David Brin intentionally includes inconsistencies within his characters’ logic in a way that seems to reflect real life. For instance, when discussing where sapient species come from, the galactic community says that self-uplift is impossible. Galactics don’t believe in evolution: no species has gone from single cell to complex, meta-cognitive creature on their own. But—and here’s the key to Brin making this feel like the world reflects reality—that fabled, probably first race that did so much to uplift so many, the Progenitors, may have. This is what I mean by inconsistent logic; these hereditary, patron-client obsessive people believe two different things about the same process depending on their own perception of the time frame involved. Through knowing hypocrisy, thoughtlessness, willful ignorance, lack of examination, or accident, people don’t always follow what they think they believe. Neither do Brin’s characters. And this is one of the main things that makes Brin’s world, Jijo and the Five Galaxies, so convincing. This one move right here helps Brin build a believable world, and helps sew the seeds for mystery and lack of certainty that drive the story onwards.
Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.
And this example isn’t the only one Brin uses of intentional inconsistencies: humans are progress oriented, trying to leave their children better off than they were, but on Jijo they are trying to downlift themselves through attaining ignorance and reversing their evolutionary track. These two competing drives, this inconsistency, deeply informs Sara’s character. I feel like a lot of people care a lot about consistency in their written works, and it’s refreshing to see Brin reflect reality by intentionally including inconsistencies in his work. It’s something I need to think about more in my own writing. It seems particularly appropriate to larger works.
It was a strange trek — the sullen leading the apathetic, followed by the confused, all tailed by the inveterately amused.
The writing here is quite good. The descriptions are engaging and informative. He has come so far from Sundiver, and he is getting better as a writer. I appreciate seeing an author improve. His best work here is in world building, and character development through making each talk in unique ways. This is a complex world with six species and multiple representative characters from each species. Though at times I get a little lost which of the Six species certain characters represent, I tend to think maybe my inconsistent reading schedule is more to blame than Brin’s writing. This over complexity is partially solved by a drawing included in the book, showing the six races: the drawing helps keep them straight. But they are so interconnected that they each borrow verbal and physical communication skills from each other, further confusing my reading. The need for the drawing seems like it may be a weakness, but I’m not sure it wasn’t just me reading this book in too many starts and stops. Well, the chapters are often short, starting and stopping often after a couple of pages, encouraging my reading pace.
Magic and art arise from an egomaniac's insistence that the artist is right, and the universe wrong.
The themes clearly deal with diversity, while showing positives—creativity, self-identification, and variety of interpretations of events—while also showing some of the negatives—stubbornness, forgetfullness, the ease of schisms developing along species lines, and the variety of a single event’s threat level on differing species. This is one of Brin’s main themes that is consistent across all of the Uplift books so far, having now read the first four. He also focuses here on evolution/devolution, especially relating it to technology and language. And his main idea here is summed up by saying that perhaps language devolution is a sign of progress, allowing more subtle things to be communicated more easily compared to the more rigid Indo-European. Even this interesting observation is tied into the idea that diversity increases complexity, which is often a benefit.
How strange. Humans always seem so much in control. Is it just a grand act, to fool both others and themselves?
This novel is one of the best Brin books I’ve read. To be as clear as possible, this is a great novel. It’s only hampered by being part one of three—at the end, too much is left in the air for this to be a great novel in its own right. But while reading it, I loved it. This book coalesces to sensational storytelling, great writing, a satisfyingly complex plot, and a solid example of world building. I am excited to immediately get on with the next novel in this series.
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