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This was the third time I’ve attempted to
read STARTIDE RISING. A couple years ago I read SUNDIVER, the
first of Brin’s Uplift books, and enjoyed it enough that I
immediately ran out to buy the EARTHCLAN omnibus (collecting
STARTIDE RISING and THE UPLIFT WAR). I naturally started reading
STARTIDE RISING as soon as I got home, but after about twenty or
thirty pages I simply lost interest and got involved in another
book.
I picked it up again about six months later
and didn’t even get that far before putting the book down
again.
This time I managed to build up a good head
of steam and finished the book. But I found the exact same flaws
this time which had turned me off the book completely the last
two times I’d attempted to read it: Crude characterization,
sloppy prose, and a poorly constructed narrative.
The first and most immediate problem is
that Brin literally starts his story in the wrong place. I have
nothing against in media res openings, but imagine
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA if Clarke had decided to start the
narrative with the alien ship already half-explored. It’s not
inconceivable that some other writer could have started the
story in the same place and made it work, but it’s certain
that Brin didn’t: Large swaths of the first hundred pages is
spent conveying heavy-handed chunks of pace-killing, awkward
exposition.
And when the exposition isn’t killing
your interest in the book, Brin’s clumsy writing takes up the
slack. Not only does he literally have characters giving “as
you know, Bob” speeches, but he frequently feels a need to
explain to the reader why the last paragraph was not, in fact,
awkward and out of character (which, of course, only calls
attention to the fact that it was, in fact, awkward and out of
character).
The cast, meanwhile, is populated by trite
clichés who – despite the momentous and deadly circumstances
in which they find themselves – seem to be mostly content in
playing out mediocre soap opera dramas. In fact, their mundanity
is an impressive achievement considering that most of them are
uplifted dolphins.
In some ways, it almost feels as if Brin is
deliberately on a scavenger hunt for every bad habit of science
fiction writing he can find, and STARTIDE RISING is his way of
checking off the finds. He even makes one of his characters
briefly an aficionado of 20th century science
fiction, and then he follows up by having her claim that if
someone were reading about Brin’s Uplift universe back then
they wouldn’t believe it (because its oh-so-dark)! I’m
pretty sure I audibly groaned when I came across that stinker of
a paragraph.
So why did I keep reading through this
slop? Because where STARTIDE RISING succeeds is in the sheer
creative scope of its future: A galactic society billions of
years old, formed entirely of species artificially uplifted to
sentience and capable of tracing their ancestry back to
near-mythic Progenitors. An anarchic society given constancy
only by is adherence to the principles of uplift – that each
client species shall give, in payment for its sentience, a
hundred thousand years of indentured servitude to its patrons
– and to the Library, a body of knowledge contributed to and
shared by every sentient species.
Even here, unfortunately, Brin doesn’t
quite get the job done. (For example, not only are his aliens
limited to uni-cultures that make Star Trek species look
positively diverse, but he has those uni-cultures persist for
MILLIONS OF YEARS.) But, ultimately, it’s the speculation in
Brin’s speculative fiction that captures the imagination and
keeps you reading.
In fact, as a general principle, Brin
consistently succeeds when it comes to the Big Ideas. It’s
only in the details that he falls down flat. For example, all
the little mini-soap operas Brin has playing out among his cast
of characters ring false; but the greater drama – of a Terran
crew desperately fleeing the wrath of the galaxy after stumbling
across a secret better left forgotten – works on a compelling
level. Similarly, Brin’s future is pedestrian in its part, but
epic in its scope: Any given technology is relatively
commonplace, but a galactic society so ancient and diverse that
they have developed a hundred different ways to break the
lightspeed barrier immediately captures the imagination.
It’s also true that, as the book goes on,
Brin begins to find his feet and delivers a more reliable
performance. But this has as much to do with the fact that, as
Brin gets his tiresome exposition out the way, the main plot
heats up and he has less and less time to dwell on his mediocre
soap operas.
In the final analysis, STARTIDE RISING is
disappointing because it could have been so much more. But, by
the same token, that failed promise of greatness still results
in a good book. A flawed book, yes, but a book which still
delivers a lot of entertainment on a lot of different levels.
GRADE: B
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