Hybrids

Rating:
Summary: The literature of ideas is alive and well
Review: It's become fashionable in some circles to denigrate the term "science fiction" .... in favor of "speculative fiction," or some such .... and to treat the "literature of ideas" .... science fiction's venerable nickname .... as pejorative. Robt J. Sawyer proves both those movements misguided. Here is real science fiction, with cutting edge science (anthropology, quantum physics, genetics, and more), and new and interesting ideas on every page. The whole Neanderthal Parallax is worth reading .... and Hybrids finishes it off in high style.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't improve over first two in series
Review: It's been a consistent 3-star series to me. While the main idea for the story is great, I felt the series focused too much the love stories and on demonizing just about everything humans do, especially males. Information trade between the two societies was often mentioned only in passing, and I think that's a shame because it could have been much more interesting. I didn't fully buy into the motivations of the bad guys he created.

Rating:
Summary: Ham-handed social diatribe instead of hard SF novels
Review: Just read this trilogy in the last few days. Gotta say, I'm disappointed.

The premise is somewhat interesting - a Neanderthal physicist is experimenting with quantum computers and accidentally opens a portal between his earth where Neanderthals rules to the possible earth where homo sapiens dominate the planet (our world) (Sawyer never did answer my geek question - did the large possibly prime number he was trying to factor uniquely address our world, or was it due to other factors?).

The Neanderthal comes over to our world, and wackiness ensues. We actually see quite a bit less wackiness than I would expect to see, and this is another place where the books fail as "hard" science fiction - the reactions of the human institutions don't seem plausible, there's far too little security and oversight in what goes on with the "alien" visitors and the gateway.

The thousand+ page trilogy would have made a far better short story or novella, there just aren't that many ideas in the whole thing and the writing is not particularly engaging.

As "hard" science fiction, there are basically two strong somewhat novel ideas in the books. One is the quantum computer gateway, the other is that religion is an artifact of the interaction of the homo sapien parietal lobe with magnetic fields. The first is kinda interesting, the second is just loopy. He handwaves away the environments where humans do interact with strong varying magnetic fields and then he introduces a surge in the Earth's magnetic field (on New Year's eve when our characters are in Times Square, of course) and everybody on the planet has a religious experience. Whee.

The other aspect of the book is more "social" science fiction. Using the alien as a contrast to explore human society is as old as science fiction is. Such explorations, when coming from the deft hands as one such as C J Cherryh, can be both intriguing and entertaining. If the alien is 3-dimension and has both strengths and weakness that are used to contrast with humanity's strengths and weaknesses

In the hands of someone less adept, this can become a cliche where the author merely catalogs the failings of humanity and simplifies the issues to blame one or two factors.

Unfortunately, Sawyer does the second. Humans, especially male humans, *especially* especially white male humans, **especially** *especially* especially white American male humans (except when castrated), are bad. Oh yes, and where testosterone isn't to blame, religion is - but that's just a mutated part of the parietal lobe acting out.

Neanderthals are good - and where there's bad in Neanderthals, it's because testerone was involved and the Neanderthal's eugenics program was only nearly perfect instead of completely perfect.

There's a hint of a grudging nod given to homo sapiens' accomplishments, but it's lackluster and is only a few words out of a thousand+ pages. It feels like an editor said, "show some balance" and Sawyer tacked it on.

Sawyer doesn't even bother to do more than handwave how homo sapiens disappeared in the Neanderthal's world, but spends a lot of time on homo sapiens' genocides.

Anyway, I was disappointed. The books were vaguely entertaining but the ham-handed "social" aspects were far too simple-minded and comprised too many pages to be anything other than tedious and annoying. I've enjoy others of Sawyers' books, but I'm going to be wary of him now.

Rating:
Summary: More U.S. Bashing
Review: More U.S. bashing. Everything good is represented by the Neanderthals and everything bad is represented by the Gliskens. Then Sawyer goes onto specifically say that the Gliskens represent the U.S. and the Neanderthals represent the Canadians, as if it wasn't already implied enough.

Everything is "Canada this" and "Canada that". Whenever there is a song on the radio or a c.d. playing in the car it has to be one of their favorite Canadian singers. Whenever someone has read a good book, it has to be by one of their favorite Canadian authors. I can't remember ever wondering if my favorite singers or authors were American or not. It isn't that important to me, but apparently it is to Sawyer who's whole book is Canadian fanfare.

I think it was a Twilight Zone episode in which aliens came to our world and were about to offer us a cure for all diseases, but we killed them off out of fear by accident before they could give us the information. The aliens that then came afterwards said that we were just not ready yet, and perhaps they would try again in several years. It was a great storyline. In this book however Sawyer makes it out like the U.S. is so evil and greedy that even if the Neanderthals did cure all of our diseases and provided us with the greatest advances we've seen in science history, that we would be so ungrateful that we would still want to kill them all off just to take their land. Wow! Why does he hate America so much? I'd say there is some real jealousy here that I could understand, but there is also some real loathing as well.

Finally in this third installment we find out that not all of the Neanderthals are perfect. It was a nice change. (Hey, everybody would even hate Superman if he didn't have a few flaws.) Neanderthals actually suffer some of our own domestic issues and problems. In this book the main character Mary goes to live in the Neanderthal world for a period of time. She is still in love with the main Neanderthal character Ponter, and together they try to find some new technology that will allow them to have a child, even though they are from different species. While Mary is in the Neanderthal world however, she winds up adopting several of their ways. I'm sorry, but I had a problem with this. Okay, I was willing to buy the fact that Mary and Ponter found each other so attracted to each other (even though they are from a completely separate world, and a completely different species), that they fell in love, but then they go and have Mary turn bisexual as well. (I've heard about girls being curious in college, but most of the time they say it is just practicing until they're with a boy. This however is a lot different.) I'm sorry, but I believe people are either gay, or they are not. They don't turn gay, just as gay people don't turn straight.

A few other things that bothered me in this book was that Sawyer appears to be in favor of castration for sexual crimes. He sets it up so that one of the characters in the book who is castrated is supposedly happier now after the castration then he was before it. I'm sorry but I think that would just make him even angrier, regardless of the fact that he would no longer have any testosterone in his body.

You're probably wondering why I even bothered finishing this series if I hated it so much. The reason is that every once in a while Sawyer brings up a nice science fiction theory that is worth contemplating. In this book he throws out the idea that the belief in God or religion might just be an abnormality in the parental lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain. It was fun to think about. The stuff about designing all of the attributes you would like your child to have was very good as well. If Sawyer only could get off his political soapbox and stick more to the science, then I'd have enjoyed this book a lot better.

As a bit of trivia, in the book they mention that one of the main American character studied game theory under John Nash at Princeton. He is the man that the movie "A Beautiful Mind" was based on.


Rating:
Summary: A Good Book but not as good as the first two books.
Review: Not quite as good as the first two books in the series. And you definately need to have read the first two books first to enjoy it. It was pretty good just the same, much better than most sci-fi books on the market.

Mary and Ponter decide to have a baby, the only problem is their chromesome counts do not match making it virtually impossible through conventional methods. They then find out about a banned device in Ponter's world that may make having a baby possible. Unfortunately, the same device becomes a threat to the "Barast" world as it gets into the wrong hands. Since this trilogy started I had been expecting someone to try to wipe out the Neanderthals so the only surprise is that it took to the third book for the threat to occur.

The book also questions the validity of religion. Is there really a G-d or is G-d created by the human brain? Sawyer also goes into more detail about man-man and woman-woman relationships than he had in the first two books.

The book does scream out for a sequel but the series was only billed as a trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: One of Today's Best SciFi Authors
Review: Robert J. Sawyer has an uncanny ability to combine current, cutting-edge science with a fantastical plot and flawed, credible characters to produce science fiction that truly gets you thinking about philosophy, ethics, politics, and religion. Despite the technical mastery of things scientific and the serious themes of his writing, the story always moves quickly and the dialogue is very real, even amusing at times, mixing in the mundane minutae of everyday existence with the search for universal truths. This yields a product that is both accessible and enlightening--something that I strive to do in my own writing. See the amazon listing for Forced Conversion to see what Robert J. Sawyer has to say about that effort.


Rating:
Summary: An Unrealistic World
Review: Robert J. Sawyer's first book in this series, Hominids, was enjoyable, in spite of the hand-waving explanation of the connection between the universes. The characters, especially Ponter, were interesting and well-drawn.

The second book, Humans, represented the beginning of Sawyer's descent into one-world kumbaya utopian preaching.

This volume, Hybrids, consists of a thin plot grafted onto Sawyer's personal PC worldview.

Everyone in the Neanderthal world is an atheist bisexual environmentalist and their world is just about perfect, cue John Lennon. And let's not forget the obligatory Dan Brown-ish attack on the Catholic Church, can't have a enlightened book these days without that.

Among other ludicrous lines, the sapiens world North Vietnamese government is described as kind. Not as bad as many totalitarian regimes? Sure. Not as corrupt as the South Vietnamese regime? Could well be. Kind? Oh dear lord.

Sawyer quotes Solzhenitsyn's phrase that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart, but very tellingly fails to include the entire statement. I quote from The Gulag Archipelago Two:

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them.

The full context of Solzhenitsyn's quote is precisely contrary to Sawyer's portrayal of an atheistic neo-Marxist Neanderthal paradise.

But my favorite was Sawyer's list (via Mary) of the handful of decent men in the world. The list included Phil Donahue. I laughed because I thought at least Sawyer was showing a bit of wit. Then I realized he was serious.

Never mind the mysteries of how a race which eschews competition could produce a technically advanced culture (especially with less than 1/20th of the population of the sapiens Earth, better breeding for intelligence doesn't explain that). Maybe there is an explanation, but Sawyer doesn't offer one.

Prior to the development of the Companion how did the Neanderthals judge whether someone had committed a crime? 80 years of supposedly perfect justice being used to wean out bad genes doesn't explain what mistakes may have been made were made in the past, when justice was far less perfect.

Occasionally Sawyer raises problems in the Neanderthal culture (such as unreported spousal abuse). But these read as throwaway issues so he can avoid the charge of writing a complete whitewash. He never explores how such issues could lead to wholesale difficulties. Again, any problems in the Neanderthal society are portrayed as minor individual trifles, never anything systemic.

Frankly, this trilogy reminds me most of Harry Harrison's trilogy, Stars and Stripes (an alternative Civil War history where the bumbling British manage to attack both the USA and CSA, and the combined USA and CSA forces pretty quickly smash the Brits, take Ireland, and conquer London).

One side is nearly perfect and decent and brilliant and the other side is nefarious and cruel.

There are no complexities, just the good guys triumphing over a bunch of bad guys. Take Harrison's trilogy, substitute Neanderthal for Americans and evil white men for the British, stir in a lot of politically correct attitudes, and you'd produce something similar to Sawyer's trilogy.

The best alternative history accepts complexities and portrays all cultures as something far less than pure. Sawyer, due to his obsession with pushing his weltanschauung ahead of everything else, fails miserably in this regard.

Rating:
Summary: Requires rust-proofing
Review: Sawyer's title gives the game away up front. Those not having read the previous works in this trilogy will quickly learn of the romance between a human geneticist and a Neanderthal physicist. Mary Vaughn, genetics researcher and rape victim, has cast aside the prejudicial image we hold of extinct "cave men". She dearly loves Ponter Boddit, who has crossed a quantum portal from an alternative universe. Ponter represents the high scientific level Neanderthals might have achieved had they not been driven to extinction by the rise of another hominid - Homo sapiens. These two species having been thoroughly introduced in the previous volumes, the ultimate result of their encounter must be the conception of a child - a hybrid human-Neanderthal.

The genetic obstacle to this breeding exercise gives Sawyer the opportunity to display his research abilities. How he resolves it is testimony to his writing skills. Humans, he tells us, are unique in possessing 23 chromosomes. Other primates, probably including the extinct Neanderthals, have 24. Merging genes from two such creatures is unlikely to produce viable offspring. Sawyer however, has no intention of boring you with clinical issues when there are bigger questions to address. Neanderthals are not only genetically distinct, their social structure differs in ways that would give a sociologist nightmares. Males and females live apart except for a brief period each month - Two Becoming One. Living apart means that each gender "bonds" with another of its kind for most of the month. Intrusions on this rigid social ideal aren't welcome, and Mary's insistence that couples "live together all the time" violates Neanderthal social mores. Tensions build as human and Neanderthals interact.
Neanderthals possess an electronic avatar called a "Companion". These ultimate PalmPilots communicate with one another and with a central recording station. All actions, conversations, decisions are recorded for posterity, or adjudication, if required. Adjudication has a long reach in both time and subject. Violence, they believe, is a genetic trait. The "sins of the fathers" are punished along lines of genetic relationships our society cast aside with the rise of Christianity. If "Hybrids" falls into the hands of a "mainstream" fiction reader, the howls of "genetic determinism" will disturb Sawyer's Mississauga home. However, there's an even bigger issue in this book than justice through biology. Neanderthals have no concept of deities or an afterlife. Why do humans believe in gods but Neanderthals don't?

The question of "faith" builds as the central issue in this series. Sawyer has flirted with it before, but never better than here. His handling of the question is at once novel, entertaining and based on sound research. Not only are Neanderthal and human chromosomes unalike, that condition reflects differences in brain structure. Sawyer extends the findings of Canadian scientist Michael Persinger in coping with this question. What gives humans a "religious sense"? Is it really derived from the supernatural, or does some mechanism bring about faith - an "illness" subject to cure? Ironies abound in this story, but none more potent than those Sawyer raises over this question. What do we believe? Why do we believe it? How do we deal with the concept of gods? There is no "rust-proofing" to cover the issue - Sawyer confronts you with it forcefully. You must see through the ironies and address reality.

Can you read this book without having read the previous two in the trilogy? Easily, if you can accept the notion of alternative universes joined by a quantum gateway. Sawyer deals well with the advance in human cognition that supposedly occurred forty thousand years ago. There are many ramifications branching off from this event and Sawyer handles them skilfully. Sawyer doesn't write simply to entertain. He writes to challenge your thinking, make you ponder the validity of your beliefs and raise questions about how we view the world around us. Read him and ask yourselves the questions. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Economic Problems Not resolved in Hybrids
Review: Science Fiction attempts to build plausible alternative worlds. The texture and "realism" of such constructions are more important to a science fiction (Said Asimov) than the complexity and interest of the plot or the characters.
The Neanderthal society of the trilogy is idealized. If in this universe Sapiens (Gliskins) dominate the planet and Neanderthal disapeared. On the Earth as we know it no society has succeeded in produced a technical civilization without agriculture. All that we know from this planet indicates that hunter-gatherer Ns would be living sparsely as small bands in the stone age. But the N's of Sawyer's implausible fictional universe surpass us technically in their spare time out from clobbering Mammoths. On our planet a billion rich people are needed to provide the support for our research and development but a few million Ns surpass us in most technologies. Did Sawyer read Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel or just list it in is list of references? Thanks for the reference Mr. Sawyer I loved diamond's book.
In Hybrids Sawyer is explicit about the small size of N population. What does such a sparse population need with a 5000 foot deep nickle mine? Grant them the technology they could find Earth's best nickel mine and dig down a few feet but what would a few blonde beasts do with as much nickel as our six billion person planet?
In the Neanderthal universe Ns dominate the planet and Sapiens disappeared. But the Ns of the trilogy are virtually without fault except that they sterilize the relatives of criminals- showing a non-PC. That they are innocent of Gliskin (Sapien) blood is proclaimed over and over no evidence is cited while the guilt of Sapiens for the disappearance of Ns is assumed. It isnt implausable but so far there is no evidence that Sapiens killed off the Ns on this planet

Rating:
Summary: Really terrible
Review: The first book in this series really grabbed me, the second was OK, but oh, does the final book stink. You can see it from other reviews, but seriously the main idea of this book is that there are two terrible evils in our world: 1) Religion (especially Christianity) and 2) White, male men - no make that White, male, American men (Canadians men are apparently a little better.) The book is frankly downright silly; just about every liberal / politically correct idea in the world is addressed: Male voilence against women, homosexuality, bisexuality, tons of environmental issues, socialism, and on and on...

I can understand making a social commentary, but this is one of the most cliche pieces of liberal dribble I have ever read.