David Brin - Uplift

[jack]

Thanks again to MCG, I read Startide Rising, the second uplift saga book. Somehow the characters all seem a little fake, but the plot and characters are interesting, and the universe and politics and implications of different remaining instincts in intelligent dolphins are very interesting.

However, sooner or later, he is going to have a twist *other* than "Intelligent beings living in lava/plasma in magma/sun are discovered and save the day. I *like* unlikely aliens, but come on. That's what happened in the LAST book, isn't it?"

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His other stuff is good too. The Uplift War (the third of the trilogy) is just plain fun. I'd probably steer clear of the second Uplift series, which wasn't that great.

His non-Uplift stuff is good too. Earth, The Postman, The Practise Effect, Glory Season and Kil'n People are all novel and well worth reading, though he suffers somewhat from a tendancy to write deus ex machina endings that tie up all the loose ends (it becomes less pronounced in his later books).

To be honest, my favorite of his are his two books of short stories (Otherness and the River of Time), which are generally excellent, and The Heart of the Comet (co-written with Gregory Benford, an author of whom I'm not fond, but the collaborations works extremely well here).