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.

Review: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Published: HarperCollins UK/Bantam Spectra (1993)

Series: Book 1 of the Mars Trilogy

Awards: British Science Fiction Association Award, Nebula Award

Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, and Locus SF Awards

The Book:

“For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.

The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.”

~from barnesandnoble.com

I’ve been meaning to read the Mars Trilogy for quite a while, ever since I enjoyed Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt years ago.   Given the length of the trilogy, and the overpowering density of detail I expected from Robinson’s work, I somehow just kept putting it off.  Now, I’m finally doing it, and Red Mars is a wonderful first installment of the series.  I would personally say that it stands alone as a novel, but I have heard other opinions.  It certainly leads into the second novel, sort of like how the 20^th century led right into the 21^st.

My Thoughts:

I would say that, above all else, Red Mars is a hard SF novel. The focus of Red Mars is the process of colonization and the formation of a Martian society.  I’m sure a tremendous amount of research went into extrapolating how current technology could advance in such a way as to make the colonization possible.  Robinson is incredibly thorough, and he meticulously details everything, from the construction of the habitats, to the many different efforts towards terraforming, and so on.  I particularly enjoyed the terraforming discussions.  Robinson describes all the different ideas the scientists on Mars have for increasing the surface temperature, thickening the atmosphere, and increasing the oxygen content of the air.  Not everything is a success, and some of the plans backfire in interesting ways.  Robinson shows us the effects of the settlement and the terraforming on Mars through lengthy descriptions of the planet’s countryside and geography.  Whether or not all of the technology he describes could be real one day, almost all of it seems completely plausible. 

Beyond the physical effort of colonization, he also spends an immense amount of time detailing the sociological, political, and economical forces shaping the colonization.  The colonization begins with the First Hundred, carefully selected specialists that are sent to establish the first dwellings on the Martian surface.  Even among the First Hundred, there are many conflicting ideas of how Martian society should be shaped, what their relationship should be to the Earth, and to what extent Mars should be terraformed.  The situation becomes immensely further complicated when their past catches up with them in the form of governmental controls, transnational corporations with their eyes on profit, and desperate, culturally diverse immigrants from the crowded Earth.

The narrative is from the point of view of people from the First Hundred, and it shifts with each major segment of the book.  I enjoyed that, even though it was in third person, the narration felt distinctive for each character.  While none of the characters seemed universally sympathetic, they were all well-rounded and had interesting ways of seeing the world.  My personal favorite segment was that of the homesick French psychologist Michel Duval.  However, even while we’re following hard-working, cynical Frank’s bitterness, idealistic, Mars-loving Ann’s despair, or the drama queen Maya’s love triangle, the focus is always on Mars.  They are all just the human windows through which we are allowed to see the development of Martian history.

Though I was very entertained by Red Mars, I have to admit that, in my opinion, it was not a completely flawless book. It’s very slowly paced, and the human stories were often overshadowed by the huge amount of scientific, geographic, social, and political information that ran through the narrative.  Furthermore, some of Robinson’s guesses for the future were a little off, so the novel sometimes feels a little dated.  For instance, Robinson’s colonization of Mars is headed by the US and Russia in the 2020s.  I’m not sure who could head that kind of a multi-billion dollar project given today’s economy, but I doubt it would be US/Russian.  Also, his Earth is collapsing under a Malthusian population crisis, something that doesn’t really appear to be hanging over us at the moment (or maybe I just don’t see the signs!). 

One other element that bothered me was his most fanciful technological development—an immortality treatment.  I think he included it so that we could follow the same characters through a large swathe of Martian history, and so that Earth’s population problems would more quickly come to the breaking point.  However, compared to how much detail he lavished on the other technology of the novel, the DNA-repairing, anti-aging treatment seemed almost like a simple plot device.  Despite all of this, I think I can solidly recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in reading an in-depth description of Martian colonization.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Red Mars is an immersive, thorough, near-future account of the colonization of Mars and the subsequent development of Martian society.  It is terrific hard SF, with plenty of ecology, geography, physics, sociology, politics, engineering, and economics to keep your mind engaged.  It also features well-developed, if not completely likable, characters through which the reader watches the future unfold.  Though it is thick with information and slow-paced, it is a fascinating vision of the sort of future we could still be moving towards.

Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Published: Candlewick Press  (2009), Walker (2008)

Awards: Booktrust Teenage Prize, Guardian Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Series: Book 1 of Chaos Walking

The Book:

“Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too.

With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.”

~From barnesandnoble.com

I’m reading this book in preparation for reading the Arthur C. Clarke award nominee Monsters of Men, which is the final book of the Chaos Walking trilogy.  I’m also reading it in order to participate in the 2011 Book Club over at the Calico Reaction book review blog. The novel does end on a cliffhanger that leads in to the second installment in the series, but the overall story was self-contained enough that it didn’t leave me feeling dissatisfied.

My Thoughts:

The New World was a very interesting setting for the story.  It’s an alien planet, colonized by a religious group that seems vaguely similar to the Amish.  The Noise germ is the main player that shapes human life on the New World.  Ness shows the tangle of men’s minds as word pictures throughout the book, and even the animals broadcast their simple thoughts.   Manchee, Todd’s dog, is surprisingly endearing with his adoring childish statements, and even the squirrels, gators, and more exotic alien animals can’t help leaking their intentions to the world.

While there is a lot of focus on the Noise in the book, there is actually somewhat less on the adaptations of New World societies to the mind-rending churn of thoughts pouring out of all the men.  It added an interesting snarl to gender relations, which is something I think that this series might continue to explore.  I enjoyed the occasional glimpse as to how different groups of people dealt with the problem, and I hope that the later installments will allow a closer inspection of the different types of settler communities. 

The plot of the novel is very straightforward.  Todd and the girl are fleeing the evil men of Todd’s hometown.  On the way, they learn more about the New World society, humanity’s place on the world, and what it means to ‘be a man’.  I get the feeling that this series is going to be a little like The Hunger Games in that the first installment has a very simple, straightforward story, but the sequels take on much more.  However, even with that feeling, there were times that the plot felt too implausible or contrived.  Frequently, insanity was used to explain people’s actions, or information was arbitrarily withheld from the reader simply because the narrator wasn’t very good at expressing himself.

The narrator in question is Todd Hewitt, an illiterate, adolescent, farm boy.  He has a highly unique manner of expression that stomps all over traditional English grammar and spelling.  It was a little difficult to get into at first, but the similarity to southern US speech patterns (My home!  I miss my home!) ended up endearing Todd to me, despite his many flaws.  I’m not sure how relatable Todd’s manner of telling the story would be to someone who lacks my nostalgia factor.  

One thing I could not get over, which I mentioned above, was Todd’s occasional inability to adequately communicate the story.  There were several major examples of this, all of them when important plot information is revealed to Todd.  It seemed like just a cheap way of putting off telling the reader key information.  I would have preferred that there be a better reason than just the poor descriptive ability of the narrator.

Even beyond his communication skills, Todd could sometimes be a pretty infuriating protagonist.  I think it was meant to be a reflection of his upbringing, but he was very rude and completely lacking in curiosity.  It simply never occurs to him that someone could be thinking or feeling something that is not communicated to him telepathically.  As a result, he has never had to learn to read body or facial cues, or even to put himself in other people’s shoes. 

On the same line of thought, he also doesn’t seek or assimilate information very well.  This does makes sense, when you consider that he’s spent his whole life trying to ignore the flood of information from others. Thanks to this flaw, the reader can pretty much figure anything out dozens of chapters before Todd, and it’s a little frustrating waiting for the little guy to catch up. As a more direct consequence, Todd sometimes makes really horrible decisions based on his inadequate information.  Todd does grow and change throughout the story, however, and I think overcoming his weaknesses is going to be as much a part of his maturation as learning the truth behind the world on which he lives.

My Rating: 3/5

Overall, I’m glad to have read this novel, and I intend to read the rest of the series over the next few weeks.   I enjoyed the world Ness has created, and I constantly fluctuated between caring about and being really annoyed with the characters.  The a-grammatical prose might be a hindrance to enjoyment for some readers, but it didn’t bother me very much past the first few chapters.  The world was fascinating enough to help me forgive the weaknesses in plot construction, and I look forward to learning more in the books to come!