David Brin's Uplift series extends across six books now - Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War, and the Brightness Trilogy. The premise is simple: the universe is not only full of life, it is old beyond belief, and as caste-ridden as India. Since the fabled Progenitors, one race after another has "uplifted" other races, by direct genetic manipulation or selective breeding. Each race has it patron, each has its clients who must discharge an multi-millenium period of servitude as repayment for their uplift, and each aspires to its own clan.

Except the earthling clan, which stumbles into this universe just before the beginning of Sundiver. And not only do the earthlings not have a patron, they have cheekily uplifted neo-dolphins and neo-chimps, creating their own client races. They are wolflings. It's an moral affront and a religious insult to other races that can trace their lines back a billion years.

So when one of the earthling ships, captained by a neo-dolphin and crewed by the three earthling peoples, stumbles across evidence of the fabled progenitors, the race that started uplift, well, it's just too much for the older races. Interstellar chaos ensues. Religious, economic and social wars break out, almost all of it aimed at the wolfling earth clan.

The earthling ship is chased across the five universes. The first book, Startide Rising is the story of the ship's attempt to hide itself on an oceanic world. A gripping plot, vivid characters, aliens that are really alien, and neo-dolphins that are everything you could want them to be. It's a wonderful story, with a stand up and cheer ending.

The second book, The Uplift War is the story of just one minor consequence of the earthlings discovery. Essentially the story of a counter-revolution, it's the triumph of low technology against high technology on an ecologically damaged world, of a band of Tymbrimi aliens, neo-chimps and humans against aliens who are really and truly alien. Told from the shifting perspectives of Tymbrimi, bad guy Jiburu, human and chimp, the story is clever, devious and captivating.

Brin's physicist training shines through his writing. But in Brin's hands the science is a means rather than an end. There's not the razzle-dazzle of the old pulps, or the machine gun pacing of, say, Ian Banks, but instead highly satisfying yarns with subtle themes, good plotting and strong characterizations. Of course the dolphins speak in haikus; how else would they talk?

This two in one volume has the Uplift Universe stories to start with. If the loose ends don't force you to read the Brightness Trilogy next, well, we _really_ don't like the same books. Highly recommended.

Not much to say, other than these were excellent books. I would recommend them to any true fan of Science Fiction.

I've placed an order for this remarkable book.

Although both 'Startide Rising' and 'The UpLift War' are stand-alone books - which means that one can read the series backwards, as have I at times, and still wonder who's going to survive, and WHY and HOW - they are magnificent reading one after another. The very Concept of up-lifting explains quite a bit - and leaves questions open for later books and disscusions. for example: only the Brin family likely knows why the Tymbrimi are marsupial humanoid elf-like beings - _can_ one up-lift a myth? are the Caltmour the dragons of legend?

So MANY questions. And only TWO ways to know the definitive answers:

1) read the books. 2) your name is David Brin!

The SFF Net anthology series has been very well-received, and I think the third volume, THE AGE OF WONDERS -- composed of stories set in the near future -- has some of the best stories yet.

My opinion is biased (I edited this volume), so I don't expect you to take my word for it. But I suspect you'll find a couple hours' enjoyment here, and I hope you'll give the book a try.

- j.

In the world of comets far out on the Oort Cloud, impossible for adults to teleport to in the year 2345, children can become heroes. An entire space station run by teens and children, tracking and deflecting wayward comments, is beseiged by a strange alien life form called Thogs. Though these cute little one-celled furry balls are harmless singly, they reproduce rapidly and combine to be deadly to electronics and humans. Readers will side with Jerry, 15, and Nan, 14, abducted from our time to help in this emergency unrecognized as dangerous by the children running the space station. Jerry with his scientific mind and Nan with her practical leadership must use their wits and their reasoning to draw logical conclusions, make quick decisions, judge character and think up creative solutions to combat the Thogs, with the help of a saber-tooth tiger imported from extinction, and their vast, talking computer library. I like best the line: "Thanks, Library. You've given me a lot to think about." Indeed. True in all times.

This book could inspire the next generation of space explorers just like the old Collier's Magazines of the '50's did to previous generations. The book is written and more importantly illustrated by Tim McElyea one of the premier NASA animimation and simulation producers down in Huntsville AL. The book has full color renderings of many new ideas of space transportation systems and vehicles. McElyea is careful to point out that he is not a rocket scientist, but an artist. He has included some vehicles that will undoubtedly raise a smile on many a space advocates lips as unlikely to see the light of day. But as McElyea comments it is not up to him to endorse one system over another. He is merely including systems that have technical merit and warrant investigating.
The book is a gorgeous panoply of color photos and computer generated simulations. The most amazing part though is that the bonus CD Rom includes most of the vehicles in full motion with sound tracks. As well as videos produced for NASA of the Advanced Space Transportation Program based in Huntsville and 3D interactive sections.
The book is the official publication of SpaceDay which is a national educational program involving millions of students worldwide. Some of the SpaceDay competition winners are included in the book.
This book is wonderful, I cannot put it down except to look at the CD Rom. Well done Tim McElyea and Apogee Books!

(Note: I read the manuscript shortly before David finished the book.) Brin takes a fresh look at privacy and freedom, arguing that strong, healthy societies depend on open debate, the power of criticism, to decide who and what is right. If you've read "Earth," you may recognize some of his ideas from its characters; after reading "Transparent Society," a re-read of "Earth" is worthwhile, as its characters practice some of what Brin preaches in the new book.

If you're interested in this argument about the role of free speech, Jonathan Rauch's "Kindly Inquisitors" tackles the same issue with a focus on institutions rather than technology.

David Brin has a lot to say and says it discursively, but he's done his homework--dipping into an impressive range of social science, philosophical, crytographic, and technical literature--thought carefully, marshalled compelling arguments seasoned with humor and bright metaphors, and, as a result, is worth listening to, arguing with, or simply pondering. The Transparent Society works out, with much supporting detail, ideas about secrecy and privacy first raised in Brin's magisterial novel, Earth, and does so in a civilizational context. I risk doing Brin and his book grave injustice by oversimplifying, but let me say Brin views "accountability" and "criticism" as central to the progress of neo-Western civilization (fight the power!) and further posits that criticism works very like T-cells in an immune system, providing (to a greater and greater extent as the collective grows in knowledge) autonomous and impersonal correctives against all manner of "error." Brin argues for greater informational transparency--almost total disclosure--observing that, if universal surveillance cameras and other snoop technologies are inevitable (and they almost certainly are), then a generalized oversight capability, or a mutual surveillance capacity (in other words, my ability to watch the government with the same technologies that the government can watch me) is the answer to the classic question, quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who shall guard the guardians?)? In short, we all will. Brin's ingenious argumentation may strike some readers as cavalier or reductionist. It's not. It's serious and is, moreover, and a serious response to flamewar proponents of "encryption as the answer" to the privacy dilemmas of the wired age.

The entire book is basically one giant argument: That in order to be safe and maintain some form of privacy, we have to in fact give it up and become an open society.
If we try to preserve our privacy through laws and such, he says, then we fall into the trap of who watches the watchers, because to some degree law enforcement and businesses will need access to private information.
His ideal society, that he puts forth, is one where all information is available, with this caveat - that none of it open to just any priviledged group. So, though the police may be able to see that you're standing on the corner, you can see them sitting at their desk. While someone might know you read some newsgroup, you'll know which ones they read.
He sees personal accountability, through openness, to be a great regulator of behaviour.

Before I read this book, if someone suggested this to me, I'd call them crazy. But after reading his arguments, and considering the reasons why I'm an open-source software proponent, I find myself considering that Brin may be right to a degree.

Startide Rising is not only my favorite Brin book, but also one of my top 3 favorite SF books--period..I bought Otherness because the themes of the book seemed related in a way to Startide...Otherness turned out to be a generally good read, but only one story stood out as one I'd read a second time..."Shhh". This snippett of a story seems worthy of a novel of its own...It raises the question...Are humans special at all or is it only our belief that we are unique that keeps us striving to grow? Some of the other short stories seem to -almost humorously- illustrate one man's (Brin's!)struggle to understand the "otherness" of women. Oh well, I give him credit for trying.

While sifting through the rows of paperbacks on my dusty bookshelf, I came across Otherness. It had been given to me for one of my birthday's a few years ago, but I'd never read it. Too busy to venture into a new author, I had stuck it on my shelf. However, one day, looking for something to read, I found this book, and on a whim, picked it up and started it. And boy was I entranced! From the first few stories I was hooked. Later, however, my entusiasum died down I and puttered through, to be picked up again at the end. It was a great book. Full of insightful thought provoking observations or statements that really make you ask yourself, "What if that was true?". Purely, one of the best short story coladborations I have read. I'd reccomend it to anyone with a mind that thinks out of the box. Thought it was a little slow in the middle, one is rewarded at the end. I give it five stars for its in-depth thinking, and especially the putting of American views into a Dogma, the Dogma of Otherness. Excellent! Wonderful! A+. By Gosh, he's done it again!

I picked up Brin's _Earth_ when it first came out, I got through about 80-90 pages before I put it down out of utter boredom. I hadn't touched a Brin book since. However, I picked up _Otherness_ on a whim, and was awesomely pleased. The ideas and quality of writing in the stories are excellent. Brin has won me back as a fan. These stories show he is a gifted visionary and an excellent world and character builder.

Brunner tells of a future -- the 1970's -- filled with environmental horrors, the reemergence of obscure diseases, and a vast eco conspiracy. Change the date to 2050 or so and the Sheep world can be real. Interesting that the Cape Cod fisheries are about dead; "dead" diseases such as TB have re-emerged as antibiotic resistant! Not to mention newer viruses such as ebola, marburg, rift valley, HIV, etc. The book is still relevant. Although the US focus on the environment during the last 30 years or so has helped slow down its destruction, there aren't many other countries doing the same.

Publishers have shown some intelligence by keeping both Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider still in print but still show odd lapses of judgement by keeping this book relegated to used book stores instead of reissuing it for all to read. This is definitely better than Shockwave Rider, and more focused than Zanzibar (though not better). It is probably one of the grimmer books to emerge from any genre, I thought On the Beach was depressing, this is even more so. Brunner takes threads and weaves them together to show you a world where the ecology is falling apart, the people who have the money to fix it also have the money to keep themselves above it while the normal people just live with it and can't think that anything will be better. There is a plot, per se, involved with environmental leader Austin Train and his emergence from hiding but mostly the novel is concerned with showing the slow inexorable decline of the world into a polluted and chaotic mess. If you keep reading it looking for some last minute save, some ray of hope, you might as well stop reading because that isn't the point. Brunner isn't showing us how to get out of it (other than an ironic comment made by a character at the very end) but showing us what he thought would happen if we didn't change things. Giving it a specific date dilutes the impact of the book but his message is still as strong as ever and even though we've taken steps to prevent that future, there's still a way to go. Brunner isn't with us anymore and his voice is surely missed, moreso when we read about an oil spill or a forest being cut down for development. Reading his books keeps that voice alive today.

Another dire warning from Brunner. Sheep is grimmer than Stand on Zanzibar. Set in a future much closer to our own time than the scenario painted in Stand on Zanzibar, the world described in Sheep is less fantastic and more familiar. The story is bitterly satirical, but the goal of the satire isn't humor, it's shock. Brunner's portrait of a corrupt, polluted world on the verge of ecological implosion is startlingly plausible and terrifyingly recognizable. You can feel the walls closing in as you read - the inertia of events feels inevitable; the end is nigh. The rich and powerful, in order to preserve their cache - even if only the illusion of it - will destroy everything that threatens it. By logical extension, the U.S. is the richest, most powerful country in the world - what will we destroy to preserve our way of life?

This early collection of short stories by David Brin spans a wide range of styles and subject matter. As a result, it is not the sort of book that reads well in one sitting. But when read one story (or section of stories, as they are loosely organized by theme) at a time, the book is far more enjoyable. Brin's introductory notes on each story are a very nice addition to the stories themselves.

Among the stories, I particularly liked "The Crystal Spheres" with its interesting take on space travel, answer to the "if intelligent life exists in the universe, why haven't they contacted us yet?" question, and its suggestion that the universe is actually protecting us a little bit. I also enjoyed "Tank Farm Dynamo". However, far and away the standout story in this collection is the title story "The River of Time". This is one of my favourite short stories by any author, both for the unique concept of time as a true river with tributaries and currents, and for its tight execution. It made me stop and consider the linearity of time in an entirely new way.

If you can locate a copy of this book, which is sadly out of print again, and you enjoy concept-based stories, it is well worth picking up for the title story alone.

Personally, I thought that all of his ideas (not that I want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it) were cool. My favorite stories in it were: The Crystal Spheres, The Loom of Thessaly, and The River of Time. I am a definite fan of David Brin though, so maybe I'm slightly (just slightly) biased.

If you can manage to get your hands on a copy of this book,grab it. I'm a great fan of Brin's ever since I read Sundiver 4 yearsago.

This collection of short stories is both original and thought-provoking. He is one of a few writers that I have read who can delve into atmospheric theory, Greek legends, and some serious speculative stuff in one science fiction volume, and have it all come off as a cohesive volume of stories.

If you're new to Brin, or if you're a seasoned fan, this book is worth reading 100%. Not as developed as his novels, but of course you can't expect that from short stories. Very satisfying read.

My dad, who got me started on sci-fi as a kid, recently complained that too much of today's sci-fi is more fantasy than science. I'm going to send him this book for Christmas, because it tackles so many areas -- space travel, biology, even sociology. I thought it was one of the best hard sci-fi books I've read, ever.

I enjoyed this book immensely! The perfect balance of exploring scientific concepts and telling a riveting story. Like "Earth" (novel by David Brin), some of the scientific ideas are a little farfetched, but not just silly. They are well thought out, and explained in relatively simple terms. There are explorations of biology (the interplay of hostile and symbiotic microscopic life forms - germs), astrophysics (using sublimation to steer a comet), and even the psycology (small groups of people under stress - a la "Lord of the Flies"). I think this is why it took two authors to write this book... there are just too many interesting concepts going on for just one person to have thouroughly researched. Oh, and did I mention that it has lots of action and a great story. Not nearly as dry as you might guess from the title - quite a treat.

Finally!! The blurbs on the book cover do it justice. What a woderful book written by two science fiction masters. I had put ofrf reading this book and had it for several years. I picked it up after a friend recommended it and WOW!. It is truly a world building story and the characters are lovingly portrayed and the plot moves along quickly. This is one "hard" science fiction book that does not get bogged down in science facts and details. Just enough to keep you interested. I can;t say enough good things about this book. Too bad these two authors didn;t collaborate on another project.

I saw the movie before reading the book. I generally agreed with movie critics that it was overdone and terribly acted. But I was fascinated by the central concept of "The Postman." So I decided to read the book. Whereas, the End Times fiction series "Left Behind" depicts the horrors of extremely centralized government, a one-world order, "The Postman" embraces the opposite concept, extremely DE-centralized government. In this story whose chronological setting is the year 2013, the United States has collapsed and a form of government known as feudalism has taken its place, a form of government that existed in Western Europe and Japan several centuries ago. There are numerous self-governing units which have little to no communication with each other. People bound themselves to the land of local dictators in exchange for protection. In the absence of any central government there was no military or police to protect people and their freedoms. These feudal lords were oftenin turn be pledged to even more powerful landowners who might be under feudal lords themselves and so on. But Gordon Krantz, in an effort to keep warm, stumbles upon something terrifying to these lunatic general-dictators. A postal service to bind people of a large republic with communication. Gordon tells several villages about a Restored United States of America and that he is a postman for that new republic. There is no Restored United States of America but that is not the point. People start believing in the possibility of a better future for the first time in a long time. And even if they did not believe the story new ideas had been introduced to them. The Holnists, followers of a long dead Nathan Holn, are committed to the idea that the strong who dominate the weak, otherwise they have been brainwashed by these weaker people. This is a hatable philosophy and serves as the story's main villian. My main complaint is that the book is not quite that engaging. It was not something I was unable to put down. There are several differences between the book and the movie in plot, and characters. But both seem to be in the exact same setting. I think the nuclear war theme is a little overdone and I would like to see how the author could have made the United States collapse in another way. Would he have chosen an extremely bad economy? a series of natural disaster? A book about the events leading to the scenario which "The Postman" describes would be even more fascinating.

There just aren't enough epic novels of post-apocalyptic survival. I have enjoyed every one that I've read, and I keep trying to find more to read and enjoy. Now, that is not to say that all of them were good. Many of them were completely ridiculous and repellant. David Brin's "The Postman," however, manages to be not only enjoyable, but also good.

On his way across the fractured, war-wracked Northwest, world-weary Gordon is shot at, robbed, and generally kicked around. That's the nature of life in post-WWIII Oregon. As the story begins, Gordon has been working as an itinerant entertainer, reciting Shakespear for a bowl of soup and a place to sleep. When he stumbles across an old US Postal Serviceman's uniform, though, he decides to try a new scam. The idea of the United States' continued existence, however, is something of a free radical, inspiring anger and defiance against local warlords. Gordon becomes an important, if unwilling, figurehead in the locals' struggle for autonomy and a return to real civilized life.

Brin's book is a good read. The story's characters are few, but generally interesting and believable. Several of his sub-plots are iffy, especially his third act treatment of male-female relations. The book was written in the 80's, and his prediction of world events in the 1990s is also so wrong as to detract somewhat from the story (at least in my reading.) Still, it's satisfying, overall, and has both a sense of humor and a moral, not to mention laser satellites and artificial intelligences. For sci-fi fans, this is a fine choice.

Before SF novelist David Brin became known as one of the "Killer Bs" of 80s and 90s SF, he penned a serial novel called "The Postman," a post-apocalyptic romp through the Williamette Valley in Oregon. Set in an area dominated by militias, survivalists, and the kinds of folks who like to blame Jewish people and blacks for America's troubles, Brin lampooned the typical, gutsy, survival-of-the-fittest attitude in post-apocalyptic (PA) fiction, creating a unique blend of adventure story and important moral lesson. In an interview, Brin said that most PA fiction revels in the downfall of civilization, creating a kind of macho paradise which would be great if you were a gun-toting conservative white male. For everyone else, it would be hell, and that is exactly what "The Postman" tackles.

Fifteen years after the Doomwar, a combination nuclear, biological, and chemical exchange between the US and an unknown enemy, Gordon roams the landscape looking for a cause to follow. The largest organization in this atmosphere are a loosely-organized militia-army, who follow the teachings of the deceased Nathan Holn, a racist whose beliefs about life and freedom were a mix of Ayn Rand, David Duke, and a badly warped Charles Darwin. Gordon, a college-educated thinking man, wants nothing to do with the militias, but is inadvertantly forced into acting when bandits steal his clothes and he is forced to dress as a postman and invent a story about the Restored United States to get some food.

On his way, Gordon meets towns wallowing in drugs and violence, paranoid people so scared by oppression they trust no one, and an organization seemingly controlled by a computer artificial intelligence. When the militias begin attacking the Williamette Valley in far greater fervor, Gordon begins to organize the resistance, aided in part by George Powhatan, an organizer who has begun to rebuild civilization in his own way.

"The Postman" makes clear that the downfall of civilization would not be a good thing, especially if you happened to be a woman, or black, or anything else not conforming to the WASP-militia stereotypes. Aside from a good adventure story, Brin's book bucks convention and treads new groud, providing an obvious stepping stone for later SF novels in the genre like "The New Madrid Run" and "The Rift." The prose can be rocky, but given "Postman" was published serially (and wasn't necessarily aspiring to high literature), this can be overlooked for the far more positive points of its content.

Final Grade: B-