Fiction 27 Jan 2005 10:09 am
Hybrids
Hybrids
Robert J. Sawyer
This is the third book in the “Neanderthal Parallax” series, and, in my humble opinion, the weakest of them.
The title of the book sort of gives away one of the major plot points, that of a hybrid between humans and neanderthals (or gliksins and barasts, the neanderthal names for the species). We finally get to see more than a glimpse of the darker sides of the neanderthal society: suppression of “dangerous” research areas, incentives for people not to report certain types of crimes of which they were victims, and so on. These issues are mainly glossed over, and not much is made of what impact the knowledge of these issues has on the image of the neanderthals on “our side” of the portal.
The most annoying thing about the book, though, is the way we are constantly reminded of earlier events by having the characters talk about them. They sound artificial, and some of the points are rehashed to death, so much so that you expect them to be important in the future events, somehow; they are not. The author is just trying to make sure you don’t forget them. A better way of doing that would have been to add a prologue with the key events of the previous books.
There are also some quite far-fetched ideas (yes, more far-fetched than the idea of a portal connecting our world to one inhabited by neanderthals); I won’t list them here to avoid giving much of the book away. They do make the last hundred pages or so seem somewhat “disconnected”: things happen too quickly, incredibly spectacular events go by without hardly a blink by the characters, and then it’s over. Not very satisfying.
As in “Calculating God”, the issue of the existence of God is an important part of the plot, here. In both books, the “aliens” hold a position that is the opposite of that held by the scientist they contact (in the Neanderthal series, the scientist is a believer; in “Calculating”, the aliens are believers). And (spoiler ahead, sort of) in both instances the view of the “aliens” turns out to be the correct one. I’m not quite sure about what position the author holds, if any, but this seems to be an important topic for him.
Overall, the trilogy is not that bad, and I have to admit that the “artificial” feeling is typical of Sawyer’s books. A point in his favour is that he does refer to lots of very recent scientific results in the plot, which makes things sound more plausible (a list of references at the end of the book would be great, though). The first book is very good, the second is so-so (as with most trilogies), but the third fails to deliver, in my opinion. Still worth reading, specially if you’ve read the first two; if nothing else, at least to see what happens to the characters.
