Books I’ve read

This is the third book in the first Uplift trilogy.

What is ‘uplift’? In a world of the future where we have discovered (or have been discovered by) a multitude of Galactic races. Part of their heritage is that all their distant ancestors were (or they believe they were) brought up from near-sapiency to full sapiency by The Progenitors, back in the mists of time, millions of years ago. Each race (and there are some weird ones involved in the series, including sun-creatures, birds, sap rings, tree-like oddities and smaller mammals of several sorts) has ‘uplifted’ one of its own intelligent species (usually not related) to sapient status, where it serves a fifty-thousand year indenture as a client race - then it may be allowed to do the same thing itself. The whole process is now, and has for countless ages been, supervised by the Uplift Institute, an apprently incorruptible organisation that sounds a little like the old United Nations.

However, before the human race meets the rest of the Galaxy, it has already, by its own intelligence and without any apparent hints, uplifted both the dolphin and the chimpanzee, not to mention having pulled our own species up by our own boostraps to the same state. As we cannot remember who our patrons were - and claim that there never were any, we are disdainfully regarded as the ‘wolflings’. Shades of Romulus and Remus.

Nevertheless, the ‘wolflings’ manage to cause disturbances all over the place. Not because they’re stirrers, but more likely through ignorance of a civilisation (or rather, hundreds of them) that has been at the Uplift game for aeons. In this particular case, the Gubru - a bird race, who do everything in threes - Propriety, Cost and Caution, Beam and Talon being the pseudonyms for religion, bureaucracy and military - have decided the hold to ransom a human-settled planet in order to force humanity to divulge what the dolphins have discovered (read the previous book - Startide Rising for the full story) and how it relates to the long-lost Progenitors.

They lay siege to and land on the planet, called Garth, and manage to collect all but a handful of humans onto a string of islands (and thus control them). They do not consider the neo-chimpanzees - remember them? - to be a problem, but they are wrong. The Gubru are also fooled into thinking that there is an as-yet un-uplifted species on the planet, known as ‘Garthlings’, and spend heavily in both monetary, manpower and pride terms to seek them out. Most of the chimpanzees (known as chims and chimmies) are loyal to their Patrons (us). With the help of a couple of humans and a father-daughter pair of Tymbrimi (psycho-sensitive humanoids who can alter their shape a little, but have years of practice in the Galaxy, are our allies and like a good practical joke, the more dangerous the better), the chimps manage to put up a fair amount of resistance - guerrilla warfare, in fact. And yes, the word ‘guerrilla’ in its mispronounced form does have an influence on the outcome of this story.

David Brin has a really far-reaching imagination, all of the scenarios plausible, as are his characters. He does try to avoid humanising them, but that is a difficult problem to overcome when you are writing for humans in the first place. I think he succeeds in this, where many others have failed. It is a page-turner, the chapters are not over-long, and they concentrate each time upon one or other of the major players - in other words, there are several, fixed voices in the story.

I have read all of the first two Uplift trilogies. This is the third book on the re-read, and I have to say that I enjoyed it more the second time around, perhaps because it hadn’t been so long since reading the last one. When you buy the books as they’re published - as I did first time around - it is difficult to remember the scenarios. But yes, very enjoyable, and I look forward all the more to reading the second trilogy (and the third, if there is one).

This edition published by Orbit SF in 1996.

Available from Alibris.co.uk and Abebooks.

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