Blog Post Number 44 Written 07-15-2021 Uploaded 01-20-2023
David Brin is another excellent author who I feel is underappreciated. I don’t remember if I already talked about him, but I am doing it here, so if it’s a repeat subject I apologize, I’m just going with it, because it’s been a heck of a week for me, with a big storm over the weekend causing property damage I had to repair, and my regular job and both of my vehicles trying to die on me and my wife getting a big tattoo that she’s all sensitive about, and that was just in the first three days! Anyway… David Brin.
The Star tide rising, or the uplift trilogy or whatever you want to call it, not only served as my introduction to the concept of uplifting but is a very unique world. With all the different aliens, and the galactic culture built up around uplifting and the social status that came with it. I don’t want to drop too many spoilers, just that they’re damn good books. I loved the characters, and he did an excellent job making the nonhuman characters, (dolphins and chimps specifically) feel like real and relatable characters, giving them culture and habits and mannerisms, they really did feel uplifted. It was all fantastic, and the way they all fit into the world with each other and complimented each other. It’s like the arsenal of weapons in Doom eternal. After you get a new weapon, the old one doesn’t become useless, it is not replaced or superseded, but rather complimented. They all have different strengths and there’s a balance to using all the different equipment in the game. The different races in Brin’s uplift books were like that. No one felt useless, or unneeded. None of the characters or species were filler, they were all needed, there wasn’t any extra in the book.
The big takeaway I have gotten from reading his books is to focus on the community feeling of the world, of the galaxy of races I have created. How the different races interact with and treat each other. To make the interspecies relationships more complete and organic feeling. To add in the little details to make the non-human characters more relatable, more understandable. So that the reader can have feelings and sympathies for them, and not just disregard them because they’re not human. Helps keep you from making the alines too alien if that makes sense. David Brin was so good at this, that my favorite characters from those books, weren’t even human.
I loved the chimps, their banging on drums, and having huge everlasting metal concerts full of drums and percussion instruments and thunder after work. Made me… jealous? Because they all just get together and have a grand old time.
Anyway, Highly recommend his books, they’re great and tell the story of a well developed and diverse universe and I hope to make my interspecies relations as well developed and related able David Brin did because his aliens aren’t just boring white bread space fillers, they’re fresh, warm and toasty garlic bread…
I need to go eat something…
Chace Randolph 