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Title: Contacting Aliens : An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe by Kevin Lenagh, David Brin ISBN: 0-553-37796-5 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: fun stuff
Comment: I loove the Uplift universe (really galaxies, not the entire universe, but whatever). This is an excellent guide book to the series, fleshing out previously-introduced races and providing new information on others. However, DO NOT read this book until you have read Startide Rising, The Uplift War, and Sundiver. Contacting Aliens contains spoilers to the conclusions of those books.
One thing, I hope a second edition of this comes out, because there are a few little errors/contradictions in it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Amusing and Impudent
Comment: If you're like me and sometimes you have trouble keeping track of which species is which in David Brin's Uplift Saga, then this book will prove to be a valuable resource. All of the major players are listed (including those so prominently featured in the "Heaven's Reach" trilogy), along with their patrons and clients, which is very helpful in sorting out the various allegiances and alliances. Most of the entries are quite short, just giving a brief description of the physical appearances of the races, how they were uplifted and what unique gifts were cultivated, and their role or fate in galactic society. Many patrons that have retired or are being urged in that direction by their juniors are included here, along with some races that are now extinct.
The artwork is not phenomenal like you might get from, say, Jim Burns or some of today's prominent artists from graphic novels, but it's got a sly and impudent sense of humor in my opinion. This fits well with the overall tone of the book, which purports to be a field guide for agents of the Terran Clan, i.e. good ol' Mother Earth. So the text often offers up tips on which races are friendly to humans, which want to destroy us, and which are indifferent, and provides hints on how to deal with some of these. (Of a particularly violent and prosletyzing race of religious zealots, the book notes that an agent's only two options are to flee or "to convert [them] to some less noxious creed".)
Also, there are some interesting "real world" web resources listed at the back of the book.
As a general refesher for the fan of Brin's work, this works well, but it's not likely to succeed in attracting new readers to the saga. Really, it's a solid supplement to the accumulated material of the novels and can be of some use, but it's not critical to own.
Rating: 2
Summary: Few will enjoy this
Comment: ...Brin's uplift novels are overloaded with wonderful details that lets the reader's mind co-create aliens and alien landscapes. He provides just enough information to evoke a sense of weirdness with his aliens that they become full fledged beings all on their own. His aliens are, for the most part, shockingly original and often disturbing in just how un-human they can be. In Contacting Aliens imagination and originally have been surgically removed leaving us with aliens as two dimensional as the artwork that accompanies their brief description. What a disappointment. The book neither fills in holes left by the series nor adds new ground or information to these characters.
The drawings appear rather juvenile and provide no depth or interest. They contribute nothing to the image of the exotics that populate Brin's novels...
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Title: Heaven's Reach (The Uplift Saga, Book 6) by David Brin ISBN: 0553574736 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 11 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Brightness Reef (The Uplift Trilogy, Book 1) by David Brin ISBN: 0553573306 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Infinity's Shore (The Uplift Saga, Book 5) by David Brin ISBN: 0553577778 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 03 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Kiln People by David Brin ISBN: 0765342618 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Tomorrow Happens by David Brin, Deb Geisler, James Burns ISBN: 1886778434 Publisher: NESFA Press Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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