I’ve just finished Heart of the Comet (co-written with Gregory Benford) This was an excellent book, the type of hard science fiction I enjoy. I’m eager to read more of his books.
From the Wikipedia article, I should probably try the Uplift series of books. Anyone have opinions on them?
It seems interesting that Brin also wrote The Postman. Now, I liked the Postman movie more than most people did. I’m curious to read the book. I’ll assume the book isn’t 1000 pages and that Kevin Costner was quite generous when the screenplay was adapted.
I liked his Uplift books a lot. I found Sundiver (the 1st book) to be weaker than Startide Rising (2nd) or the Uplift War (3rd). Sundiver is something of a solitary prequel to the other books despite technically being the first book in the trilogy. It’s also set in the distant past compared to the rest of the series, and has completely different characters. I’d start with Startide Rising and continue with Uplift War. You can return to Sundiver later if you find the series interesting.
Brin will sometimes build a fascinating interstellar civilization, then place the setting in an isolated world where people are hiding from said fascinating interstellar civilization. To me, this can be quite frustrating - I don’t want to read about a group of kids hiding out on some ecologically-damaged backwater, I want to read about the movers and shakers that make the civilization work.
And I know that many might disagree with me, but I’ve long believed that his book Earth is one of the top science fiction books of the 1990s. Both in content and form it is - to me - up there with anything written by Niven, Clarke et al.
He doesn’t really get the ‘blood and thunder’ (as H. Beam Piper described it) but he’s great, nonetheless.
Agreement. I liked Sundiver, but absolutely adored Startide Rising. Going back and filling in Sundiver after, if you like ST and TUW, is a very good reading strategy.
(Personal brag: I was actually standing on his doorstep, delivering some paperwork to him, when the postman – yes, the real postman! – came and handed him an envelope. Inside was a copy of the art work for the cover of Startide Rising. So I may have been the first Brin fan to see that cover art, and certainly the first person to see it after he saw it.)
Only if you skip the last twenty-five pages. “We saved civilization because the women were sulking.” Seriously? That ending was an insult to both genders…
It’s not really a trilogy. They’re just the first three books in a series that’s set in a common background. He wrote these three books in the eighties. He then took a few years to work on other books and came back to the Uplift setting with a genuine trilogy: Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore, and Heaven’s Reach. These three books are a continuous narrative and should be read in order.
My recommendation for someone starting out on Brin is to not jump into the rather long Uplift series. Start with one of his stand-alone novels like The Practice Effect, Glory Season, or Kiln People.
One book I have to unfortunately not recommend is his most recent book, Existence. It’s not terrible but it’s not as good as his earlier books.
The Practice Effect is a light, fun kind of story. Enjoyable, but not deep.
Startide Rising was the first of Brin’s books I read: I can read that alone, without going onto the other Uplift novels, almost as though it was truly a standalone.
I’m with Jonathan Chance on Earth: it, along with Startide Rising, are my favourites of his.
There’s a novella of his, called Thor Meets Captain America which is interesting. Nothing to do with the Marvel universe.
I agree, an excellent book, and (as I remember it) quite prescient about things like everyone uploading video all the time, and things like that. But I thought the overarching story about what happens when someone drops a mini black hole into the earth’s core to be, well, silly.
I’ve liked just about everything of his that I’ve read, but I haven’t read his stuff in maybe 10-15 years.
Actually you didn’t miss a lot. Brin took a ten year break from writing novels. He didn’t publish any novels between Kiln People (2002) and Existence (2012).
Not quite - He published a short young adult novel in 2007 (called “Sky Horizon”).
It used to available on his web site but doesn’t seem to be any more. But it’s available for sale for 99 cents Smashwords – Thor Meets Captain America. The story was also expanded into a graphic novel “The Life Eaters”.
