Rating: 
Summary: A great book!!
Review: I never thought the Robert J. Sawyer of such intimate human novels as CALCULATING GOD and FACTORING HUMANITY, and the Robert J. Sawyer of the intelligent dinosaurs of FARSEER, FOREIGNER and FOSSIL HUNTER could ever collaborate on the same book, but he (they!) have done it here with HOMINIDS. The our-kind-of-human characters ..... especially poor Mary Vaughan ..... are as finely drawn as anything Sawyer has done before, and the Neanderthal world he has created is as fascinating and faceted as the home moon of the Quintaglio. I read this when it was serialized in ANALOG and couldn't wait for each monthly installment. Delighted it's now out in book form ..... most of my Xmas shopping taken care of in one fell-swoop! Excellent, excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent -- but awaiting vol II
Review: I wavered between 4 stars and 5 for Hominids, but ultimately decided on 5. Although Hominids as a stand-alone book is perhaps not quite in the same league as FlashForward or Calculating God, it is only the first of a three-volume series, and the next installments will presumably flesh out some of the details that were glossed over in volume I. In any event, it is head and shoulders above most of the SF being published today, and, like all of Sawyer's work, a terrific read. Like a number of Sawyer's prior books (Illegal Alien, Calculating God), Hominids is as much social commentary as it is SF. As in those works, he drops an "alien" (here, a Neanderthal from a parallel universe) into our midst and then proceeds to have the newcomer examine our world, compare it to his/her own, and then explain the myriad ways in which our society is comparatively flawed (too violent, too greedy, etc.). Hopefully the second installment will examine the flip side of the equation, because Ponter (and Neanderthal society) are portrayed as just a little too perfect for the criticism to work as effectively as it could with a more nuanced and balanced treatment. For example, Sawyer strongly implies that the vicious homo sapiens killed off the neanderthals in our universe, but never even addresses the question of what happened to the homo sapiens in Ponter's world. Whether the most likely scenario is true -- that they did the same thing to us in their world as we did to them in ours -- must await volume II. And what about the ethical and societal downside(s) to wearing a permanently implanted "alibi recorder" in your wrist? Or the genetic cleansing practiced by the Neanderthals? One has to hope that Sawyer will critically examine these aspects of Neanderthal society in the next installment. Hominids is extremely well written, and the fictional "news reports" Sawyer uses to begin several new chapters strike me as so on-target as to be uncanny. (And the Letterman-inspired "top ten reasons why we know that Ponter Boddit must be a real neanderthal" is laugh-out-loud funny.) The science of quantum mechanics and alternate universes is well presented, but really serves as little more than a backdrop to the main event: Sawyer's forcing us to examine what makes us human, and getting us to think about how the world might become a better place. Hominids is a great book. I can't wait for volume II.
Rating:
Summary: Best of Science Fiction
Review: HOMINIDS exemplifies what I consider to be the best quality of a great science fiction novel. No robots, no space ships, no faster-than-light travel; just a fascinating "What if...?". What if in a parallel universe, homo sapiens did not become the dominant human species, but our long-extinct cousins, homo neanderthalis (the Neanderthals) did? Sawyer creates a fascinating world which is inhabited with Neanderthals and shows us how their society works. It is very interesting to see our world through their eyes, to examine our belief systems and the structure of our society. The romance between the Mary Vaughn and the Neanderthal scientist, Ponter Boddit, should be implausible, but is written with a lot of heart and turns out to be very touching. Great reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Simplistic and Facist
Review: Under developed characters slog through over-rendered, dubiously explained environments with an meager plot. Basically, this is a rather facist oriented tract that appears to advocate conformity and totalitarian control as an ideal. It is just a readable but unexciting diversion.
Rating: 
Summary: Much like Ayn Rand...
Review: ... in that Mr. Sawyer sets up his plot to support his urge to commit propoganda. Consequently -- and, like Rand -- this book is filled with straw men, going through the motions, serving only to make his next point, slogging their way through a completely implausible plot.
A synopsis -- a Neanderthal from another dimension accidentally falls through the rabbit hole created by his experiment and ends up on our earth. Fortunately, he's surrounded by scientists! They take him to the hospital because of the blow to his noggin and then to one of their apartments. Finally, it dawns on these wonder-brains that maybe Neanderthal Man might be in danger from our germs, or humanity from his, and they spend a lost weekend with the curtains drawn, waiting for the medical honchos to say it is okay. While there, he gives the lowly humans his great wisdom, which is about atheism, bisexuality, collectivism and the supremecy of one eyebrow over two. Then he goes home.
That something as monumental as the appearance of a humanoid from another dimension could occur without the government being all over it ...! Are the Canadians that different?
One saving grace is the portrait of Ponter's home and culture. That was fairly well done. I found myself quite interested during these bits. Going back and forth between the two settings only emphasized the fragility of the whole.
You will do well the check this out of your local library if you must read it. Your money would be better spent elsewhere, though. Not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Homo sapiens are eeeevil
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with Steven Taylor's review of this book. I love Sawyer's writing in general, but he REALLY hits you over the head with social commentary. I felt preached to in many places, and it seems his intent is to make you feel guilty for being a human, especially a male human.
Furthermore, I don't like how the privacy-less neanderthal society is presented as The Answer. It's ridiculous to think there wouldn't be any corruption in the system, that they got everything right the first time.
The love story aspects of it are entirely not necessary for the plot in this book, and come across as being superfluous marketing. Though he may be building for something in the sequels.
I've already purchased and plan to read the two sequels. I like the concept of the parallel neanderthal world and our interactions with it and am very curious about how it plays out. I just hope the guilt-trip gets toned down, because in general I dig Sawyer's writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Very much overrated
Review: This is the second Sawyer novel I have read and after all the rave reviews, good press and a Hugo award to boot, I was excited to get my hands on a copy. But I have to say when I was reading the book, I became quite angry.
Briefly the plot: There is a parallel universe where neandethals survived and we became extinct. During a failed scientific experiment using quantum computers, one of the neanderthals is transported into our world.
This book is a light, quick read despite being over 400 pages. There are two parallel stories, one of the neanderthal in our world, the other of the neanderthal world where on man is being trialled for the murder of the missing neanderthal. Of the two plots, the story set in the neanderthal world is the far more compelling.
So let's get to the meat of it, why did this book make me angry?
Firstly, the author uses incredibly cheap plot devices that really stretch the realms of plausability. For example, four characters (including the neanderthal) are quarantined in a house. To push the romance element of the story, the author decided that Mary and the neanderthal needed to be alone. So how does he get them alone in the house? The other two character lock themselves in their own room to have sex, that's how. Think about it, there is a man from another dimension who could quite possibly be the most amazing experience in your life, but instead you lock yourself away from him to have sex? Yeah right.
The second thing that made me angry was the so called "social commentary". This term can hardly be used to describe what is a sneering, down the nose look at man's history. Sawyer seems content to oversimplify complex issues (he sums up the cold war in one sentence) and call them bad without ever exploring the issues or making any attempt to understand. No, he'd just prefer to point the finger and call it wrong.
Leading on from this, we have Sawyer's attempt to create utopia in the form of the neanderthal world. It is interesting that Sawyer has taken a point completely opposite to Orwell's great novel 1984. Amazingly, Sawyer argues that being monitored 24/7 and having every move you make recorded is a good thing!. Yes, according to Sawyer we would all be better off having no privacy. Hmpf!
The next thing that made me angry - the ending. I won't dwell on it too much here lest I ruin it for anyone, but let me just say this - Sawyer took the easy way out and made a very simple ending. Also, given the understanding of what was discussed in the book, the conclusion Ponter makes at the end is simply stupifying.
To top it all off, this book won a Hugo award. So that makes me angry too. This is an embarrassment to the award.
So there you have it. Intelligent readers looking to read something meaningful and challenging, steer clear of this. For people who like light entertainment which pretends to be clever but isn't, you may enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Harlequin Neanderthal Parallax
Review: If you're interested in what an anthropologist has to say about this book, read on.
This book asks the questions, What if there were a parallel universe in which Neanderthals, instead of Homo sapiens sapiens, had survived and developed civilization? What would their world be like? How would their society be different from our own? How might they interact with us?
I think these are interesting questions and worth the effort to try to answer them via the sci-fi genre. Through much of the book, Sawyer presents in an entertaining way current thinking on and debates about Neanderthal anatomy, physiology, behavior and social structure. Unfortunately, in his attempt to explain why Neanderthals eventually achieved civilization (and why, in our world, our species did the same), Sawyer reveals a fatal flaw in his thinking that demonstrates a distinct lack of careful research and, in my view, undermines his entire project. That is, unless his project is to write a romance novel.
Toward the end of his book, two of Sawyer's protagonists, Louise, a post-doc quantum physicist who happens to be a brunette bombshell "wearing tight-fitting denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt tied in a knot over her flat midriff" (p. 369 in the hardcover version), and Mary, a plain Jane geneticist who happens to be a devout Catholic, engage in a one-sided discussion about the origins of consciousness. Louise has had an epiphany that she shares with Mary after carefully testing her idea on "some guys...in the physics department" (370). It's all become crystal clear to her: the reason humans were able to develop civilization was because, forty-odd thousand years ago, they became conscious through the "quantum superposition of isolated electrons in the microtubules of brain cells" (380). Louise doesn't explain this mechanism, apparently assuming that Mary needs no further details because she's a smart cookie and because the sacred word "quantum" has been invoked.
Mary, perhaps disabled by her envy of her colleague's gorgeous body and disarmed by her romantic feelings toward their Neanderthal visitor, swallows Louise's argument hook, line and sinker. This, despite the fact that she is a specialist in Neanderthal genetics and has some sort of training in paleoanthropology. It also could be because Mary is Catholic and Sawyer would have us believe that Catholics accept that consciousness never existed on earth until humans discovered it during the Upper Paleolithic (circa 40, 000 years ago). If nothing else, it would appear that physicists believe this to be true.
This is where the entire story falls apart as far as I'm concerned. I can suspend my disbelief - after all, this is science fiction - enough to enjoy the notion that multiple parallel universes exist and that it is possible for them to intersect through the intercession of a quantum computer (never mind, read the book). And I can put up with Sawyer's host of two-dimensional characters. But you couldn't pay me to accept the idea that consciousness is something humans invented. Louise falls into the same trap that has caught less sexy but more intelligent philosophers and theologians since humans began pondering the origins of consciousness: anthropocentrism, that is, the crippling assumption that humans are the Cat's Meow of creation. For example, 500 years ago, Rene Descartes, in his "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) revelation, made the same mistake, which led to a widely held belief that humans were the only creatures that could think and feel. This, in turn, led to a perception of all other animals as simple machines that were incapable of feeling pain or making decisions. As a result, scientists conducted many "experiments" on animals that were little more than torture fests. I thought we'd come a long way since then, but Louise (aka Sawyer) has set me straight.
What does this have to do with anthropology? A lot, as it turns out. Louise suggests that "all other primitive forms of life...are just chemical machines" (376). We don't need to mire ourselves in a paleontological debate about whether, to quote Mary, a trilobite showed volition when it "decided to go left instead of right" (376). Sawyer pays out more than enough rope to hang his thesis when Mary, in a rare moment of critical thinking, challenges Louise's theory by alluding to evidence for sophisticated behavior by Homo ergaster, Homo erectus and other hominids that preceded the emergence of Homo sapiens. Amazingly, Louise successfully dismisses her point by saying, "Well, I realize this is your field...but I've been reading up on this on the Web. As far as I can tell, those earlier kinds of man didn't really have behavior any more sophisticated than a beaver building a dam" (377). As far as she can tell. Who needs a Ph.D. in anthropology when rigorous research is only a few mouse clicks away?
Louise should have tested her idea on "some guys" in the anthropology department before she talked to Mary. Mind you, they may have become just as distracted by her cutoffs as her physics guys seem to have been. ("Louise, I think you're really onto something here!") Or maybe she was using the wrong keywords in her Google search. She obviously didn't think to enter the word "Acheulean" (why would she?), which would have brought her to websites depicting the famous stone hand axes that Homo erectus and their ilk started producing over a million years ago. These Lower Paleolithic stone tools have been found in many places in the world and were made on a variety of rock types. If you're a skilled flintknapper (stone tool chipper), you can make one with relative ease, but that's because you've learned how to work with the quirks and subtleties found in each piece of stone. Every whack you take at a rock has to be calculated and the finished product has to remain in your mind as you work. Can this be accomplished without consciousness? Perhaps Sawyer should try it in his sleep. Moreover, I call on beaver biologists to rise up and refute Louise's implication that beavers lack consciousness, too. Fiddlesticks!
In my opinion, quality works of science fiction build on what we already know or think we know and, based on this knowledge and theory, speculate about what might be possible now or in the future. Sadly, Robert Sawyer's book, Hominids, while making Neanderthal studies palatable for a wider audience, stumbles as a fictionalization of science and work of science fiction. Will I read the next two books (Humans and Hybrids) in the series? You bet. I've just got to find out how things go with Mary and her Neanderthal boyfriend!
Rating:
Summary: Just horrible... who's buying and voting for this?
Review: By existing, this book has actively harmed the genre of speculative fiction. This is precisely why we hated this book so much. By itself, it's relatively harmless. Bad books tend to fall into anonymity to leave way for better works. But this thing is by a famous author, will sell well, and won awards!! We cannot fathom how but because it did, Hominids will overshadow far, far superior works by other authors. That is very, very damaging to the genre because there is nothing redeeming about the book.
WHO SHOULD READ:
If you generally find science fiction too complicated, then this is the book for you. If you find Star Trek and Star Wars technological explanations to be lucid and intellectually satisfying you're going to be in high clover reading this book. If you love to sit around and think about how much the 21st century sucks but don't like to think deeply about why that is or think seriously about solutions, then you're going to love the pieces of social commentary. If you believe the Hugo award is a good determiner of literature, then you should definitely read this book in order to test your faith in this voting process of theirs.
WHO SHOULD PASS:
If you like good science from the likes of Kim Stanley Robinson, Alastair Reynolds in fiction or Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, or Timothy Ferris in non-fiction, or read good laymen journals like Scientific American or Discover, then you'll be mortified by what you read here. Alternate worlds, quantum theory, visiting aliens, and even basic human interaction and dialogue have been done far, far better by other authors. If you're into this stuff, look up Philip Pulman, China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer, Kim Stanley Robinson, or even page turners like Frank Herbert or Orson Scott Card. Just about anything is better.
READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM
Rating:
Summary: Political cliche's now win Hugo's??
Review: This is barely Science Fiction. It's more a treatise on the awful (as the author seems to regard it) human condition.
The premise is interesting. A parallel universe where Neanderthal man rose to dominance instead of us. A temporary gateway opens by accident and an educated Neanderthal physicist is flung into our universe. Possible storylines and scenarios abound.
The author instead closes up the Neanderthal in a house with a coupla other people...and they talk our ears off about culture, politics and sex.
Basically, replace the Neanderthal with a 60's Berkely student, who has lived his whole life on campus...and you have HOMINIDS.
Every liberal cliched thought...from religion, to sex, to industrialization and pollution, "overpopulation," space travel, Govt., etc...is now expressed by a guy with no jawline, ridges on his brow, and a miniaturized body by Atlas ("Oh, wow...Mary thought.")...instead of the Berkley student.
There is not an original thought, scientifically, or politically...in the whole book.
Take any topic you want from above...determine how a liberal "leftist" mindset would view it...and that is exactly how it will be portrayed in the book.
zzzzzz
Everybody has been saying lately how "awards" are being given these days...based more on expressing a certain political viewpoint, than any other criteria.
HOMINIDS supports that thesis.
A boring, cliched book.
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