Humans

The Neanderthal Parallax consists of three books which take us through the story of Mary Vaughn and the Neanderthal Ponter Boddit. If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be the first of the series, but it made me want to read the complete trilogy so I wouldn't recommend reading only one of the books.

The story was great science fiction, in that it gave great insight into our present-day world. The author showed many contrasting points about the Neanderthal which made commentary on religion, our environment, over-population, feminism, violence and crime and punishment. The contrast of the worlds was especially poignent in the first book, Hominids, when every chapter conveyed simultaneous events in each of the parallel worlds.

This, like a lot of Sawyer's books, left me wondering just how much of the research he presented was true (especially the parietal lobe and religion), but left me with no reason to doubt it, it fit into the story perfectly.

Some specific names, however immortalized they may be, felt dated today: Kofi Annan, Dick Clark.

I like the fact that the author said the Neanderthals couldn't produce the /i/ (“ee” as in bee) phoneme, due to the structure of their mouth. Because of this, they couldn't say Mary's name, only the first part “Mar”, which in the Neanderthal language meant “beloved” and also sounds the same as the French word “mère” (mother – see book #3). It may have been the narrator of the audiobook, but it seemed the Neanderthals could say /j/ (“y” as in you) in some of the examples, which is a glide that requires the /i/ to commence. I wouldn't think this would be possible.

Oh zucht. Ik herinnerde me tijdens dit boek waar ik de auteur van kende. Robert J. Sawyer was ook al verantwoordelijk voor het afgrijselijke [b:Calculating God 264950 Calculating God Robert J. Sawyer https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423491114s/264950.jpg 2207588].Dit boek werd genomineerd voor een Hugo. On-ge-loof-lijk. Ergens in het begin, na een paar verbijsterend slechte hoofdstukken, heb ik besloten het derde boek ook te lezen. Niet omdat ik wil weten waar het naartoe gaat (dat kan ik wel vermoeden, het derde boek heeft Hybrids, wohohohow), maar omdat dit leest als een soort slow-motion treinongeval.Slecht. Maar echt slecht. En echt twijfelachtig van gedachtengoed. Een verkrachter letterlijk castreren? Niet alleen een goed idee, de persoon zelf wordt er ook gelukkiger van. Privacy? Voor mensen die iets te verbergen hebben. Mensen zijn slecht, neanderthalers zijn goed.En slechte sexscènes.Op naar het derde boek!

The first book in the series was somewhat enjoyable if only because the idea of a parallel universe where Neanderthals had survived instead of us is rather interesting. But once the novelty wore off I found a very boring story. Everything feels so cliched and forced. The Neanderthal society is used to show all the ways ours went wrong. Their society evolved into a gentle, tolerant, peace loving one while ours is violent, hypocritical and prone to warfare. This has been done a million times in science fiction (just replace the Neanderthals with some alien race).

How about developing a realistic culture for the Neanderthals and intellectually explore how their history and technology might be different from ours given their genetic and physical differences? The framework for the story has a lot of potential but instead retreads the same tired territory.