of science in here. Biological science, ecological science, chemical science, linguistics, you name it. By the time Brin was writing this, he was apparently feeling comfortable enough with his writing skills and the success of the first two Uplift novels to utilise the kitchen sink approach. Some of the characters are truly delightful, such as the Neo-Chimp Fiben Bolger and Uthacalthing, the Tymbrimi ambassador to Garth.The novel teeters on a fine edge, yet somehow manages not to topple into the realm of being overly complicated. Well, barring perhaps the Galactic code of conduct and all that. All in all, it comes together nicely. Expect some great twists. But you already knew that, didn’t you, having already read Sundiver and Startide Rising? Oh, and of course, this novel has neo-gorillas!
—Dirk Grobbelaar
