Gregory Dale "Greg" Bear (born August 20, 1951) is an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work has covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), artificial universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin's Radio, and Darwin's Children). His most recent work is The Forerunner Saga, written in the Halo universe. Greg Bear has written 44 books in total. Greg Bear was also one of the five co-founders of the San Diego Comic-Con.
Bear is often classified as a hard science fiction
author because of the level of scientific detail in his work. Early in
his career, he also published work as an artist, including illustrations
for an early version of the Star Trek Concordance and covers for Galaxy and F&SF. He sold his first story, "Destroyers", to Famous Science Fiction in 1967.
In his fiction, Bear often addresses major questions in contemporary science and culture and proposes solutions. For example, The Forge of God offers an explanation for the Fermi paradox,
supposing that the galaxy is filled with potentially predatory
intelligences and that young civilizations that survive are those that
do not attract their attention but stay quiet. In Queen of Angels,
Bear examines crime, guilt, and punishment in society. He frames these
questions around an examination of consciousness and awareness,
including the emergent self-awareness of highly advanced computers in
communication with humans. In Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children,
he addresses the problem of overpopulation with a mutation in the human
genome making, basically, a new series of humans. The question of
cultural acceptance of something new and unavoidable is also brought up.
One of Bear's favorite themes is reality as a function of observation. In Blood Music,
reality becomes unstable as the number of observers (trillions of
intelligent single-cell organisms) spirals higher and higher. Anvil of Stars (sequel to The Forge of God) and Moving Mars
postulate a physics based on information exchange between particles,
capable of being altered at the "bit level." (Bear has credited the
inspiration for the idea to Frederick Kantor's 1967 treatise
"Information Mechanics" (see Digital physics)) In Moving Mars, that knowledge is used to remove Mars from the solar system and transfer it to an orbit around a distant star.
Blood Music was first published as a short story (1983)
and then expanded to a novel (1985). It has also been credited as the
first account of nanotechnology in science fiction. More certainly, the short story is the first in science fiction to describe microscopic medical machines and to treat DNA as a computational system capable of being reprogrammed; that is, expanded and modified. In later works, beginning with Queen of Angels and continuing with its sequel, Slant, Bear gives a detailed description of a near-future nanotechnological society. The historical sequence continues with Heads, which may contain the first description of a so-called "quantum logic computer", as well as Moving Mars. The sequence also charts the historical development of self-awareness in AIs. Its continuing character Jill was inspired in part by Robert A. Heinlein's self-aware computer Mycroft HOLMES (High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor) in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
While most of Bear's work is science fiction, he has written in other fiction genres. Examples include Songs of Earth and Power (fantasy) and Psychlone (horror). Bear has described his Dead Lines, which straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, as a "high-tech ghost story". He has received many accolades, including five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards.
Bear cites Ray Bradbury
as the most influential writer in his life. He met Bradbury in 1967 and
had a lifelong correspondence. As a teenager, Bear attended Bradbury
lectures and events in Southern California.
In
1975, Bear married Christina M. Nielson; they divorced in 1981. In
1983, he married Astrid Anderson, the daughter of the science fiction
and fantasy authors Poul and Karen Anderson. They have two children, Chloe and Alexandra. They reside near Seattle, Washington.
On September 23, 2014, Bear underwent surgery to repair an aortic
artery dissection. The procedure included installation of a mechanical
aortic valve.
Awards and accolades
Before Blood Music was a novel, it was a story published in the June 1983 issue of Analog. It won the Best Novelette Nebula Award (1983) and Hugo Award (1984).
Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature, wrote, "I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music, by Greg Bear. He's a great writer."
Works
Novels
Series
Darwin
Darwin's Radio (1999) Nebula Award winner, Hugo, Locus SF, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 2000
Darwin's Children (2003) Locus SF, Arthur C. Clarke, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 2004
The Forge of God
The Forge of God (1987) Hugo, and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1988; Nebula Award nominee, 1986
Robert Lull Forward (August 15, 1932 – September 21, 2002) was an American physicist and science fiction writer. His literary work was noted for its scientific credibility and use of ideas developed from his career as an aerospace engineer. He also made important contributions to gravitational wave detection research.
He then went to work at the research labs of Hughes Aircraft, where he continued his research on gravity measurement and received 18 patents. He took early retirement in 1987, to focus on his fiction writing and consulting for such clients as NASA and the U.S. Air Force. In 1994, he co-founded the company Tethers Unlimited, Inc. with Robert P. Hoyt, where he served as Chief Scientist and Chairman until 2002.
Forward's extensive work in the field of gravitational wave detection included the invention of the rotating cruciform gravity gradiometer or 'Forward Mass Detector', for Lunar Mascon (mass concentration) measurements. The gravity gradiometer is described in the well-known textbook Gravitation
by Misner, Thorne & Wheeler. The principle behind it is quite
simple; getting the implementation right is tricky. Essentially, two
beams are crossed over and connected with an axle through their crossing
point. They are held at right angles to each other by springs. They
have heavy masses at the ends of the beams, and the whole assembly spun
around the common axle at high speed. The angle between the beams is
measured continuously, and if it varies with a period half that of the
rotation period, it means that the detector is experiencing a measurable
gravitational field gradient.
Fiction
In
addition to more than 200 papers and articles, he published 11 novels.
Critics' reviews were mixed, always praising the science concepts and
the aliens he created, but often finding the plots thin and the humans
shallow.
His treatment of hard-science topics in fictional form is highly reminiscent of the work of Hal Clement. He described his first novel, Dragon's Egg, as "a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel." His novel Rocheworld describes a double-planet system with a single shared atmosphere and ocean, and a beam-powered propulsion interstellar space ship to get there. Forward co-authored two Rocheworld novels with his wife, Martha Dodson Forward, and two additional Rocheworld novels with his second daughter, Julie Fuller. Forward also helped Larry Niven calculate the parameters of the Smoke Ring for his novel The Integral Trees.
Future Magic (1988) This book discusses possible future applications of Skyhooks and orbital rings amongst other technologies, including a plan by Hughes Aircraft for a potential flying saucer.
Edson
McCann, Jordan Park, Elton V. Andrews, Paul Fleur, Lee Gregor, Warren
F. Howard, Scott Mariner, Ernst Mason, James McCreigh, Dirk Wilson,
Donald Stacy
Occupation
Novelist, short story author, essayist, publisher, editor, literary agent
Frederik George Pohl Jr. (/poʊl/; November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan,
with a career spanning more than 75 years—from his first published
work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel
All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012.
From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy and its sister magazine If; the latter won three successive annual Hugo Awards as the year's best professional magazine. His 1977 novel Gateway
won four "year's best novel" awards: the Hugo voted by convention
participants, the Locus voted by magazine subscribers, the Nebula voted
by American science-fiction writers, and the juried academic John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won the Campbell Memorial Award again for the 1984 collection of novellas Years of the City, one of two repeat winners during the first 40 years. For his 1979 novel Jem, Pohl won a U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Science Fiction. It was a finalist for three other year's best novel awards. He won four Hugo and three Nebula Awards,[2] including receiving both for the 1977 novel Gateway.
Pohl was the son of Frederik (originally Friedrich) George Pohl (a salesman of Germanic descent) and Anna Jane Mason. Pohl Sr. held various jobs, and the Pohls lived in such wide-flung locations as Texas, California, New Mexico, and the Panama Canal Zone. The family settled in Brooklyn when Pohl was around seven.
He attended Brooklyn Technical High School, and dropped out at 17. In 2009, he was awarded an honorary diploma from Brooklyn Tech.
While a teenager, he co-founded the New York–based Futuriansfan group, and began lifelong friendships with Donald Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, and others who would become important writers and editors.
Pohl later said that other "friends came and went and were gone, [but]
many of the ones I met through fandom were friends all their lives –
Isaac, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Dirk Wylie, [and] Dick Wilson. In fact, there are one or two – Jack Robins, Dave Kyle – whom I still count as friends, seventy-odd years later...." He published a science-fiction fanzine called Mind of Man.
Pohl served in the United States Army from April 1943 until November 1945, rising to sergeant as an air corps weatherman. After training in Illinois, Oklahoma, and Colorado, he was mainly stationed in Italy with the 456th Bombardment Group.
Pohl was married five times. His first wife, Leslie Perri,
was another Futurian; they were married in August 1940, and divorced in
1944. He then married Dorothy LesTina in Paris in August 1945 while
both were serving in the military in Europe; the marriage ended in 1947.
During 1948, he married Judith Merril;
they had a daughter, Ann. Pohl and Merril divorced in 1952. In 1953, he
married Carol M. Ulf Stanton, with whom he had three children and
collaborated on several books; they separated in 1977 and were divorced
in 1983. From 1984 until his death, Pohl was married to science-fiction
expert and academic Elizabeth Anne Hull.
He fathered four children – Ann (m. Walter Weary), Frederik III (deceased), Frederik IV and Kathy. Grandchildren include Canadian writer Emily Pohl-Weary and chef Tobias Pohl-Weary.
Pohl
began writing in the late 1930s, using pseudonyms for most of his early
works. His first publication was the poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite:
Luna" under the name of Elton Andrews, in the October 1937 issue of Amazing Stories, edited by T. O'Conor Sloane. (Pohl asked readers 30 years later, "we would take it as a personal favor if no one ever looked it up".)
His first story, the collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth "Before the
Universe", appeared in 1940 under the pseudonym S.D. Gottesman.
Work as editor and agent
Pohl
started a career as a literary agent in 1937, but it was a sideline for
him until after World War II, when he began doing it full-time. He
ended up "representing more than half the successful writers in science
fiction", but his agency did not succeed financially, and he closed it
down in the early 1950s.
Pohl stopped being Asimov's agent—the only one the latter ever had—when he became editor from 1939 to 1943 of two pulp magazines, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories. Stories by Pohl often appeared in these science-fiction magazines, but never under his own name. Work written in collaboration with Cyril M. Kornbluth
was credited to S. D. Gottesman or Scott Mariner; other collaborative
work (with any combination of Kornbluth, Dirk Wylie, or Robert A. W.
Lownes) was credited to Paul Dennis Lavond. For Pohl's solo work,
stories were credited to James MacCreigh (or for one story only, Warren
F. Howard.)
Works by "Gottesman", "Lavond", and "MacCreigh" continued to appear in
various science-fiction pulp magazines throughout the 1940s.
In his autobiography, Pohl said that he stopped editing the two
magazines at roughly the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union
in 1941.
Pohl co-founded the Hydra Club, a loose collection of science-fiction professionals and fans who met during the late 1940s and 1950s.
From the early 1960s until 1969, Pohl served as editor of Galaxy Science Fiction and Worlds of if magazines, taking over after the ailing H. L. Gold could no longer continue working "around the end of 1960". Under his leadership, if won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine for 1966, 1967 and 1968. Pohl hired Judy-Lynn del Rey as his assistant editor at Galaxy and if. He also served as editor of Worlds of Tomorrow from its first issue in 1963 until it was merged into if in 1967.
After World War II, Pohl worked as an advertising copywriter and then as a copywriter and book editor for Popular Science.
Following the war, Pohl began publishing material under his own name,
much in collaboration with his fellow Futurian, Cyril Kornbluth.
Though the pen names of "Gottesman", "Lavond", and "MacCreigh"
were retired by the early 1950s, Pohl still occasionally used
pseudonyms, even after he began to publish work under his real name.
These occasional pseudonyms, all of which date from the early 1950s to
the early 1960s, included Charles Satterfield, Paul Flehr, Ernst Mason,
Jordan Park (two collaborative novels with Kornbluth), and Edson McCann
(one collaborative novel with Lester del Rey).
In the 1970s, Pohl re-emerged as a novel writer in his own right, with books such as Man Plus and the Heechee series. He won back-to-back Nebula Awards with Man Plus in 1976 and Gateway, the first Heechee novel, in 1977. In 1978, Gateway swept the other two major novel honors, also winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel and John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science-fiction novel. Two of his stories have also earned him Hugo Awards: "The Meeting" (with Kornbluth) tied in 1973 and "Fermi and Frost" won in 1986. Another award-winning novel is Jem (1980), winner of the National Book Award.
His works include not only science fiction, but also articles for Playboy and Family Circle magazines and nonfiction books. For a time, he was the official authority for Encyclopædia Britannica on the subject of Emperor Tiberius. (He wrote a book on the subject of Tiberius, as "Ernst Mason".)
Some of his short stories take a satirical look at consumerism
and advertising in the 1950s and 1960s: "The Wizards of Pung's
Corners", where flashy, over-complex military hardware proved useless
against farmers with shotguns, and "The Tunnel under the World",
where an entire community of seeming-humans is held captive by
advertising researchers. ("The Wizards of Pung's Corners" was freely
translated into Chinese and then freely translated back into English as
"The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle" in the first edition of Pohlstars (1984)).
Pohl's Law is either "No one is ever ready for anything" or "Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it".
He was a frequent guest on Long John Nebel's radio show from the 1950s to the early 1970s, and an international lecturer.
Starting in 1995, when the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award became a juried award, Pohl served first with James Gunn and Judith Merril, and since then with several others until retiring in 2013. Pohl was associated with Gunn since the 1940s, becoming involved in 1975 with what later became Gunn's Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. There, he presented many talks, recorded a discussion about "The Ideas in Science Fiction" in 1973 for the Literature of Science Fiction Lecture Series, and served the Intensive Institute on Science Fiction and Science Fiction Writing Workshop.
Pohl's last novel, All the Lives He Led, was released on April 12, 2011.
By the time of his death, he was working to finish a second volume of his autobiography The Way the Future Was (1979), along with an expanded version of the latter.
Collaborative work
In
addition to his solo writings, Pohl was also well known for his
collaborations, beginning with his first published story. Before and
following the war, Pohl did a series of collaborations with his friend
Cyril Kornbluth, including a large number of short stories and several
novels, among them The Space Merchants, a dystopiansatire of a world ruled by the advertising agencies.
In the mid-1950s, he began a long-running collaboration with Jack
Williamson, eventually resulting in 10 collaborative novels over five
decades.
Other collaborations included a novel with Lester Del Rey, Preferred Risk
(1955). This novel was solicited for a contest by Galaxy–Simon &
Schuster when the judges did not think any of the contest submissions
was good enough to win their contest. It was published under the joint
pseudonym Edson McCann. He also collaborated with Thomas T. Thomas on a sequel to his award-winning novel Man Plus. He wrote two short stories with Isaac Asimov in the 1940s, both published in 1950.
There is also a short story, "Aficionado" (originally titled "Life in the Extreme"), published in 1998, which
serves as a prequel to the series as a whole (it also serves as a part
of Existence, an unrelated work by Brin), and a novella, Temptation, published in 1999 in Far Horizons, which follows on from Heaven's Reach. He also wrote Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe, a guidebook about the background of the series.
At least one more Uplift book is planned by Brin, as he has stated in 2012 that Temptation "will be a core element of the next Uplift novel... and answers several unresolved riddles left over from Heaven's Reach."
In
the Uplift universe an intergalactic civilization called the Five
Galaxies, comprising a multitude of sapient races, has existed for
billions of years. This civilization is perpetuated by the act of "uplift", in which a "patron" species genetically modifies a pre-sapient "client" species until it is sapient. The client species is typically indentured
to its patron species for 100,000 years. A patron species gains
considerable status, and patrons and clients often unite into powerful clans. Patron status can be lost due to extermination, or gross crimes against the galactic civilization.
It is generally accepted in this universe that the process of
uplift was initiated at least one billion years ago by a species known
only as the Progenitors. Humanity
is therefore an anomaly – a species with no apparent patron race.
Whether humanity truly evolved independently, or whether it was
criminally abandoned by an unknown patron early in its uplift, is a
topic of fierce debate. Most of humanity believes itself to be a
"wolfling" species that emerged into sapience solely through natural evolution,
without genetic manipulation by a patron species. This belief is
considered heresy and ridiculous by most of the galactic civilization
and has made most of the galactic powers enemies of EarthClan. The fact
that humanity had already uplifted two species (chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins)
when it encountered the galactic civilization gave humanity patron
status, which is one of the few lucky turns it has had in its difficult
position as pariah in the galactic civilization. This saved humanity
from the likely fate of becoming client to another race through forced
adoption or being punitively exterminated for the environmental damage
done to the Earth and its native species.
Humanity and its clients are collectively known as EarthClan.
Humanity in the Uplift universe is not a dominant nor a technologically
advanced species – it is centuries, even millennia, behind the great
galactic powers and has several enemies capable of exterminating it
entirely.
The civilization of the Five Galaxies has several "Institutes", which are bureaucracies
that specify how species deal with each other and the uplift process.
One of the most significant of these is the Library Institute, the
repository of all knowledge. Humanity prides itself on using the Library
as little as possible. For instance, instead of drawing upon the highly
refined starship designs available in the Library, humanity tends to
develop its own (generally vastly inferior) vessels. Humans feel that
this is a way to exercise their own independence and creativity, and it
occasionally allows them to find solutions to problems which have in
fact surprised more powerful races.
The Institute of Migration determines what planets can be
colonized and under what environmental restrictions, primarily to ensure
that suitable races can still evolve for later uplift. The Institute
also ensures the separation of the hydrogen-breathing and
oxygen-breathing orders of sapient life. Other intergalactic institutes
regulate the uplift of sapient species, navigation, warfare, etc.
Bureaucrats are recruited from all races but are expected to put the
interests of their bureau before that of their race and maintain strict
neutrality; however, this does not always happen.
The civilization of the Five Galaxies is made up solely of oxygen-breathing
species. This civilization is aware of, but by tradition rarely if ever
interacts with, the other orders of sapient life, which include those
which are hydrogen-breathing, transcendent, mechanical, memetic, and quantum. There is also a special designation for hypothetical orders of life which could also exist but have not been discovered.
Technology
Unlike
most other races, humans and their clients regard creativity as very
desirable – the others take the view that everything useful has already
been discovered, so it would be more efficient to search the Galactic
Library for whatever they need. EarthClan are also considered odd for
using archaic technology in addition to the more advanced Galactic
technology, or sometimes preferring primitive technologies that they
understand to more advanced ones that they don't yet understand. Most
notably, EarthClan utilizes calculus, which is unknown and mistrusted by galactic society. All other races simply apply brute-force, finite-element analysis to any problem due to their ability to apply as much computing power as may be needed to model all phenomena.
Social behavior
Most Galactic "clans" are rather feudal and sometimes exploitative, and place strong emphasis on etiquette
and especially on deferential behavior by members of "subordinate"
races towards members of "superior" races. Hence they often regard
EarthClan's informal speech as insulting and the humans' egalitarian
treatment of their Neo-Chimp and Neo-Dolphin clients as foolish, if not
outright offensive.
Languages
Most of EarthClan speaks Anglic. Galactics have several specialized languages:
Gal One: Purely mathematical and similar to Morse code. Extremely slow.
Gal Nine: Chiming, syncopated. Kanten, Linten, Siqul.
Gal Ten: Fluting, sonar-like. Brothers of the Night.
Gal Eleven: Bridging language. Cautious, often redundant. Used between different Orders of life.
Gal Twelve: Throaty, used by the Soro. 2 billion years old.
Planets
The following planets feature in the books, from the many thousands of inhabited planets in the setting:
Calafia: A water-world inhabited by humans and Neo-Dolphins, currently occupied by the Soro. The name may refer to Calafia, a mythical Black Amazon.
Cathrhennlin: A Tymbrimi university world.
Deemi: A world leased to humans on the condition that they
run the Galactic prison located there. It is bathed in ultraviolet
radiation. Most of its biosphere is aquatic.
Garth: The main setting of the novel The Uplift War,
which depicts its invasion by the Gubru. The planet was leased to
EarthClan after its ecology was devastated by the Bururalli species, and
is inhabited by humans and Neo-Chimpanzees. Its star is called
Gimelhai, and its main city is Port Helenia.
Horst: A disaster world, assigned to Humanity less than six generations before the Streaker crisis, and populated by primitivists.
Jijo: The main setting of the novels Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach. It is a planet orbiting a carbon star in Galaxy 4, illegally inhabited by refugees from ten species: humans, chimpanzees, dolphins, Hoon, G'Kek, Urs, Traeki, Glavers, Qheuen, and Tytlal. It is also used as a refuge by the EarthClan starship Streaker. Brin uses the mix of species to explore commonalities of the sapient experience; for example Hoon Alvin Hph-Wayuo is a humicker, an enthusiast and imitator of human culture.[6]
Jophekka: The homeworld of the Jophur, sapient and ambitious sap ring stacks.
Juthtath: A Tymbrimi world.
Kazzkark: Minor planet, where an important base of the Navigation Institute gathers data from E-Space.
Kithrup: The main setting of the novel Startide Rising, where the EarthClan starship Streaker
takes refuge from its many pursuers. It is a metal-rich, watery world
orbiting the star Kthsemenee. It is inhabited by the pre-sapient Kiqui,
and serves as the recuperation home for the psionic Karrank%.
NuDawn: A pre-Contact colony (whose name may be a pun with
Aurora - New Dawn) where an incident with Hoon inspectors brought Jophur
to massacre the human colonists.
Oakka: A "green-green" world, where the air is difficult to
breathe. There was a Library branch there, but its inhabitants were
corrupted and attacked the Streaker in an attempt to capture it.
Omnivarium: A world inhabited by birds that mimic any sound, a
fact discovered when the birds started mimicking the sounds of
explorers performing coitus.
Tanith: The location of the nearest full Galactic Library branch near Terra.
Urchachka: A very dry planet, homeworld of the Urs.
Alien species and humans
EarthClan
EarthClan is the name of humanity and their clients (an animal or plant species being uplifted) in David Brin's Uplift Universe. They are named for their combined homeworld Earth.
In the books, humanity is an insignificant race, having no known
Patrons (a species responsible for uplifting them) and having mostly
primitive technology. Humans have two (confirmed) clients and are
referred to formally as "a-Human ul-Chimpanzee ul-Dolphin". However, in
being Patrons, humanity has unknowingly protected itself from being
forced into becoming a client of an older race.
Humans
Humans in
the Uplift universe are surprisingly baseline. Advanced augmentative
technologies exist, but appear to be too expensive or socially frowned
upon to be in widespread use. So, while cybernetics, advanced genetic
engineering, and other technology capable of creating trans-humans exists, they are not in widespread use, as very few characters are portrayed using such technologies.
Neo-Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees
are the first clients of humans and are the most "complete" in that
they are closest to full sapiency. They are Stage 2 clients but almost
became Stage 3 when the Gubru invaded Garth. Neo-Chimpanzees like music, specifically percussion.
They are embarrassed by situations which remind them of their earlier
status as "smart animals", especially about nudity, tree-climbing and
above all losing their ability to speak when under stress.
Neo-Dolphins
Dolphins
are the second clients of humans, and are some of the best pilots in
the Five Galaxies because their aquatic origins give them excellent
instincts for 3-D maneuvers. They are also important in planetary
warfare because most Galactics are unaware of the strategic potential of
the sea. Neo-Dolphins are Stage-2 Clients, and recently got their own starship, Streaker (Streaker's discoveries later caused controversy among the oxygen-breathing
sapient species). Neo-Dolphins are at a relatively early stage of
uplift, and this has several consequences which are important in the
plots of the stories: the optimal genetic mix for Neo-Dolphins has not
yet been determined, and some of the newer genetic mixes become
dangerous to colleagues when under stress; there are significant
differences between older and younger Neo-Dolphins, in particular older
individuals find it more difficult to speak; and they have to struggle
against tendencies to slip into atavistic behaviours such as the "Whale
Dream" and rescue fever (which leads them to beach themselves).
Neo-Gorillas
Neo-Gorillas
were at a very early stage of uplift when the Galactic Uplift Institute
ordered humans to halt the process, because they were concerned that
humans could not manage so many uplift projects at the same time. Some
humans secretly continued the project on the small colony-world of
Garth. Neo-Gorillas have some understanding that they are being
uplifted, and chose the Thennanin as their "patrons" at a ceremony on
Garth. This is politically very important, as the conservative and conscientious
Thennanin are a major military power and the Neo-Gorillas' choice
converts the Thennanin from enemies to allies of EarthClan. After
adoption by the Thennanin, the Neo-Gorillas are termed "Garthlings."
Neo-Dogs
Dogs have been mentioned as a possible client of humanity in several books, but their final adoption has not been confirmed.
Other clans (of aliens)
The Jophur
The
Jophur are a fictional extraterrestrial race in the Uplift Universe.
Physically, they are a stack of waxy, living rings. Each ring serves a
different purpose, and they connect to each other to form a single being
by chemical means via an electrically conductive, sap-like substance
that flows down the center to bind the stack together. A "master ring"
provides a strong sense of individuality to each stack and enforces this
with corrective electrical shocks to non-compliant rings.
The Jophur were originally the traeki, intelligent but
often indecisive because of internal debates between the rings that
formed each individual. Their patrons, the Poa, asked the Oallie
to engineer the traeki further to increase their effectiveness. The
Oailie created "master rings", shiny black rings (often described as
"silvery") that created a strong sense of self-identity. The newly
invigorated Jophur, as the traeki with the new master rings were called,
quickly became a strong, vigorous force in the Five Galaxies.
According to various books in the series, most prominently the trilogy that followed the characters of Startide Rising, the Jophur quickly began a genocide
and eradicated all but a small group of the original traeki, with the
exception of a small "Sooner" group that settled on the planet Jijo in
the fourth galaxy. "Sooner"
is a term from United States history, and is used in the Uplift stories
to describe illegal settlers on worlds that have been declared fallow,
i.e. to be left uncolonized so that native intelligences may have a
chance to develop naturally. The Jophur became fanatical adherents of
one of the galaxy's religious ideologies,
and exterminated many races they regarded as "heretics" – including the
g'Kek, which also survived only as a "Sooner" group on Jijo.
Kiqui
Kiqui are a pre-sapientamphibious species first discovered on the planet Kithrup by Streaker's crew, who persuade them to be uplifted as clients of the humans. If this goes ahead, the Kiqui would become humanity's first extraterrestrial clients.
Plot outline and major themes
Ecology and stewardship of genetic diversity are major themes in the Uplift books. Religious orthodoxy and the behavior of static societies are also themes.
The first book in the Uplift series, Sundiver (1980), is essentially a detective story
and occurs only decades after humanity's first contact with the Five
Galaxies. In this story mankind discovers the sun's inhabitants and a
plot to overthrow a patron race. This is the only novel to directly
involve Earth.
The second book, Startide Rising (1983), occurs centuries later. It follows the Earthclan amphibious spaceship Streaker (crewed by uplifted dolphins and their human patrons) which has discovered a colossal derelict fleet. Streaker is pursued as rumors spread throughout the Five Galaxies that the ship has found the remains of the Progenitors.
The third book, The Uplift War (1987), occurs around the same time as Startide Rising but in another part of the galaxy. An intergalactic war, sparked by the events of Startide Rising, results in a successful invasion of the EarthClan colony on the planet Garth, heavily populated by uplifted chimps.
In 1995 Brightness Reef was published, the first book in a
new Uplift trilogy. The "Uplift Storm" trilogy (excluding the first
book, which solely focuses on Jijo) follows the survivors of the
spaceship Streaker as they continue to evade the various galactic powers. Along the way they encounter a hidden planet
which has been inhabited by six races which have illegally settled and
dropped out of the civilization of the Five Galaxies. They eventually
make contact with the other orders of life. The second and third books
in the new Uplift trilogy are Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach.
In Heaven's Reach, the series sums up with conclusions on
the nature of life in the universe and revelations on the motivations of
the oldest species in the Five Galaxies. Further explanations are
provided on the Streaker's
continuing mission, Earth's fate after invasion, and the nature of
galactic life in the overlapping conspiracies of galactic civilization.
The short story "Aficionado" or "Life in the Extreme" is set
earliest of all the currently written work and gives an account of the
early days of the human uplift program before Contact. The contents of
this story have since been reused as part of the unrelated novel Existence, making its position in the uplift universe uncertain.
The novella Temptation was set just after the ending of Heaven's Reach, and tells what happened to some of the characters from the trilogy after the main story ended.
Timeline
Below is a summarized timeline for events detailed in the Uplift Universe, which corresponds to the Gregorian Calendar:
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