Review: Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer

Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer

Published: Ace Books/Analog, 1996

Awards Nominated: Hugo and Nebula Awards

The Book:

“In the future, the discovery of artificial wormholes has put the sentient Earth races (humans and dolphins) in contact with their counterparts from two other worlds, the argumentative Waldahudins and polite, long-lived Ibs.  For diplomacy and managing future first contact situations, the vessel Starplex was designed, with an environment that allows all four races to live and work together.

Keith Lansing is the current director of Starplex, and his watch is filled with wonders, disasters and personal struggles.  He will lead his crew through scientific mysteries, encounters with new species, and even violent conflict, all while struggling to master his own midlife crisis.” ~Allie

This is another one I listened to on audiobook, and it's my next installment for Stainless Steel Droppings' Sci-Fi Experience.  Instead of listening on commute, my husband and I both listened to this one together during long car trips.  As our first jointly-listening-audiobook, I think this one was quite a success. This is my third Sawyer novel, after Hominids and The Terminal Experiment. Sawyer stated in the introduction that this novel was his ‘swan song’ for far future science fiction, as he planned to shift his focus to near-future stories.  This one makes me think I should check out some more of his earlier work, because his far future stories are pretty fun!

My Thoughts:

My strongest impression of Starplex is that this was a very busy book.  There are so many ideas, mysteries and subplots packed in that I was skeptical it would come to a coherent end.  Sawyer mentioned in the introduction that he wanted to address many of the cosmological questions of our time, and it was a fun surprise to see what fictional answers were provided.  Some of the topics included were dark matter, the expansion of the universe, and the formation of spiral galaxies.  While there was never a dull moment, it sometimes felt like the story was jumping from subplot to subplot, without a strong enough central thread to hold everything together.  The most central, continuous story would be Keith’s midlife crisis and his relationship with his wife, Rissa, and I felt like this came to a nice resolution by the end of the story.

Keith and Rissa were interesting characters, but the rest of the crew also brought the story to life.  All four sentient races were represented aboard Starplex, and I really liked how their physiology and culture shaped their personalities.  On the level of stereotype, each alien race was translated into a particular accent— Brooklyn for the argumentative Waldahudin and a prim British accent for the polite Ibs.  The dolphins played a smaller role, but also had a distinct view of life. The wide variety in character perspective really enriched the setting and the interactions between characters.

Speaking of the setting, I really enjoyed this universe.  I liked that Starplex was not built on a military model, and I loved the emphasis on science and diplomacy. I liked all the detail that went into the imagining of a starship that could support each species in separately in comfort, and adequately together.  The crew faced some entertaining scientific puzzles and problems, and it was fun to watch them reason their way through.  In addition, there was some space-based combat that occurs later in the book, for those who like a bit more action.  Even this conflict involved entertaining considerations of physics, especially since the diplomatic Starplex does not have anything designed to be a weapon.  Altogether, it was a very fun book, set in a lively universe that I can still hope he will revisit one day!

My Rating: 4/5

Starplex is my favorite Sawyer novel to date.  His far-future universe was a very interesting place, and I liked the different perspective his various sentient alien species brought to the story.  There is a big focus on cosmology and physics in the story, which provides fictional answers for a number of open questions.  I really loved how the story revolved around scientists solving problems and mysteries, and how physics considerations came into play in ship maneuvers and the small amount of combat.  It seemed like there were almost too many different subplots folded into this compact novel, but I was satisfied by how all of the important points were resolved in the end. Starplex was a very entertaining book!

Review: The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer

Published: Analog Science Fiction & Fact / HarperPrism (1994)

Awards Won: Nebula Award

Awards Nominated: Hugo Award

The Book:

“After a defining experience as a young student, Peter Hobson had a deep interest in determining the exact moment of a person’s death.  His related research made him a wealthy man, but it was his discovery of the soul leaving the human body that made him a true celebrity.

People frequently ask Peter what the afterlife is like, but he really has no idea. With the help of his best friend Sarkar Muhammed, an AI specialist, Peter decides to answer this question by modeling his own mind in three different versions: one is a ‘control’ version, one is meant to simulate immortality, and one is meant to simulate a bodiless afterlife.  However, the copies were recorded just after Peter’s personal life was rocked by an unexpected betrayal, and it appears to have caused one of the simulations to become a killer!”  ~Allie

This is the second novel I’ve read by Robert J. Sawyer, and it’s definitely my favorite of his novels thus far.  I was not a fan of Hominids, but I’m glad I decided to try another of his novels.  This is another audiobook that I listened to during my daily commute!

My Thoughts:

The science of The Terminal Experiment might not have been terribly realistic, but I thought the fictional science elements (including simulated human minds and the detection of the soul) were really fun. The understanding of computers was a little short-term retro, due to the publication date. For instance, I had to laugh a little bit when after recording the entirety of Peter Hobson’s mind, the narrator commented, “Gigabytes of information had been recorded”.  However, I’ve always been fascinated by the stories including electronic simulations of human consciousness, so I was perfectly willing to suspend disbelief for the story.  As for the existence of the soul, it was interesting to see how the world would change if it could be scientifically proven that there was some kind of afterlife.  All in all, I thought it was a really cool set of ‘what-ifs’ to build a story around.

I felt like the story was as much a drama as it was a murder mystery. The murder mystery part arrives fairly late in the story, so it is important that the reader be drawn in by the protagonist’s life story.  I initially disliked Peter Hobson, mostly for his contempt and his tendency to generalize dislike of specific people to broad categories of the population.  However, though his own personal narrative often glosses over his shortcomings, I felt like the reader was meant to notice and acknowledge his flaws. Most of the focus of the story is on Peter, and on the variations of his personality.  Other characters, including his wife, her co-workers, and her parents, are seen mostly through Peter’s eyes, and so don’t have the same depth.  One secondary character that I particularly enjoyed, though, was his best friend Sarkar—I think that it is not very common to encounter religious scientists in fiction, and even less common to encounter Muslim scientists.

The murder mystery propelled the plot in the later part of the book, but I didn’t think it was the most interesting part of the story.  It seemed like the consideration of the effects of technology on society fell a bit by the wayside when the murder investigation got underway.  The mystery was also very predictable, so there was not much in the way of a puzzle for the reader.  I still found it pretty exciting, though, to see Peter try to work his way to the solution and keep ‘himself’ from killing again. Peter's story was one that was easy to be drawn into, even through audio. In the end, The Terminal Experiment was an entertaining sci-fi thriller that has brightened my daily travels.

My Rating: 3.5/5

The Terminal Experiment is a mind-uploading murder mystery that revolves around the drama of scientist Peter Hobson’s personal life.  Though the science is dated, I thought the central speculative ideas of the story—the proof of existence of a soul and the ability to electronically copy human minds—were really fun.  I would have liked for the story to involve more of how these discoveries could affect society, rather than moving into a predictable mystery plot.  All the same, Peter Hobson, and his three electronic alter-egos were interestingly flawed central characters, and I also enjoyed many of the secondary characters that filled his world, such as his friend Sarkar, the AI specialist.  Overall, I enjoyed The Terminal Experiment, and it has left me feeling more positive about trying out others of Sawyer’s novels in the future!

Review: Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

Published: Tor, 2002

Series: Book 1 of the Neanderthal Parallax

Awards: Hugo Award

Nominated: John W. Campbell Memorial Award

The Book:

“Hominids examines two unique species of people. We are one of those species; the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they became the dominant intelligence. The Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but with radically different history, society and philosophy.

Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. Almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist, he is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended—by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence, and especially by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport.

Ponter’s partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter? “ ~from barnesandnoble.com

Hominids is the first novel I’ve read by Robert J. Sawyer.  It stands on its own as a novel, but it pretty clearly leads into the sequel, Humans.

My Thoughts:

As a physicist myself, I was delighted when the story opened with the link between worlds appearing in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, under the nose of the post-doc Louise Benoit.  Physics continues to play a prominent role in the story, but Sawyer quickly takes it from the realm of real science to the realm of wild speculation.  In addition to physics, Sawyer’s story also relies on anthropology, specifically concerning the differences between Neanderthals and Humans.  Of course, his anthropological information also moves way past actual science into the realm of conjecture, as Sawyer creates his own modern Neanderthal society. 

Sadly, he does not spend much time at all explaining how the impressive technology of the Neanderthals was developed.  For instance, all Neanderthals have a ‘companion’ implanted in their wrist, which records their entire life as viewed from a short distance away.  When the characters discuss the companions, they give no detailed suggestions as to how it could actually work.  I found myself occasionally frustrated by Sawyer’s minimal treatment of his futuristic technology, in addition to the artistic license he took with accepted sciences.

The two parallel plotlines follow Ponter, as he learns about the human world, and his man-mate Adikor, who is left behind to deal with Ponter’s disappearance.  My favorite of the two stories was definitely Adikor’s.  Sawyer created an interesting modern Neanderthal society, though I wish the book allowed us to see more of it.  I found Adikor to be an engaging protagonist.  He is intelligent, active, and has interesting internal conflicts as a result of his place in his society.

The Neanderthal world contains a hunter-gatherer society extrapolated forward into modern times. Neanderthals are typically bisexual, and most have a mate of each gender.  They tend to live with their same-gender mate, and meet with the opposite-gender mate for a brief period each month.  The stable two-partner system created some interesting webs of social connections, but I didn’t really accept that strict gender separation was necessarily a positive thing.  The Neanderthals also practice basic eugenics, and they monitor everyone for every second of their life.  Strangely, Sawyer portrays the constant surveillance, strict gender roles, and genetic culling as positive aspects of society.  Adikor’s story does illustrate some flaws in their community, but the novel still comes across as strongly in favor of this oppressive regime.

In Adikor’s story, Adikor and Ponter are conducting a science experiment in a nickel mine, deep underground, when Ponter vanishes. Their Companions were unable to send recordings to the central database, so some believe that Adikor lured his man-mate into the mines in order to kill him unobserved.  Adikor must find a way to prove his innocence, or he will suffer terrible consequences.  The secondary characters involved, such as Ponter’s daughter Jasmel and Adikor’s accuser Daklar Bolbay (Ponter’s deceased woman-mate’s woman mate), are reasonably fleshed out and necessary to the plot.  They don’t receive a huge amount of attention in the narrative, but they are believable as individuals with their own fears and desires.  Overall, I enjoyed watching the workings of Neanderthal society as Adikor tried to save both Ponter and himself.

Ponter’s story in the human world is considerably less active.  He becomes acquainted with the humans, particularly Mary Vaughan, and learns about the differences between the two worlds.  This plotline had a tendency to become fairly preachy.  It is understandable that Ponter would have a rose-colored view of his home world, since he is lonely and homesick.  To some extent, his idealized view of Neanderthal society is tempered by the less than ideal events of Adikor’s storyline.  The humans, however, seem strangely determined to represent our world in the worst possible light.  Ponter even has to convince them to lighten up occasionally, by pointing out remarkable things our civilization has accomplished.  I sometimes found myself mentally arguing with the book, as the humans harped on our world’s ‘terrible’ societies, beliefs, and history.

The characters in Ponter’s story seemed much flatter than in the other plotline.  The three Human companions (geneticist Mary Vaughan, physicist Louise Benoit, and doctor Reuben Montego) mostly exist as Ponter’s soundboard.  They are essentially just people plucked by chance out of their normal life to interact with a Neanderthal.  The one with the largest role is Mary Vaughan, who becomes Ponter’s love interest.  At the very beginning of the book, she is raped by a stranger in a dark alley.  I kept expecting this to be necessary to the plot somehow, but, in the end, it just seemed gratuitous.  As far as I could tell, she was raped so that there could be a rape victim character, in order to add emotional weight to the anti-human arguments.  This really bothered me.  Furthermore, Mary is the religious character, a Catholic, though she seems oddly ignorant of her own religion. In a way, Mary is set up as religion’s inadequate advocate, just as the others are set up as humanity’s inadequate defenders.  As a result, humanity comes off looking the worse in every conversation, not because of any particular points that were made, but because it has such a poor defense.  I would have liked to see more depth to the human characters, instead of just seeing them as people who react to Ponter.

My Rating: 2/5

I appreciated the bits of physics and anthropology described in Hominids, and I’m generally willing to overlook some questionable science for the sake of a story. I enjoyed reading about the Neanderthal society, even while I thought it was kind of horrifying, and I found Adikor’s story very entertaining.  However, Ponter’s story mostly killed my enjoyment of the book.  Very little seemed to happen, and their conversations had a tendency to devolve into anti-human preaching.  I never really believed the human characters as individuals, since they didn’t really seem to have much depth to their personalities.  Ultimately, from my point of view, the interesting premise of the book was crushed by the preachiness of Ponter’s storyline.