Thursday 26 February 2004

Pic of the day: One of these heads is a reconstruction of a 50 000 years old Neander skull, by L'Atelier Daynes. The other is mine. Which one, I leave as an exercise for the reader. Our expression hasn't changed much over the years, huh?

Hybrids (review)

This is about the book Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer. In all fairness, this is the third book in a trilogy, and the fact that I have read the two previous books reveals that I start out with some positive bias.

The books can be read separately, but I recommend starting from the first, Hominids. That one I also considers the best, if only by degrees, because of its original concept which is then re-used in Humans and Hybrids. The first book contains all the pseudoscience necessary to imagine a contact between our world and a parallel existence where the Neanderthals survived and our type of humans did not.

And not only survived. The Neanderthals are superior in every way. They are not just stronger and healthier, but also smarter and wiser, ecologically responsible and morally superior. Oh, and they are naturally born atheists. To them, gods and spirits are like square circles or dark light: Mental exercises at best, sheer madness at worst. It becomes painfully clear in this third book that the author shares this view and is willing to bend the story slightly in order to promote it. Faith is a big issue in Hybrids. But it is also to some extent about crime and redemption, and ironically the twists of fate in this book are so intricate and satisfying as to bear witness to a wise and watchful creator. It's just that in this case, the creator is Sawyer...

The plot of the book is fast paced enough to make it hard to put aside, but not rushed. More impressively, the plot twists and turns in surprising yet plausible ways. Several times I think "Ha! I knew this would happen!" and then it turns out to be something different after all. Not once or twice, but perhaps half a dozen times did he fool me that way, without ever becoming truly contrived. Even when he literally pulls a "deus ex machina", things don't go quite the way I thought they would.

***

Yes, Sawyer is clearly intrigued by recent research that human religiosity may have a biological origin. Magnetic stimulation of certain parts of the brain is highly likely to cause religious experiences in human test subjects, or if sufficiently irreligious they will perceive aliens or some undefined presence in the room.

I have already before seen in publications of popular science people interpreting this as proof that there is no god, it is all a product of the human brain. To me the opposite seems more likely: If the vast majority of humans have an organ to perceive something, it is likely that this something exists and is useful to human survival. Thus we have eyes and much cerebral cortex dedicated to the input from them, same for ears and skin and so on. Even consciousness itself, of which humans are aware, seems to confer some advantage. Sawyer blithely accepts that the rise of consciousness gave the upper hand to the species that (in each world) first gained it, but he continues to see the "god organ" as a liability. His fictional Neanderthals are clearly better off without it and without any belief in an afterlife.

But, despite the most excellent writing that makes them almost believable, they are fictional. They are all too clearly fictional, in their larger than life ideal humanity. In a manner of speaking, Sawyer's Neanderthals are humanity without the Fall of Eden. Except Sawyer solves the problem by removing not the snake but God.

Despite my disagreement with these notions, and disagree I do, I'm happy to recommend the book on the strength of its literary qualities. The book seems aimed not at the borderline literate but rather the armchair intellectual, the kind of person with a healthy interest in a broad range of sciences but without too much detail. It is certainly not the "young adult" type of science fiction. While you can read it without a dictionary, you will not for a moment feel talked down to. If you can read my journal without difficulties, then you should be just the right level to enjoy these books. This is the work of a true professional, a writer quite possibly at the height of his long and successful career. Enjoy!

---

I bought the trilogy as e-books from Fictionwise.com but the book is available on amazon.com and at sellers of science fiction books. You may also want to visit Sawyer's extensive web site, sfwriter.com. Lots of background stuff, advise to budding writers, and shameless (and well deserved) self promotion.