Sundiver

The Uplift Saga, Book 1

De: David Brin

Narrado por: George Wilson

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling, highly regarded works of contemporary science fiction. Beginning with Sundiver, Brin provides an intriguing exploration of humanity's future in the universe.

For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth? The answer to this mystery might be as close as our own sun, but it will take a daring dive into its fiery interior to know for sure.

Sundiver begins David Brin's thoughtful, exhilarating exploration of a future filled with an imaginative array of strange alien races, dazzling scientific achievements, and age-old enigmas.

©1980 David Brin (P)2001 Recorded Books

The very best!

If you enjoy AC Clarke, Brim will thrill you. One of the greatest true science fiction writers I have read in the last 25 years.
His awards through the years are ssoooo well deserved. The more you are aquainted with real science, the more you will love Brim's works!

Not what I thought it was but good

Well let me first say that this wasn't what I expected it to be like, it was good contained some surprises and overall was worthy of reading.

There are some things about this story that are a little unexplained or maybe poorly explained, you can understand whats happening but its not until the end that you really get what is going on and then there are more questions.

So there are these "things" in the sun that people have seen when going into the surface of the sun doing observations for science. The Aliens don't understand this because there is a "galactic library" that holds everything one needs to know so there is no reason to do research like that anymore but being the suborn Humans we are we are doing it anyways - well things are seen in there that look to be sentient life and its the research vessel that goes into the sun to research these things and report back because the "galactic library" doesn't have anything on what they could be so some suspect that they have been lied to and the copy of the library that we humans have is not complete or maybe deliberately missing stuff

If you know who Erich Von Daniken is and his book from 1986 called "Chariots of the Gods" and latter works you know about the "uplift theory" where by aliens have "uplifted" humans in the distant past that's why we cant find the so called "missing link" in the evolutionary tract and why we have jumped so far in such a short time, this is sorta the concept of the books back story.

In this book we Humans have uplifted dolphins and chimps to full sentient as in able to think like a human can or at least at the same intellectual level which results in chimps and dolphins talking to humans and helping them do tasks like any other human would except for dolphins can do underwater stuff better - its a cool concept and according to the galactic library almost every single race was "uplifted" by another race leading all the way back to the start with some group of races that isn't explained completely , but humans don't seem to have a "up-lifter" which is a little strange to many aliens

The Humans here think that maybe the beings in the sun could actually be the uplifters of humanity, and will the Aliens help them to understand it or maybe do something even worse?

There isn't much about this book I didn't like other than it was missing some better explanations and maybe a nice pre-story for a chapter or so to get you into the world thats created but it was good, I am going on to the next book so check my reviews for that one to see if it is as good as this one was

meh

not that great not once did i think this is awesome or worth the purchase.

Good in a Series of Greats

Not as good as Startide Rising, but very comparable. See my review for the aforementioned for more detail.

Interesting premise for the world - a little borin

Any additional comments?

The setup and premise of this series of books is pretty good But this particular book was often pretty boring. It had some good part at the end but overall it was hard to get through. Glad I listened to it at 1.25X. I heard the next book in the series is much better. Probably be a while until I actually read it though - still not recovered from this books slow pacing.

A True Classic

This is one of Brin's ealierier novels and the story telling is a bit stilted. Part of that is the process of Universe building. The concept of a universe based on Uplift is easy to grasp but hard to explain. The other part is that it was Brin's first published novel. Even a great first novel is a first novel. The story is a good mystery based on scientific possiblilities. The Universe he creates is interesting and engaging as are the characters.

The narrator does an excellent job of dealing with both human, terrestrial and alien characters. They are clear and recognizable.

I look forward to listening to the rest of the books.

"chapters" cut at really weird places

the chapters don't remotely match the book. and some of them actually cut off the narrator mid-sentence. makes it a bit hard to listen to one "chapter" at a time

wow

The Uplift books are tied for my favorite sci-fi series with Asimov's original Foundation series. This is sci-fi at its very best. Brin goes through an astonishing number of fascinating ideas and concepts, but leaves them for the reader to peruse or discard. Want racial allegory? Sure. Prefer religion? Plenty of it. Political intrigue? It's there by the truckload.

When Brin goes into pretend-science he goes all in. One can almost sense his smirk going through this first book: that's right, this book has talking chimpanzees and dolphin haikus and spaceships flying into the sun. Wanna fight about it? It works, and the mileage he forces out of it is outstanding.

And to top everything off he makes a point of tying off each book with an epic space battle, punctuated with a stunt humans come up with that surprises (or angers) their alien counterparts for sheer boldness and audacity. What's not to love?
#scffi #Suspenseful #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Exciting and imaginative

I came across book 3 of Brin's Uplift Saga entirely be chance, but the moment I put it down, I was compelled to find more by him. I was delighted to see that it was part of a series! This is an excellent introduction to the concepts and particulars of Brin's notions of the future. Beyond simply being fascinating, I have also found this series to have wonderfully tense moments and a generous sprinkling of wry humor. Book 1 (Sundiver) is no exception.

Good Book, Average Narrator

Was distracted more often than I would have liked by the Narrator pausing to swallow. Story was great and other than the swallowing Narrator did a great job.