Hominids

zoomar

Just bought this in paperback and haven't read it yet. It's supposedly an AH ISOT story about a Neanderthal scientist who gets transported from his universe (where they became the sole surviving homonid species) to ours. The blurb made it seem pretty interesting. It's the first in a series.

Anyone read it?
 

Akiyama

Yes. I enjoyed it, although the story takes a while to pick up speed. The Neanderthal world is well thought out.

I haven't read the last book in the series yet, though.
 

sbegin

I've got all three, and enjoyed them.
Just a warning, as most Rob Sawyer book, there's a bit of his "preaching" involved, you know, humans mainly bad, others mainly good. If you can get past that, it's an intriguing proposition
 

Mike Stearns

zoomar said:
Just bought this in paperback and haven't read it yet. It's supposedly an AH ISOT story about a Neanderthal scientist who gets transported from his universe (where they became the sole surviving homonid species) to ours. The blurb made it seem pretty interesting. It's the first in a series.

Anyone read it?
Click to expand...

I have. They're good books. The thing you have to remember with Sawyer though, is that he's more of a conceptual writer. As a results his usually have relatively weak characters, but a great premise.
 

zoomar

Finally read it and very much enjoyed it. The ending seemed awfully contrived but I'm glad it ended the way it did. After a while, I did get tired of the "preachiness", not about how bad H Sapiens was but how unrealistically good H Neanderthalis is. But a very well thought out alternative timeline. I will certainly read the next ones.
 

Superdude

Banned
I didn't like it because of the huge amount of preaching against Americans. Hell, he has characters in the book talk about the Neanderthals are Canadians and Homo Sapiens Sapiens are Americans.

Thus, while the Americans build great things and breed like crazy, they are warmongering assholes who have no regards for the consequences of their actions. The Canadians live in a peaceful society, which doesn't do much, but is much nicer and better to live in.
 

zoomar

Superdude said:
I didn't like it because of the huge amount of preaching against Americans. Hell, he has characters in the book talk about the Neanderthals are Canadians and Homo Sapiens Sapiens are Americans.

Thus, while the Americans build great things and breed like crazy, they are warmongering assholes who have no regards for the consequences of their actions. The Canadians live in a peaceful society, which doesn't do much, but is much nicer and better to live in.
Click to expand...

Wow, pretty touchy, eh? It is set in Canada, after all, and all the main characters are Canadians, so why not have them reflect Canadian attitudes about their pushy neighbor to the south?
 
Mysterius

Mysterius

sbegin said:
I've got all three, and enjoyed them.
Just a warning, as most Rob Sawyer book, there's a bit of his "preaching" involved, you know, humans mainly bad, others mainly good. If you can get past that, it's an intriguing proposition
Click to expand...
zoomar said:
Finally read it and very much enjoyed it. The ending seemed awfully contrived but I'm glad it ended the way it did. After a while, I did get tired of the "preachiness", not about how bad H Sapiens was but how unrealistically good H Neanderthalis is. But a very well thought out alternative timeline. I will certainly read the next ones.
Click to expand...
Superdude said:
I didn't like it because of the huge amount of preaching against Americans. Hell, he has characters in the book talk about the Neanderthals are Canadians and Homo Sapiens Sapiens are Americans.

Thus, while the Americans build great things and breed like crazy, they are warmongering assholes who have no regards for the consequences of their actions. The Canadians live in a peaceful society, which doesn't do much, but is much nicer and better to live in.
Click to expand...

Great. That's one book with an interesting premise that I probably will not, however, ever read. :(
 

sbegin

Authors write about people and places they know. Sawyer is Canadian, lives in Canada: that's who he writes about. I don't think that he's showing that all Americans are bad, he just has a villain in his book, most books do. This one happens to be American.
 

Superdude

Banned
No, it isn't that the villain is an American. It is that his characters continually compare the Neanderthal's and the Humans, and the Neanderthals have the perfect society, whereas the Humans are deeply flawed, warlike ignoramuses. Then he equates the Neanderthals to the Canadians, and the Humans to the Americans.
 
Hapsburg

Hapsburg

Well, we humans are a bunch of brutes. It's up to you to take that as a negative or a positive description. I personally accept our flaws, our warlike tendencies, as things that allowed us to become the dominant species on the planet. It is our flaws that make us whole beings; perfection would only lead to hubris. Vive l'humanité!

In any case, it is quite unlikely for the Neanderthals to have a perfectly harmonious society and inhabit the entirety of the Earth. In order for them to dominate the planet as we do, they would have to radically change from their historically environmentally-conscious and relatively conservative natures, and become as violent, as innovative, and as open to social change as we humans are. So, they would have to become just like us, and would never remain as they were.
 
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Superdude

Banned
Yes, but he's saying this dominance is a bad thing.

However, I felt proud when Ponter became interested in Human wars, and found World War I and World War II, and became scared as hell.
 

zoomar

Ok, bumped for the last time.

I finally finished Humans and Hybrids and they went decidedly downhill. Hybrids, in particular, degenerated into sociosexual eco-fantasy and (as one poster remarked earlier) outlandishly apocalyptic anti-americanism.

To bad. Hominids was genuinely great, and some of Sawyer's other stuff is wonderful.
 
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