Hominids

Rating:
Summary: Hominids Is Awesome! Sawyer is Awesome!
Review: I have always enjoyed Robert J. Sawyer's writing, and this new trilogy is seemingly no different. Once again he has outdone himself in terms of style and creativity. The book is incredible, and the next two of the series should be no different. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've ever read
Review: I fell in love with this book as soon as i read it. It was masterfully crafted.

Rating:
Summary: Score one for the Homonids
Review: The story in a nutshell: in a parallel universe, the Neanderthals evolved to become the dominant species while the humans died out. The book's hero, Ponter Bondit, Neanderthal and all around nice guy finds, himself in a parallel universe, namely ours!

The story alternates between Bondit's partner trying to figure out a way to get Ponter back (along with other problems I won't mention so as not to spoil the book) and Ponter's experiences on an Earth (ours) decidedly different than the one he came from.

What makes the book fascinating is how, sociologically, the Neanderthals dealt with the problems of society. The book gets just a little heavy handed when dealing with our abuses of the environment (vs the saner choices of the Neanderthals) - but it makes valid points and is very thought provoking.

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Summary: The Finest in anthropological fiction!
Review: As a science teacher, I am an avid reader of anthropology textbooks and fiction. I have read most college level textbooks of anthropology, most factual books of paleoanthropology from Ian Tattersall and the rest, and most works of fiction on the subject ranging from Jane Aeul's series to Petru Propescu's "Almost Adam". It was in a dry spell, as I had consumed all there was, that I found Robert J. Sawyer's "Hominids". Normally, I tend to stay away from science fiction, but, a Neanderthal Parallax? I had to give this one a chance.
Hominids was a feast for my eyes, my mind, my heart, and my humanity. It raises compelling questions about our human condition from a very outside and an rational perspective. It is well researched, which is a requirement for a good anthropological fiction in my mind. Aeul explored the caves in France, but, Sawyer MET with Tattersall!!!
I now hold the second book of the trilogy "Humans" in my hands, it just arrived yesterday. I have never waited for a book with such anticipation. I feel like a boy with my first new bike, the anticipation to ride so very exciting, yet a challenging aspect about it causes me to hesitate and take it step my step, so when I have conquered it I will experience the thrill and absorb the accomplishment just to prepared myself for the next level; the third book in the trilogy: "Hybrids". This book is by far the best I have ever read, and I have read them all.

Rating:
Summary: First rate ... great start to what looks like a great series
Review: I loved this book. Sawyer has a way of really using the tools of science fiction to examine social issues. In this case, privacy. He explores all the ins and outs of a monitored society (that happens to be based on Neanderthals instead of Homo sapiens). Lots of positives are seen, but some negatives too (a major subplot is a trial that is based on the privacy issue. The characters - human and neanderthal - are real and fascinating, not just straw to explore the issues, but the issues never get short shrift. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: There's No "There" There
Review: I was pretty disappointed with this book. It felt like it had the plot of a short story, stretched out to accommodate people talking about stuff the writer researched. The main character Mary was raped, and I had the feeling the writer didn't really think hard about women's reactions to rape. It read more like a guy thinking about how he guesses a woman might feel about being raped. This is no small criticism since much of the book tries (and rarely succeeds) to deal with gender rolls and violence. Sorry, but this is a pass-it-up kind of book. Save your money.

Rating:
Summary: The best novel ever about Neanderthals
Review: Sawyer has obviously done extensive research. It's apparent not just from the exhaustive list of Neanderthal experts listed in his acknowledgments, but also in every page of the text. If the Neanderthals had survived to develop a technological civilization, I suspect it would indeed have been much like what Sawyer has described here. And HOMINIDS is also a fast-paced, deeply moving novel of character. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: A near-masterpiece of alternate world storytelling
Review: Almost every science fiction reader has experience with alternate world stories -- plots in which things happened differently than in our own history because of some event, usually trivial, that went another way. Sawyer postulates a truly far-reaching point-of-divergence -- the rise to intelligence of Homo neanderthalensis instead of Homo sapiens. What's more, he makes a pretty good case for the physics behind his parallel worlds. It all starts in a deep nickel mine in northern Ontario which in our world is a neutrino observation lab and in the alternate Neanderthal world is a quantum computer lab. Ponter Boddit, physicist in that other world, falls through into our own world quite by accident, and the story is off and running. Because not only does Ponter have to figure out this world (and we have to accept what he is), his co-worker and house-mate, Adikor Huld, finds himself accused of murdering Ponter, who has mysteriously disappeared from their world. Sawyer is very good at thinking of all the problems and questions a reader is likely to raise and answering them satisfactorily -- in terms of the story, that is, though most of his speculations, even, seem like reasonably good science. He describes an internally consistent Neanderthal world, in which the Agricultural Revolution never took place and so the world's population is far smaller and more dispersed, which also means disease is much less prevalent. Because males and females live separate lives most of the time, nearly all individuals have both a man-mate and a woman-mate, one for affection and companionship, the other also for procreation. Menstruation occurs for all females at once, always on the same schedule, and children are born in planned generations, once every ten years. And, as one would expect, the Neanderthal world is more advanced in some ways than ours, and vice versa -- which also gives the author the opportunity to let us look at our own world through the eyes of an intelligent and sophisticated but mostly alien being. In fact, I expect there to be a backlash against this book by the Religious Right, because Ponter has some forthright things to say about the nature and effect of religion in our world -- an unnecessary psychological tension his world has been spared. As always, Sawyer also develops fully realized characters, with some cogent comments on the nature of intelligence, love, violence, and interpersonal relationships. Happily, this is only the first volume of a trilogy, and I'll be looking forward eagerly to the next volume.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: I bought this one pretty much on the spur of the moment - I read the blurb on the inside of the dust jacket, liked the idea, went home and ordered it online.

When it arrived I read it in one evening. That's both a testament to the quality of the writing and a commentary on the fact that this isn't a particularly hefty book. The cover says it's the first of a series, having finished it I can't help but wonder if Sawyer wrote a much longer book that the publisher's now decided to publish as a trilogy of slim books instead of one fat one.

I won't deal with the plot summary - other reviewers have covered that in plenty of detail and if all else fails, go read the dust jacket. It's interesting to read an "alternate history" book (even if it's strictly a parallel, rather than an alternate history) where the author's gone *way* back in time and projected forward, rather than the more common "something didn't happen 100/200/500 years ago, extrapolate from there" approach. There's a lot more room for divergence, which in turn gives the imagination an equally large space to explore.

As indicated by others, this is basically two stories intertwined, with a common beginning and end. Both threads are equally readable - in one you learn of the Neanderthal culture through direct exposure, in the other through the protagonist's exposure to our own culture. These contrasting views work well together - in one thread you're the puzzled onlooker trying to figure out an alien yet understandable civilization, in the other you're familiar with the culture, but it's set in a new light through the perceptions of someone from the Neanderthal culture.

It's not perfect - some of the characterizations are a little flat (although this may change over the course of the series), at least one plot event is very unsubtly planted in such a way that you know how it's going to be used long before it actually is, and Sawyer's portrayal of the Neanderthal culture, while fascinatingly detailed, at times seems over-idealistic, as though it was created with the deliberate aim of making our own civilization look even worse than it already is (although I have to admit it sounds like a place I would't mind living). It's also the case that while signposting the numerous flaws and evils of our own society, it gently sidesteps some aspects of the Neanderthal culture that we'd find distasteful - for example, a eugenics program that, while performed with the best of intentions, dwarfs anything that homo sapiens has attemped.

Still, these are fairly minor gripes, and shouldn't spoil the book for anyone who can accept the mistakes of our own history. It's a great, easy read, it's a pleasant change to read a plot with such a small and focused setting, and it's nice for once to read a piece of good sci-fi that doesn't in some way involve the end of the universe or people being downloaded into machines/transcending this plane of existence to become omnipotent beings who are in some way or other driven by trendy contemporary physics.

Speaking of physics, the background research here seems pretty good - by having two main characters be an anthropologist and a physicist, the author gets the chance to explain a lot of the background science in the course of the story, without shoehorning it in unnecessarily.

Rating:
Summary: Incredible ideas!
Review: I guess I've become a little disillusioned with society and humanity recently, so it came as a huge surprise to find some of the very ideas that had been so troublesome for me lately represented by Robert Sawyer in Hominids.

The story concerns an alternate universe in which Neanderthals became the dominant species and Cro-Magnon (our ancestors) became exinct. This is of course the opposite of what actually happened. During a quantum experiment, a Neanderthal scientist named Ponter accidently is sent through a portal into our universe.

I was particularly transfixed with the passages in which Mary Vaughn, the geneticist, is forced to account for all of our history's mistakes. I love the notion of our world as seen by an outsider, and I believe that Sawyer has captured this brilliantly. I only wonder if it was Sawyer's intention to make the Neanderthal universe look like a great place to be. I certainly saw it as such. I know that the trial is supposed to be seen as a miscarriage of justice, but the Neanderthals' certainly have a few things figured out that I wish we could!

I'm very excited about reading the second one when it comes!