The Uplift War (The Uplift Saga, Book 3) (original 1987; edition 1987)

Against all common sense, I love this book to death. It's a comfort re-read. ( )

http://tpi-reads.blogspot.fi/2012/12/the-uplift-war-uplift-saga-book-3-by.html ( )

Fiben had often wondered how much of the popularity of the thunder dance came from innate, inherited feelings of brontophilia and how much from the well-known fact that fallow, unmodified chimps in the jungles of Earth were observed to “dance” in some crude fashion during lightning storms. He suspected that a lot of neo-chimpanzee “tradition” came from elaborating on the publicized behavior of their unmodified cousins.
Like many college-trained chims, Fiben liked to think he was too sophisticated for such simple-minded ancestor worship. And generally he did prefer Bach or whale songs to simulated thunder.
And yet there were times, alone in his apartment, when he would pull a tape by the Fulminates out of a drawer, put on the headphones, and try to see how much pounding his skull could take without splitting open. Here, under the driving amplifiers, he couldn’t help feeling a thrill” run up his spine as “lightning” bolted across the room and the beating drums rocked patrons, furniture, and fixtures alike.

"Startide Rising" ended with the dolphin-crewed spaceship Streaker on the run from various warring Galactic races who are all desperate to win possession of the ship and its discoveries. As this book opens, the human and neo-chimpanzee inhabitants of Garth are expecting to be invaded at any moment, as one of the Galactic species has decided to take Garth hostage in an attempt to force the Terragen Council to hand over Streaker's discoveries. With diplomats and other visiting aliens fleeing the planet in droves, the Tymbrini ambassador Uthacalthing and his daughter Athaclena have decided to stay. The Tymbrini are the Terrans closest allies, and are known for their capricious sense of humour and Ambassador Uthacalthing seems to have some devious ploy in mind when he sets off into the wilds of Garth with the ambassador of a species less friendly to Terra in tow.

Garth is a planet that suffered ecological disaster when a newly uplifted predator species who had been granted a lease on the planet reverted to savagery and ran amok, wiping out all the larger native wildlife (although old legends say that some of the mysterious Garthlings may survive in out of the way areas). Now the Galactic Civilisation has leased Garth to the Terrans, who are trying to rebuild the shattered ecology, introducing Terran plants and animals to fill empty ecological niches. The Galactics chose the Terrans for this because of the unusual amount of biodiversity on Earth compared to other planets, but the amount of biodiversity also worries the Galactics, who got the humans to sign an agreement saying that they won't start uplifting any other species.

The uplift of chimpanzees is an on-going process and although humans govern their client species with a light hand compared to the other Galactics, breeding rights are tightly controlled. Only the coveted white card allows unlimited breeding and an unofficial class system has developed among the chimpanzees based on which colour card they have been allocated, and the ethics of uplift are one of the major themes of this novel. ( )

For me, an interesting but unglamourous introduction to David Brin. His universe is very compelling and his aliens are both convincing an imaginative. Most notable, however, is the bizarre political world existent in the Uplift Universe. It smells very strongly of colonialism and bossism, and is never really explored in depth. I was left pondering the question of whether this is a deadpan ironic commentary in the style of Starship Troopers, or whether this highly educated author has fallen into a very natural human chauvinism. If the former is true, I must question whether he did enough to make his pastiche accessible to his audience.

The book reads well and is great for light entertainment. Brin, however, has an irritating habit of inserting the occasional highly unusual word in a manner that suggests that he is either showing off his vocabulary or his proficiency with a thesaurus. This makes the book seem slightly stilted.

That said, my appetite is whetted and the author definitely has done enough to make me explore more books in the Uplift series. ( )

An intriguing world where life forms are raised to sentience over eons of time under the direction of patron races. Although Brin has created an interesting world, the Uplift War can be plodding at times. The story, which was very good, after could have been written in about 300 fewer pages. It seemed also to there were many odd tangents built in to the story. ( )