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I’ve only gotten a few comments on this blog, and most of them were from readers very unhappy with my reviews of their beloved books or TV shows. To them all I can say is I’m sorry. My policy on screening comments is that if you spew obscenities and insults at me, you’re not making a valuable contribution to the discussion. That said, I have my own perhaps not valuable addition to the discussion to make. That is to say, I very much dislike The Uplift War.  In fact, I couldn’t finish it. Don’t get me wrong – Brin’s premise (that sentient races were all brought into being by the process of uplift, a gift bestowed upon them by other sentient races) is unique and compelling. I read Startide Rising and liked it. But I find that The Uplift War suffers the pitfalls of much contemporary fiction – an acute focus on action with very little interest in exploring the philosophical underpinning of the world the author has created. Further, there is a fixation on character development that, curiously, still leaves the characters undeveloped. Few writers, like Vernor Vinger and Dan Simmons, have managed to do this kind of novel successfully. Here, David Brin fails.

The Uplift War shifts perspectives between multiple different narrators, two of which are alien species and one of which is chimpanzees, the first species which human beings uplifted. Of course, we cannot introduce an exotic female into the narrative, the Tymbrimi Athaclena, without immediately eroticizing her and setting her up as a love match for the human Robert Oneagle. Similarly we are treated to erotic scenes of chimpanzees in a strip club. I’m not surprised by Brin’s penchant toward bestiality – in Startide Rising one of the dolphins entertains sexual feelings for one of his human crewmates. I’ve gotten used to the objectification of women in science fiction – it’s inevitable, and tracing the phenomenon over time proves that we have a long way to go toward cultural equality if this kind of thing is still present in what is supposed to be our most forward thinking genres of fiction. But when animals are eroticized I become disturbed for the reader and the author. I’m plain not interested in that subject matter. This, of course, is a personal preference, but it’s appearance in The Uplift War made me far less likely to finish the novel.

Besides its sexism, what the novel really suffers from is a minute focus on action that barely moves the plot forward at all and does not explore the philosophical underpinnings of the novel’s premise that most appeal to a certain type of reader. For those of you that love action for the sake of action in your science fiction novels, this one is for you. For those of you interested in learning about uplift or what the humans discovered in deep space that triggered this war, you’ll find nothing of interest here. Yes, the uplifted species the chimpanzees are featured prominently, and yes, the uplifted nemesis Gubru also play an important role, but the mystery of the Streaker’s discovery is left, perhaps, for other books.

Anyone who wants to chime in and voice their opinion on the book is welcome too, as long as they’re constructive. I simply found it, above all, to be insufferably boring and painfully disappointing.

It’s hard to know where to begin in dissecting this out-of-print Nebula winner. It’s another time travel story, and as we’ve already established with historical fiction and alternate histories, using such a device allows the author carte blanche when constructing a plot around their unique timeline. No Enemy but Time uses this latitude to create a novel that rewrites our understanding of our distant past. Whether this journey 2,000,000 years into Earth’s past is successful enough for the reader is up for debate.

No Enemy but Time is really two stories about one character told in a twined narrative as the author moves forward through Joshua Kampa’s past being raised by his foster parents, and his future, where he travels backwards in time to Plieistocene Africa in the the fictional country of Zarakal. He goes because he has been dreaming of living there, in this same far-distant time period, his whole life, and somehow the time travel technology in this novel revolves around the vivid dreams Kampa has had since he was a small child. Only one who has “spirit traveled” can actually go back in time using the time travel device, White Sphinx. Kampa qualifies, and so he is sent back in time to observe the fictionalized proto-humans, Homo zarakalenis (referred to as Minids). The rest of this time travel part of the story focuses on Kampa’s adventures with the tribe of proto-humans he eventually becomes a part of. An intriguing premise, No Enemy but Time fails to reach the heights worthy of a Nebula.

The plot of No Enemy but Time is hard to summarize intelligently, as may be apparent from the first two paragraphs of this review. The book is long and winding, and while its two stories are connected through the shared character of Joshua Kampa, it’s hard to pin down why the story of his childhood and maturation is necessary, even if these chapters are the best written of the book. But what is most frustrating and banal is the way Bishop treats Kampa’s time in the past. The book reads like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel without the excitement, and with a black protagonist. As Kampa successfully joins the Minids band, he becomes the all-powerful outsider, just as good, if not better, at practicing the tasks of hunting and gathering that his Minid companions are both evolutionarily and experientially more suitable for.

Even more problematic is the nature of gender and sexuality in this book. The Minid society is divided along gender lines, with the men doing the hunting and protecting and the females doing the gathering and the nurturing. They also pair bond monogamously along gender lines, implying that heteronormative standards reigned supreme in humans’ distant ancestors. That is, of course, until Kampa falls in love with one of the female Minids that he names Helen, a loner, physically larger than the other woman, who most often acts like a male of the tribe. But this is an uneasy role – Helen is shunned by the females and often takes to stealing other animals’ children in an attempt to play mother. In Bishop’s Pleistocene era, the key to true acceptance in society for a woman is still tied closely to her reproductive capabilities and her role in a heteronormative couple.

That’s right. If you haven’t guessed it by now, Kampa and Helen pair bond, have sex, and produce a child. Putting aside the possible scientific impossibility of this procreation (it is a novel about time travel based on dreaming, after all), I was quite put off by the sexualization of Helen, who I read to be basically an animal in comparison to Kampa. Their love scene read like lurid bestiality, and though I could see the relationship coming from miles away, that didn’t lead me to be any more disappointed in the author. The love scene and sexual bond between Kampa and Helen served no purpose in the plot other than to situate both Kampa and Helen in a monogamous, heteronormative relationship.

This book was published in 1982, during the rise of the New Right with a backlash against the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s. It’s hard to know if Bishop’s interest in pair bonding Kampa and Helen related to this backlash, but one of the most striking features of this novel is that Joshua Kampa is black. Further, he encounters prejudice and discrimination based on his skin color in scenes that are convincing enough such that they are uncomfortable to read. If Bishop was unwilling to relinquish heternormative relationships, he did explore the color barrier.

Also, the novel is set in Africa, an Africa that Bishop envisions as forward thinking scientifically, and that in the end gets its own space program. It is not a simple backdrop for a story about time travel, but instead is a character in its own right, as are the African politicians who play and support Kampa along the way.

As I said at the beginning of the review, this novel has an extremely interesting premise, I just wish it had been executed better. Kampa’s sexual relationship with Helen was a disturbing plot point that I couldn’t move beyond, and it was hard to feel immersed in the minutiae of the Minids society when most of their time was spent looking for food – realistic perhaps, but it didn’t make for riveting reading. Then Bishop glossed over one of the most interesting parts of the story – his return to the present with his hybrid daughter. Perhaps unwilling to imagine the prejudice she might face, or the mental handicaps she might have to overcome, she appears as perfectly normal in the final chapter, absconding to chase her own dreams of the future.

No Enemy but Time is lean on material where it should be thick, and dwells too much on seemingly mundane episodes. Further, it is hard not to feel disturbed by the eroticization of an animal. Poor females are always sex objects, even if they’re almost of a different species. This book is a romance novel for men disguised as a technical manual for wilderness survival disguised as a coming of age story. Follow your dreams, Bishop extorts his reader, they will lead your on wilder and more inappropriate adventures than you ever imagined.

The idea that the disappearance or removal of all technology and nuclear weapons might be the only way to save the human race is not new to science fiction. Clifford D. Simak made exploring the pros and cons of this scenario the center of many of his works, including the great City. Vernor Vinge, another decorated author, is more known for his far future Hugo winning space operas than post-Cold War dystopias. In The Peace War, however, written in 1984, a time when President Regan built up the US army as the USSR began to collapse under the strain of rot from within, Vinge’s near-future exploration of technology, morals, and war proved compelling enough to garner him a Hugo nomination.

The Peace War is the first in a string of nominees that I will be reading in place of the actual Hugo winners from their year. Why I’m skipping certain books varies on a case by case basis, and that doesn’t mean they won’t pop up later in the project. In this case I’m choosing to ignore William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Skip down to the end of the review for my explanation of why.

I’ll be forthright when I say that I love Vinge’s Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, and I look forward to reading Vinge’s other near-future winner, Rainbows End. At his best, Vinge is a modern master, blending hard sci-fi and far future plots to create incredible universes that leave the reader both convinced and in awe. His books are also quite riveting page turners, and I generally tend to dislike books overly driven by plot. But no, in Vinge’s universes the reader is treated to vivid and surprising characters that are just as alive and captivating as his harrowing plots.

The Peace War is interesting, but it is certainly not Vinge at his best. It is mired in Cold War not-so-sub-text, set in a world in which the Peacers have disabled every nuclear and military complex and weapon on earth, bringing “peace” to a world teetering on the brink of catastrophic, violent collapse. The Peacers, are not a governmental body but a private corporation who created a technique called bobbling. Using this technique the Peacers surrounded all military weapons and installations in impenetrable silver spheres – referred to as bobbles – therefore incapacitating all world governments by rendering their armies useless.

But in this new, demilitarized world, the Peacers are the enemies. Disallowing not only military but other forms of advanced technology that might lead to military development, the Peacers have plunged the world back into what Vinge repeatedly refers to as a feudal society, though Vinge only gives us glimpses of a ravaged Southern California ruled by what might be some sort of feudal government. Mostly the world seems to be populated with gangs, tribes, traders, and our heroes, the Tinkers: men and women who continue to develop advanced technology. Hiding from the Peacers, they hope to one day overthrow the authoritarian entity and let the United States flourish again.

There are a lot of things going on in The Peace War, most of them very thinly fleshed out in favor of advancing action, a weakness that Vinge put aside in later works. One reason dystopias are so captivating is because of the world building that occurs in such familiar places. The disaster has already happened – what does like look like for the surivors? Literally, what does it looks like? These questions, and Vinge’s world invites many of them, go largely unanswered.

On the micro level, Vinge is obviously trying to explore the way race and social status would be constructed following such a catastrophe. The main character, Wili, is black, something that Vinge reminds us of over and over again, especially every time he is introduced to new characters. But the meaning of this blackness is unclear; several times Vinge alludes or states that other characters might be surprised to take orders from Wili or to learn that he is a genius, but why this characterization in relation to Wili’s blackness is so important is made unclear. No racial tension is ever actively demonstrated. Interestingly, Vinge again alludes that Southern California is no longer angelo, but boosts a majority Spanish population, though in the caste system is still seems English speakers are on top. Confusion abounds. Does this mean whites are still in control here? Is there a difference between language and race? Wili grew up in Southern California but is fluidly bilingual, further compounding this problem. Then there are groups of people that are only referred to by made-up tribal names. Wili is always black in relation to them while their own racial identities remain unclear.

This issue of Wili’s blackness is worth bringing up because Vinge makes it such a glaring point of description but refuses or overlooks explaining to the reader how race works in this dystopic society. His oversight is really a shame, as dystopias provide an interesting setting to explore social constructs like race. Though Vinge seemed to sense these possibilities, his novel is much more interested in exploring the technological marvels he creates in the form of the bobbles and cerebrally interactive computer networks than how humans might interact following a devastating event.

His strange half-exploration of post-apocalyptic social constructs extends to women as well. The antagonist of the novel, Della Lu, is an Asian woman. Her race is mentioned as constantly as Wili’s, with just as little exploration of what that racial identity means to Lu, and to the other characters she reacts with. A bit more fleshed out is her characterization as a woman. Like with Wili, Lu is constantly aware that all the men around her are surprised and resentful that they must take orders for a woman, even though she is more competent than they are. Unlike Wili, Lu at times even has to listen to men denigrate her femaleness, whereas Wili’s blackness if never openly addressed.

Lu isn’t very sympathetic, she’s through and through a killer, bent on destroying the Tinkers because, well, who knows why, really. It seems every story needs and enemy. At one point she has sex with Mike Rosas, a Tinker turned turncoat turned Tinker again, only for the reason that she is trying to shut him up. The sexual encounter sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the novel, as if Vinge threw it in there simply to spice up the narrative. Women in this book are always sexual objects, including Jill, a computer program created to resemble lead Tinker Paul Hohler’s lost love. Vinge also assumes that a return to the “feudal” structure (a word I’m not sure he even understands) automatically means a return to extremely restricted gender roles – all the peripheral female characters are expected to be domestic and silent. This is a post-feminist novel written during the rise of the New Right, perhaps grasping at the disintegrated domestic ideal. Women can have agency, but in the case of Lu, if they step outside the domestic norm they are heartless bitches who use their bodies to manipulate men and are punished for their sins by death. A familiar trope. Vinge does allow one female character, Allison, to have agency, even though she takes on a non-masculine role in the storyline. Allison, however, has literally been objectified by Paul Hohler, who created the computer program Jill in her image.

Overall The Peace War’s most interesting contribution to the field is its examination of Cold War tensions through a dystopic lens. On a geopolitical level, the three remaining powers in the novel are France, China, and America (all under control of the Peacers), with nary a mention of the USSR. This trio of powers is a wonderful imagining of what might have grown from the alliance made between the French and the Chinese. In 1984 the Soviet Union was collapsing, and in The Peace War there’s nothing left of it. Instead, the unstoppable behemoth, China; France, the rebel of Europe; and the USA have taken over control of most of the world. Interestingly, Africa, always a problem for the first world, remains largely uncontrolled, though it lacks the technological resources of Tinkers elsewhere in the world and is therefore not as much of a threat of Peacer technology. Vinge created a fascinating reading of contemporary geopolitical structures in his dystopic future, and this is yet another point of interest that it would have enriched the novel if only it had been fleshed out.

A product of the 1980s, in The Peace War, Vinge explores a lot of familiar technology, like sophisticated spy satellites and computer networks that looks suspiciously like the internet. The book also reveals that fears of nuclear war and the escalating development of technology didn’t die with détente – they continued to suffuse people’s lives and minds, driving their actions and influencing their fears. The Peace War doesn’t find peace in removing technology. As the title of the novel suggests, the attempt to remove technology simply led to a war to bring it back, almost leading us again to the conclusion that violence is inherent to Man. Vinge’s characters believe that peace is possible, but only if technology is used correctly, and is put in the right hands. What “correct” use is and whose hands should be in control remains unexplained, along with most of the dystopic world Vinge created.

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During the course of this project I will skipping at least a few of the actual award winners, each for varying reasons. In the interests of fair play, I’ll try to explain why I’m skipping each one. This year’s winner that I’ve chosen to exclude was Neuromancer, by William Gibson. I know that Neuromancer is considered one of the game changers of modern science fiction, that it is much, if not obsessively beloved. The thing is I don’t like it. I’ve tried to get through it many times and never once have I been able to finish it. I find it to be dense, boring, and unreadable. To be fair, I am not a fan of cyberpunk in general. Also, I have actually read quite a lot of William Gibson’s work. I didn’t like any of those books either. While less dense than Neuromancer, I found his plots to be repetitive and all of his endings to be terribly anti-climactic, so much so that they ruined the premise of each book that I read – and some of them had really good premises! Those disappointments combined with my inability to make it through Neuromancer even once left me feeling rather disinclined to try reading it again, especially since I’m doing this project for fun. I’m sure there are many really wonderful places both online and in print that you can go to read about how great or shitty Neuromancer is. For now this won’t be one of them.