Sundiver by David Brin

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about David Brin's Sundiver.

The Short of It

Plot: Somehow, the Galactics missed a species - sentient creatures living at the edge of the Sun. It's up to humanity to investigate.

Page Count: 340

Award: Book 1 of the Uplift Trilogy - Books 2 and 3 won awards.

Worth a read: Skip this one but read the next two.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail
Technobabble: Frequent.
Review: At the core of this book is a great theme: to join the broader galaxy of enlightened species, populations must be "Uplifted" - brought into the fold via a sponsor, and civilized. There's a key question - which race Uplifted humans? All of this is fun, and well done. It is also still at the heart of the sequel, which is a much better book. The plot of this is... fine. Characters are bland, interactions are stilted, relationships unbelievable. This isn't exactly a bad book - but it has nothing on the sequel, and is not necessary reading to understand it.

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free!

I was going to do these all as a batch, but there really is such a difference between this and the following books that it does a disservice to them. That said, this will also be pretty brief; the most interesting parts of this series come back in the others, and I'll expand on those in the next two reviews.

Mr. Protagonist Man sure be a protagonist. As in, all of them. It's a good thing he picked up those skills in the past. Too bad he's too old for this. Sure, he retired, but he's back in it. Of course he's the only one who could do this. Why wouldn't every woman want him? And you wouldn't like him when he's angry...

It feels like a sizable step back - a throwback to Strong Man Good Save Everything literature. Sure, there are some cool aliens, but otherwise... underwhelming.

If you'd still like to give this a read, consider using the link below! I'll get a few cents at no cost to you.

I am the link!

The Long of It

Spoilers Ahead!

If I had started this trilogy without needing to read the next two, I probably would not have continued after this. It does not even feel like the bones of the better books are here. And the further away from this I've gotten, the less I like it. 

There are a number of monologues that throw off pacing, often presenting completely on-the-nose metaphors. The one that stands out the most is an 1800 word monologue on the Native Americans and the White Man. The connections to alien races interfering to "civilize" are a bit hard to understand, so, if you're incredibly dense, Brin kindly includes the following as the end of the speech:

“The moral of this story I have told, should be obvious. We humans are faced with a choice similar to that faced by the Amerinds, whether to be picky or to accept wholeheartedly all of the billion-year-old culture offered us through the Library. Let anyone who urges choosiness remember the story of the Cherokee. Their trail has been long, and it isn’t over yet.”

It's heavy handed, it's slow, it's sloppy. I can't name any of the characters - there are no personalities, as everyone exists to facilitate Jacob doing Jacob stuff. It's just dull. By a similar token, if you look at reviews (even from those who like this one) most tend to be about how neat "Uplift" is as a concept, and not about this book itself. This just doesn't do it.

Again, skip this one, and move on to books two and three, which are both excellent.

It's good to be back, Stranger.

And don't forget to read a book!