Fiction 17 Sep 2004 02:54 pm
Hominids
Hominids
Robert Sawyer
The first Robert Sawyer book I read was “Calculating God”, about aliens who land in Toronto and ask for help from a local paleonthologist to search for signs of God in Earth’s fossils. It’s a book that keeps you glued to it, and I finished it in two days. After that, I was a fan.
“Hominids” is the first book in a trilogy, the “Neanderthal Parallax”. In this book, scientists from an alternative Earth, in a parallel universe, manage to open a portal to our Earth (by accident), and one of them is sucked through before it closes. The main difference between our world and theirs is that, in theirs, we (humans) are extinct; the dominant species are the neanderthals.
Neanderthals are probably our closest relative in the primate family, and we co-existed until some 30,000 years ago, when they went extinct (nobody knows why). It is believed that they were fairly intelligent (having a brain slightly larger than ours), and that is what the books builds on. In that alternative universe, the opposite happened (again, for no known reason) and they have a technological civilization, just like ours.
Well, not quite like ours. They never developed agriculture, thus they can’t support large populations, and the whole planet has less than 200 million “people”, living in small groups (of up to 30,000). They also don’t have domestic animals other than the dog (wolves were domesticated for hunting, but most other animals came as a result, directly or indirectly, of agriculture), and almost no diseases (due to limited contact with animals). And, socially, the differences are much larger, but hard to talk about without giving away much of the plot.
The visiting neanderthal, Ponter, quickly becomes both a celebrity and a target for wackos and religious nuts. He’s welcomed by a group of scientists, and well cared for; he also learns to communicate in English, mostly with the help of his “Companion”, a sort of very advanced PDA implanted in his arm. Meanwhile, his partner, still at home, is charged with his murder and threatened with severe punishment.
There is a very interesting conversation in the book between Ponter and one of the scientists regarding God and its role in human civilization and science; it’s very similar to parts of “Calculating God”, with the roles reversed (this time, the “alien” is the atheist).
As this first books paints a somewhat rose-coloured version of the neanderthal’s world, I suspect that in the next ones we will see more of its dark side. There were some hints of it towards the end of the story, mainly regarding its judicial system and social organization. I’ll certainly read them as soon as possible.
