Hominids (original 2002; edition 2003)

Hominids is an extremely well-written novel. It tells the story of a Neanderthal physicist living in an alternate timeline where humans, not Neanderthals, went extinct. The Neanderthal physicist, while working on a quantum computing experiment, is accidentally transported to an alternate universe, our universe. The novel then splits into two stories. The story of the Neanderthal's friend at home who is trying to retrieve the lost Neanderthal while fending off an accusation of murder against his friend. And the story of the Neanderthal and his interactions with humanity. Sawyer is a brilliant writer, and the book was never dull. The trial of Adikor, the Neanderthal's friend, was especially gripping. So much so that I often skipped ahead to read more of the trial before going back. But it was all well-paced, well-characterized reading.

It was also pure nonsense. I'm no scientist, and I have no doubt that Sawyer had basis for all of his ideas in this novel. Normally, I wouldn't question the science in a book, because perfect accuracy is not the point of science fiction. But midway through the book it was painfully obvious what Sawyer was doing. The Neanderthal, Ponter, became a mouthpiece for everything Sawyer doesn't like about modern human culture. The Neanderthals were not a realistic society with flaws and strengths, they were the culmination of what humans could be, in Sawyer's mind at least. The criminal justice system, religion, the media, even some aspects of the scientific community are his targets. Sometimes with justification, but never with nuance. The Neanderthal society is presented as almost perfect, due to a combination of culture and technology. They are at one with their surroundings, have no religion, and little crime thanks to unhackable surveillance devices. Logically of course all systems have a weakness, and Sawyer has clearly never read 1984 but then again, Neanderthals are just that great.

Sawyer throws humanity a few bones. Our fundamental violence and competitiveness did allow us to go to the Moon. But that's about the only thing we can do better than our cousins and even that we screwed up. It's ridiculous, not because humanity is portrayed negatively. I'm all for pointing out our flaws. But because the Neanderthal society is portrayed as so utopian. What few flaws he identifies in their society are minor and I'm not sure were intentional. They practice eugenics, castration, and 24 hour surveillance, but Sawyer makes sure to balance that with the very emotional inclusion of a female scientist who is brutally raped, so you see that all that terrible stuff would actually make society better. Yes, at one point we see a Neanderthal who is driven to grief by unfair aspects of their society, but Sawyer clearly is advocating the Neanderthal approach to crime stopping.

What makes this worse is the scientific certitude with which Sawyer writes. It's a fictional book and he doesn't claim otherwise. But he does have sources at the end of his novel, which lead you to believe a lot of the extrapolations he is making are justified scientifically, when they are not. Does not finding any evidence of ritual burial mean Neanderthals didn't have religion? Is there any solid evidence Neanderthals had any more respect for the environment than humans? Etc. I say no. I say we can put pretty much any face we want on Neanderthal culture because we will never know what they were really like. There may or may not be evidence for some of Sawyer's claims. But to have a society be so idealistic is just not believable. All societies have flaws, major flaws, not the minor foibles of these Neanderthals. You can, in fact, present a superior society that shows humanities faults without the pie in the sky version of Neanderthals.

I could forgive a lot about this book if it weren't so heavy handed. Sawyer spends so much time explaining why humans are bad and neanderthals are good that he forgets about the story. It turns out that it takes about five minutes to bring our friend Ponter home. Buried in this are some actually interesting quantum ideas about the way consciousness may or may not affect the universe. But even these are ruined by the cheap why they are used to further the rushed ending. So what did we learn? What changes were made in the characters and in the societies? For me, not much. It all felt very empty.

Sawyer is a better writer than that. I've never read a book that was so interesting and well-paced, that left me feeling so disappointed.

By the way, humans also hunted Neanderthals to extinction, as well as all mega-fauna on the planet. Climate changes played no role in any of it. ( )

Hard to see how this won the Hugo. He's taken a great idea and turned it into a dull, cliched book. Basically, it's an update of "Brave New World". In our enlightened times the idea of the noble savage has been squashed (they killed off the mammoths, didn't they?), so Sawyer has replaced them with Neanderthal. These Neanderthals have the perfect Utopian society (although lacking a bit in privacy) so can preach on the evils of human civilization. This preaching, on the usual subjects of war, pollution, racism etc. has priority over a plot that is minimal and characters that are heavily stereotyped.
The science is not all that hot either. Nowhere is it explained how a small hunter gatherer population could create and sustain an advanced technological civilization. A 10% increase in brain capacity is not enough to account for the difference. Explaining the Big Bang away as mass differing over time does not explain the relative distribution of elements (H, He and Li) - inflation does. ( )

I wanted to like this book. The premise was intriguing and I love stuff about Neanderthal man and other human relatives. I read reviews that said this book was terrible. I was like "bah, it couldn't be! They just aren't giving it a chance." Well, I definitely gave it a chance and let me tell you it's pretty terrible. The main plot point is certainly intriguing but devolves quickly into being overly preachy and critical of humanity. Goodness knows, I think there are a whole lot of things wrong with humanity too, but there are much subtler and more intellectually stimulating ways to address human social problems than by slapping me upside the head and saying "LOOK THIS IS BAD!!" All of the characters are stereotypical--yes, even the Neanderthals. How can that be when the "cavemen" don't act like cavemen? Every woman is either "stunningly beautiful" or "terribly plain" and they are all very shallow, vindictive screaming harpies. Whether they are homo sapiens or homo neanderthalensis. The other characters are typical of their religion or race etc.

I wanted to like this book so much that I kept reading waiting for it to get good, but I would say just don't waste your time on it. ( )

Start with your basic SF concept that there are parallel universes differing by some event in history. Postulate that the difference between our universe and another is that...over there...our ancestor, Cro-Magnon man, died out and homo neanderthalensis evolved. Now, build a plot around a Neanderthal accidentally crossing to our universe.

It wasn't a bad premise for a book. There was a rather interesting explanation of how the cross-over might occur, introducing the reader to quantum computing, a science in its infancy in our world. The societies had evolved in different directions, providing a lot of room for subplots contrasting those differences.

Unfortunately, this plot gets buried under Sawyer's desire to preach at the reader. Our society is uniformly portrayed as a catastrophe in all respects. Neanderthal society is the closest thing to a utopia that is "humanly" possible: there is no pollution; there is no over-population; there are no extinctions of species; there are no wars; hunger is unknown; crime is almost non-existent; every individual's primary desire is to make a positive contribution to their society.

Sawyer spends so much time sermonizing that he runs out of room for the plot and characterization. The former is really rather thin. You get to the end and realize that there wasn't much story; perhaps it's in the sequels. For the latter, particularly the women, he relies on trite stereotypes to flesh them out. Louise Benoît?...oh, she's the stunning-but-nice blonde who gets everything she wants because every man on the planet is gaga over her. Mary Vaughan?...oh, she's the main character raped at the beginning of the book who is now afraid to love again. Reuben Montego?...oh, he's the minority doctor-made-good...well, you get the idea.

I wanted to like this and I think Sawyer has the ability to write well, but this was disappointing. ( )

I just read a fantastic book trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. It is sci fi and works on the premise of multiple universes-kind of the same idea as that tv show Sliders. Well, the two universes in this triligy are both on earth-one earth is the world as we know it today-the other earth is populated in a reality where Neanderthals became the dominate species and man died out. During an experiment in the Neanderthal world-they are more technically advanced than us- a member of that world is transfered into ours. His name is Ponter Boddit and he is as surprised to be here as we are to have him here. The first book introduces him and his society. Neanderthals are environmentally friendly-no gasoline powered anything, no agriculture-which means little disease as we know it, very clean, sparsely populated the planet-do not even live all over the planet, peaceful, loving, kind, totally cool society. They are bisexual. Each adult takes a same sex and opposite sex mate-not everyone but most. To control population children are born only every ten years. To ensure that, men live with men and women live with women and only come together for 4 days a month when "two become one". Violence and many forms of inherited disease have been bred out. A violent criminal is sterilized-so is eveyrone else containing 50% of his DNA-that means parents, siblings and children. Scary, yet effective.
It is fascinating and light sci fi-for those non-technical people-such as myself. the characters are fantastic-definetely fully dimensional, life like and well realized. The story is implausible but definetely makes you think about where our species is headed. ( )

Hominids, the first book in the Neanderthal Parallax and a novel that won Sawyer a Hugo award, is probably one of his best known works. I had this one lying on the to read stack for more than half a year now and ended up reading a more recent book, WWW: Wake, first. I very much liked WWW: Wake so my expectations were rather high. I guess this is one of those love it or hate it books. It has the potential to piss off just about every person on the planet of for one reason or another. If you manage to keep your anger in check however, there is a very interesting novel underneath. It does lean a bit too much on ideas however.

In Hominids an experiment with quantum computing by two Neanderthal scientists goes awry. One of them, a man named Ponter Boddit, is transported to a parallel dimension and ends up in our universe. He needs to rescued from the Sudburry neutrino observatory by a number of perplexed scientist. He did after all, emerge in a closed room. Geneticist Mary Vaughan is soon called in to determine if Boddit, is indeed what he appears to be, a living breathing Neanderthal man. In the mean time Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, has his own problems. He faces charges for the murder of Ponter and this is preventing him from figuring out where his partner disappeared to.

This novel is driven by ideas and I must say the concept of a man from an advanced Neanderthal society appearing in our own appealed to me. Sawyer has managed to create a very interesting Neanderthal point of view in the novel. Their society is about as different from ours as you can imagine. This is also the source of lot of criticism on the book. Especially the unusual way in which male/female relationships are organized and the fact that all Neanderthals are in effect bisexual will strike many readers as unrealistic. On top of that Neanderthal society has implemented a system of anti-crime personal surveillances than would make Big Brother jealous. All of the characters seem to be very convinced this system is uses to serve justice, with the data only being made available in case of a suspected crime, but it certainly gave me the creeps. As it turns out, it is not so infallible as many Neanderthal seem to think.

On top of this unusual society Ponter, once in our universe, challenges just about anything we take as a given. From the Big Bang theory to religion, from our judicial system to the minimum age to vote, from population control to our sexual morale, there doesn't seem to be much we do agree on. These challenges are what makes the concept of this book absolutely brilliant. Ponter forces you to rethink everything. If you are overly attached to a particular item he challenges that may cause some readers to dislike the book. Personally I think the necessity to rethink certain ideas is one of the things that make science fiction interesting. This novel contains more challenges than your average science fiction novel so don't say I didn't warn you.

Sawyer has, as usual, done his homework on Neanderthals. There is a lot of speculations about this species still. Scientists don't agree on whether it is a sub-species of Homo Sapiens or a species in it's own right, the don't agree on what caused their extinction, whether they could speak and had language, if they had a religion or even how intelligent they are. There's a lot of research being done so some of the things Sawyer refers to are no doubt out of date already. He's also had to make some choices about what theories to use and which he considers the most likely. The science dealing with our ancestors (or cousins, as seems to be more likely in the case of the Neanderthal) is full of often contradicting theories. On top of that there is also the image of the dumb brute of a Neanderthal dragging his woman (whom he fist clubbed in some sort of mating ritual) in a cave by the hair. Science may not agree on a lot when it comes to Neanderthals but this idea surely is outdated. Sawyer manages to navigate this minefield of perhaps, maybe and inconclusive evidence skilfully to create a scenario that is not unlikely given the knowledge available at the time of the writing. His thorough research notwithstanding, he'd probably be the first to tell you that in a decade the picture might look different altogether.

If you consider science fiction the literature of ideas, you can't get much better than this book. Hominids is so full of ideas and interesting theories than one reading is probably not enough to catch them all. I think it did go at the expense of the story itself though. As you can see I used one paragraph for the synopsis where I usually need two or even three. I felt I couldn't write more without giving the entire plot away. The story is a bit thin. I hope Sawyer manages to create a bit more depth in the following two books in this trilogy. Saywer injected some very interesting ideas but the way his characters deal with sexuality and the choices them make in that respect made me cringe at some points. Hominids is a very good read but from a literary point of few it leaves a few things to be desired. That surprised me a little given the fact that the book won one of the biggest awards in the genre. Still, it is well worth reading. I am most certainly going to dig up the next two book on my next visit to the (online) book store.

Want to comment on this review? Go here. ( )

Very exciting, with a thrilling plot, and many interesting scientific, paleontological and ethical issues. Great stuff. ( )

If you've read Sawyer before you'll be aware that he has a lot of political commenting (a.k.a. complaining) in his works... this is no exception. And, no, it's not done discreetly or in flow with the story, he sorta just sticks it in at some spot he deems convenient - sometimes it doesn't clash with the story flow, but mostly it does and you'll stop and think, "now what does the government funding policy have to do with this Neanderthal?".

The concept behind the book is cool and there is some exploration of how it could be "possible" which makes the sci-fi part of the novel pretty decent... it's the character development (or lack thereof) that makes this story frustrating. Instead of developing characters, Sawyer relies on stereotypes to dictate and explain behaviors: females are victims (to menstrual cycle, to rapists) men get so distracted by beautiful women they can't focus on their work, etc.

The concept is worth 4 stars, the rest of it warrants a 3, or less if you tend to choke on political grumbling. I won't read any more in this series. ( )

In "Hominids" Robert J. Sawyer makes a number of sharp points about society by conjuring a Neanderthal man in present-day North America. Many modern ills, like violence, racism, xenophobia, pollution, overpopulation, each have their moment in the sun.

This is only obliquely a didactic novel, however. With the social discussion, we also have a number of sciences dealt with effectively: genetics, computer science, physics, anatomy, medicine, history, paleoanthropology - don't worry! These are all duly subservient to the plot.

On top of all that, Sawyer has produced a real page-turner. The Neanderthal Parallax is a good treat for those of us who like a little meat on our sci fi. ( )

interesting weaving of anthropology, physics and gender politics into an easy read that provides a dramatic resolution and leaves open the possibility of a sequel. ( )

I found a lot to like in this book, but for me, the flaws were large enough that I'm not sure if I will pick up the next one in the series. (I probably will on the strength of a recommendation of a friend.)

The basic premise is that Ponter, a man from a parallel universe where Neanderthals and not Homo sapiens (sapiens) achieved sentience and dominance, accidentally travels to an Earth that is recognizably ours. The book follows his adventures, as well as the experiences of several of the human scientists who interact with him and the lives of the friends and family he left behind.

The good: the science seems accurate enough to me. The author includes an extensive list of people and institutions he consulted in doing research for the book, and there's a bibliography in the back. Clearly he's made some choices from among the possibilities proposed by experts, but nothing struck me as problematic. The physics that allows parallel-universe travel was...a little dodgy, but got more details right than a lot of SF, and I was willing to forgive an unrealistic extension in the service of the story.

The descriptions of the Neanderthal culture avoided a lot of common traps. The differences were not only superficial, but indicated some thought into the structure of a society with radically different underpinnings from our own. Discussions of privacy and crime were especially interesting. However, a lot of the detail used to illustrate these differences *was* superficial--I was irritated by the number of words given over to describing the timekeeping system of the Neanderthals, especially since Ponter works in a field where math is ubiquitous and converting between systems of measurement should be trivial. That kind of thing is just not important, especially when pinned to the same physical phenomena. The structure of Neanderthal cities was a bit of a problem for me as well; populations grow and shrink, the amount of space needed for a given population changes, and I have a hard time imagining an organically-created arrangement with women in the middle of a roundish city, and men around the perimeter. It could be imposed top-down, but some discussion is given to the prehistoric reasons for the arrangement, so I think we're supposed to believe that cities just spring up that way. I didn't buy it.

The characterization was mostly good--a bit of romantic pairing up that I wasn't too fond of; I get annoyed with authors who make sure to create single adult characters in pairs so that everyone ends up with somebody. This was especially odd given the nonstandard romantic entanglements of the Neanderthal society. I have no basis for this, but it read to me like Sawyer had a pretty gender-specific relationship model in his head that he couldn't quite get away from, but was aware enough of to try to circumvent it; he just wasn't totally successful. I appreciated the effort, but it was still a bit trying to read. And it wasn't as bad as Asimov trying to write romance (I'm not sure how much of a compliment that is!).

One scene to be aware of--a female character is raped in an early chapter of the book. It's described in a pretty impartial and scientific way, which seemed like an attempt to include the scene without fading to black or possibly, er, causing enjoyment where none was intended. But since I can't imagine anyone in that situation *actually* being impartial and scientific, I found it very creepy, and almost stopped reading the book. I'm still not sure why this plotline was included, as the rest of the book would have worked fine without it; but in the end it wasn't the most negative element of the book. It did throw me right out of the story for a couple of chapters, though.

Overall, I enjoyed the book more than I was annoyed by it, but there were certainly parts where annoyance was the stronger emotion. The interpersonal relationships were much weaker than the story line, and the scenes on the Neanderthal world were much more compelling than the scenes on our Earth. I'd recommend this more to people interested in idea-driven SF than character-driven. ( )

http://tpi-reads.blogspot.com/2008/10/hominids-by-robert-j-sawyer.html ( )

This book is kind of one of my guilty pleasures. It's not a great piece of literature, although it did win a hugo, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I have a particular interest in paleo-humans so the description of the crossover universe was pretty good in my book. A good piece of scifi. ( )

the entire series is great

Not only is this simply a good story with believable characters and relationships, but also great in terms of social commentary and scientific theory. I am already looking forward to rereading the series all over again. I definitely recommend beginning with Hominids, then proceeding through the series to Humans, then Hybrids. ( )

I don't read a whole lot of science fiction. However, when I first saw Hominids its basic premise sounded quite intriguing: As a result of an accident in a quantum computing experiment, our universe is linked to a parallel universe in which Neanderthals, rather than humans, became the dominant intelligent life form on Earth. At its most basic, Hominids is a very interesting look at the interplay between people from wholly divergent cultures that are based on the same set of operative world facts. At the core of Hominids however, is what the best of science fiction aspires to: It is an examination, through the use of science and speculation, on what it truly means to be human. And in that examination, Hominids succeeds masterfully. I suppose that is why the book won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel in 2003. The characters are wonderfully fascinating, with truly human (or would that be neanderthalian?) flaws. The world that Sawyer creates for the Neanderthals is unlike anything with which we are familiar, yet set in a world with which we are intimately familiar. Plus, looking at our world through the eyes of Ponter Boddit is a marvelous experience. In addition, the discussions among the characters on such topics as the reason for (or against) religion, privacy, gender roles and relations, agrarian versus hunter-gatherer societies, and others are so well-written and well-conceived that the reader doesn't feel that the author is forcing the reader to wade through an esoteric discussion. Instead, the reader feels as if two real people are having a real discussion about real issues that have real meaning and impact upon those characters. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough! ( )

Link to a review on my personal website. ( )

Although about a well loved theme (as I am an prehistory archaeologist), "Hominids" is not a good book. The plot two main lines are predictable , with one of them (the neanderthal world) being much better written than the other (our world).

Quite flawed in feminine character development. Presenting a main characters with a rape scene is something that instantly victimizes her. From being a victim that same characters becomes a whining one, fearing all men, to finally be reborn for "love" in a very predictable way. (I suppose sex will happen in the sequel.)

Our world is terrible and the Neanderthal one is a beautiful utopia (no crimes, no ecological problems, no homophobia, no religion...). Too good to be true. (Nonetheless, the Neanderthal world is the most appealing part of the book.)

To many clichés in a book that is normally highly rated. Disappointing. ( )

In a quantum computing accident worthy of a "Stargate" episode, a Neanderthal physicist from a parallel Earth where Homo sapiens died out while Homo neanderthalensis (or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, if you prefer) thrived is sucked into our world. He's rescued from drowning by physics postdoc Louise Benoît, put under the medical care of Dr. Reuben Montego, and befriended by geneticist Mary Vaughan. Meanwhile, back in Ponter's, the Neanderthal's, world, his work and life partner Adikor is accused of his murder...

Most of this novel's focus is on comparing the Neanderthals' culture with ours: they live in a society where men and women are treated equally, but live separately; where everyone has two romantic partners, a man-mate and a woman-mate; and where crime has been almost eradicated through alibi cubes—monitoring devices implanted in everyone's wrists—chemical personality readjustment, and the forced sterilization not just of convicted criminals, but also of their immediate families. While I'll admit that *our* world is hugely fucked up—a fact Sawyer conveyed by having a man rape Mary when she's walking home from work; an event he dealt with well, I suppose, but which I still found traumatizing—Ponter's world didn't seem so great to me, either. Parts of this are addressed when Adikor is falsely accused and has to struggle to prove his innocence—oh yeah, was it mentioned that in Neanderthal land you're guilty until proved innocent?—but in general, Sawyer seemed to think that this alternate system he came up with was just AWESOME. Now, maybe this will be further addressed in the next two books in the series, but any society where forced sterilization = fantabulous legal policy is also pretty fucked in my mind. (I'm not so fond of the "women living separately from the men" idea, either.)

When the two societies were merely contrasted, I found this book very interesting; I also liked how Sawyer showed the rest of the world's reaction to Ponter. However, that the book seemed to come down so much in favor of the Neanderthal way was troubling to me. I mean, not only did Ponter have his "I am so ashamed of what you humans have done to this planet" moment, Mary had a "sterilization FTW!" one. I hope the next book readdresses this disparity; it would be much more interesting if the series were about how two societies can learn from each other, rather than how some Other can save us from ourselves. (With castration! It's fun for the whole family!)

Robert J. Sawyer’s tenth novel, Hugo award-winning “Hominids” jump-starts a thoughtful and imaginative trilogy, “The Neanderthal Parallax”, which explores an alternate evolutionary stream where Neanderthals became the dominant intelligent species on the planet. Sawyer makes up for his somewhat lackluster prose with well-researched paleoanthropological information and theoretical physics played out by charming untraditional characters from two parallel universes. I recommend Sawyer’s trilogy for readers well-read in SF who seek challenging ideas that push the boundaries of cutting-edge science and alternate social practices. The trilogy explores the lives and cultures of two unique species of people, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis, through the premise of existing parallel universes and what might happen if they “collided”. During a quantum-computing experiment, Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidently pierces the barrier separating his universe from ours, plunging him into a land both familiar and strange. Having left behind his family, a mystery, and his colleague -- now accused of murder -- Ponter’s search for home forces him to navigate his way among the curious and suspicious “Gliksins” who have in his world been extinct for 40,000 years. In our universe it is his kind who have been extinct for so long.
All three books move at a ponderous pace before finally accelerating into high gear. In “Humans” this only happens by chapter 17 (about a hundred pages into the book).
Certainly Sawyer’s characters radiate warmth and evoke our sympathy, but they remain avatars to the main driver of the trilogy, Sawyer’s imaginative ideas in science and social paradigms. While there is nothing new about the idea of parallel universes, Sawyer uses it ingeniously to launch his premise, of an alternate evolution where Neanderthals inherited the “big leap forward” into higher-consciousness, in order to explore an alternate zeitgiest and to comment on our own. The world of the Neanderthals unfurls before us through the counterpoint intrigue of their universe and our own. Sawyer’s alternative societal choices, illustrated through Neanderthal culture show us by example the foolishness of some of our own paradigms, social taboos and prejudices as he explores concepts of morality, gender, faith and love. Author David Brin says: “The biggest job of science fiction is to portray the Other. To help us imagine the strange and see the familiar in eerie new ways. Nobody explores this territory more boldly than Robert Sawyer.” One of Sawyer’s most ingenius concepts is a society wherein females live together with their same-sex mate apart from males who live with their same-sex mate and then get together with their opposite-sex mate only part of each month at the right time to conceive (or not). Of course this is feasible because when women live together for any length of time, it has been shown that they develop synchronus menstral cycles. I found Sawyer’s treatment of this bisexual life-style sensitively and insightfully portrayed.
With respect to language, there is no special magic or brilliance to Sawyer’s writing, particularly in how he constructs his sentences or how he chooses to illustrate his worlds. The writing in Neanderthal Parallax runs lackluster with copious mundane detail, such as the colour of someone’s phone or the brand of potato chips. For instance, do I need to know that Mary had “become quite taken with Upstate Dairy’s Extreme Chocolate Milk, which, like the Fabulous Heluva Good French Onion Dip, wasn’t available in Toronto”? Do I care? There were also too many corny references for my taste to vernacular of our subculture, including “Star Trek” scenes. There are much more effective ways to illustrate a character’s predelictions than with clutter of this sort. In the second book, “Humans”, Sawyer’s passing reference to the demise of New York’s Trade towers appears dropped in gratuitously and, I found, trivialized the tragedy as a result. While this detail was no doubt intended to enrich his created world with a sense of concrete reality (not unlike many mainstream literery works) it also threw me, the reader, out of his “fictive dream” many a time. It detracted from the story’s compelling potential and slowed the pace considerably. There is a place and a method for adding this sort of detail. If simply dropped in, with an inkling of “self-cleverness”, such detail becomes trite and the reader’s involvement with the story is compromised. The reader becomes less participant and more observer. There is nothing wrong with reader as observer. Many classics, written in the “omniscient” voice (as opposed to limited third person) offset the inevitable distancing from the characters by seducing the reader with something else: vivid narrative rich in subtle, lyrical metaphor, evokative imagery or depth of theme. Sawyer provides none of these, so we are left with a need, a yearning for connection in some other way.
There are also times, many times, when Sawyer’s research overwhelms the story with a littany of expository information. For instance, when one of his characters is brutally attacked, permanently changing their physiology and consequently their mental behavior, instead of letting us witness the transformation in the character, we are presented with copious data from the character’s own research, as if Sawyer just had to include all the research he’d conducted on the subject. This, coupled with Sawyer’s mundane detail, reads more like a travelogue, a topography of life without its depth. Those few times when he seamlessly infuses information in story stand out as a result. Two examples include the utterly fascinationg discourse between Louise Benoit and Jock Krieger about CEMI theory and the conversation between neuroscientist Veronica Shannon and Ponter and Mary about the relationship of religious experience with brain chemistry, both in the third book, “Hybrids.” Sawyer seems to do best with dialogue, and some of it is clever. One example comes to mind in a scene between Mary and her Neanderthal friend, Bandra, where Mary defends Homo sapien’s right to breed: “I guess we believe that superseding the brutality of natural selection is the hallmark of civilization.”
To his credit, Sawyer’s “home-spun” style has its charm, providing us with some of that connection we yearn for through his characters. Sawyer’s main characters unfold with a realism that evokes strong empathy in the reader. I like his characters, pimples and all. I particularly like how he has tapped into his geographic heritage to give us full-bodied characters with uniquely Canadian backgrounds, like Louise Benoit, the statuesque French Canadian post-doc in quantum physics.
Sawyer’s greatest skill as a fiction writer lies in how he marries his ordinary people in an ordinary world to extraordinary ideas and circumstance. And it is for this reason, I think, that he time and again arouses wide public readership and continues to be nominated and to win Hugos and Nebulas. The Neanderthal Parallax is no different. I recommend this trilogy for not only Sawyer’s interesting thoughts on paleoantrhopology and quantum theory but for the questions he raises about how we define our humanity. This is good classic SF. Sawyer’s “Neanderthal Parallax” incites intellectual thought and lingers like a rich flavourful coffee. ( )

http://moreramblingsfromafar.blogspot.com/2007/02/book-hominids.html ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=414 ( )

Another great SF novel from the Mississauga author (www.sfwriter.com). Story venues include York Univ and Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. This guy is good.

Protagonist(s): Expert paleoanthropologist Mary Vaughan and physicist Ponter
Boddit
Setting: present-day Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Series: #1 in a trilogy

I enjoyed Sawyer's End of an Era so much that I decided to try another of
his books, the Hugo Award winner, Hominids, which is the first in a trilogy.
Deep in a mine, physicist Ponter Boddit is working on a quantum computer
when an accident throws him into a parallel world--ours. In our world,
Neanderthals became extinct. In Boddit's world, the opposite is true. While
Boddit is being welcomed into our world, his partner, Adikor Huld, is being
charged with murder. The story jumps back and forth between the worlds. Huld
trying to defend himself while searching for his partner and friend. Boddit
coming to terms with an alien culture in a world that looks so
familiar...knowing that he will probably never be able to go home.

This book held me enthralled from almost the very first page. Sawyer once
again has done his homework on anything from quantum physics to mines to
neutrinos to Neanderthal physiology. He's developed an
entire world, an entire culture, for the Neanderthals, and it's fascinating!
Their language, how they tell time, their thoughts on the differences
between the sexes, religion, the crime rate. Sawyer gave me a lot of food
for thought and a hunger to read the other two books in this trilogy. I came
to know and care for the characters of both worlds. I love the way Sawyer's
mind works! ( )

Absorbing SF about a neanderthal from a parallel universe who accidentally gets dumped in ours. Book 1 of the Neanderthal Parallax series. ( )

I've seen the later novels in this series, repeatedly, at bookstores; I've always wanted to read this. Boy, was I right! I need to buy the sequels immediately! If you like –as I do– cultural science fiction, alternate earths, paleoanthropology, or Canadian settings, then this is the series for you! With chapters alternating between our earth and the protagonist's, it tells the story of a Neanderthal quantum physicist (builder of a quantum computer) who travels to our world by mistake. ( )