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    Humans: Volume Two of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Unavailable
    Humans: Volume Two of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Unavailable
    Humans: Volume Two of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Ebook411 pages6 hours

    Humans: Volume Two of the Neanderthal Parallax

    By Robert J. Sawyer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Robert J. Sawyer, the award-winning and bestselling writer, hits the peak of his powers in Humans, the second book of The Neanderthal Parallax

    The trilogy tells of our world and a parallel one in which it was the Homo sapiens who died out and the Neanderthals who became the dominant intelligent species. This powerful idea allows Sawyer to examine some of the deeply rooted assumptions of contemporary human civilization dramatically, by confronting us with another civilization, just as morally valid, that has made other choices. In Humans, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit, a character you will never forget, returns to our world and to his relationship with geneticist Mary Vaughan, as cultural exchanges between the two Earths begin.

    As we see daily life in another present-day world, radically different from ours, in the course of Sawyer's fast-moving story, we experience the bursts of wonder and enlightenment that are the finest pleasures of science fiction. Humans is one of the best SF novels of the year, and The Neanderthal Parallax is an SF classic in the making.

    Humans is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJul 6, 2010
    ISBN9781429914628
    Unavailable
    Humans: Volume Two of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Author

    Robert J. Sawyer

    Robert J. Sawyer is the author of Flashforward, winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series. He is also the author of the WWW series—Wake, Watch and Wonder—Hominids, Calculating God, Mindscan, and many other books. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards—making him one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel. He was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

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    Reviews for Humans

    3.5/5

    354 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Book 2 of Sawyer's Neanderthal series is a good read. The book seems to be aimed at late teenagers and early twenties. Since I'm in my 80s, I felt a bit guilty about enjoying the book. As in his other books, Sawyer uses a fairly thin story line to carry his discourses on science and culture. Notwithstanding that, the story line was sufficient to keep me reading. I've already requested the 3rd book from my public library.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as good as Hominids. It will be interesting to see if the 3rd in this trilogy continues the downward trend, or if Humans just suffers from MOTS. The chief villain is not well thought out.

      I would not recommend this book to YA readers or younger due to the details provided concerning the consummation of Mary and Ponter's relationship.

    • 2/5
      Humans, the second novel in Robert J. Sawyer’s The Neanderthal Parallax series is more romance than science fiction complete with the mandatory steamy sex scene. Unfortunately the female lead in this romance story, Mary (Homo sapiens), provokes little interest. I personally found nothing especially admirable about her and actually found her somewhat annoying. The male lead, Ponter (Homo neanderthalensis), is more interesting, but even he seems to fluctuate from being scientifically objective, as one would expect for a prominent theoretical physicist, to emotionally unstable, which one would not. Romance isn’t a genre I read and maybe this kind of soap opera contrast is common in them but these are not the kind of personalities I look for in science fiction.
      Personally, I didn’t find the social commentary in this book overly preachy, as did many other reviewers. Sawyer contrasts a low population, hunter-gatherer culture with ours, which has a high population and extensive farming. Each has good points and bad points and I don’t think he came down too hard on Western society. There are other problems with the premise though.
      The one that perhaps most bothers me is that all the major characters seem to accept the hypothesis that “consciousness” somehow suddenly appeared 40,000 years ago. Such an astounding and counterintuitive assertion in science fiction is not uncommon but must have at least enough techno-babble to make it possible to suspend disbelief long enough to entertain the idea for the sake of the story. This book does not provide that. It’s stated as if this is a well-known and accepted scientific theory.
      The other thing I find hard to accept is that a hunter-gatherer society can achieve the population density required for the individual specialization needed to achieve a high-tech society, which the Neanderthals in this book obviously have. In areas of artificial intelligence, their tech is well beyond ours, in fact, although their achievements in other areas are not. There is some techno-babble to explain this but it seems weak.
      The prose is competent and the book is readable, but in the areas of plot and characters, I think it fails. Will I read the next in the series? Yes. The first book, Hominids, was interesting enough and I have hopes that the third is more like it.
    • 5/5
      great sci Fi, makes me wish I'd paid more attention in ALL my science classes. or great motivation to go back and pick up what interests me again. less intense physicswise than the first book.
    • 3/5
      this is the weakest of the trilogy, it's ok, but meh
    • 5/5
      What would it be like for a human woman to be in love with a Neanderthal man and visit his world in an alternate universe. As we found in the first book of the series, the Neanderthals in the alternate universe are far more advanced than we would have thought, but their culture is very different than that of humans. This book does provoke a lot of thought and is an entertaining story as well. It leaves me eager to jump into the third book, Hybrids, and see where the author's mind next takes me.

    • 3/5
      I am so frustrated.
      This series has potential, yes, but there are so many problems.
      The sub-plot is globally important, but it's the sub-plot.
      I like Mary, but she gets on my nerves(I also can tell that the author is a man from the way Mary is written).
      The frame story in this novel got on my nerves.
      The dialog did not get any better, and the frequent religion talk continued.
      I wouldn't be this frustrated at these bad things if I didn't really like some of the story, but there's only so much that can be forgiven. This may be where I leave this series off, unless I can find a good deal on the last book, no matter how frustrated I may be at never knowing more.
    • 3/5
      Volume 2 of Sawyer’s Neanderthal trilogy was pretty good. I think where it fails is in its making this reader curious about the events of the two cultures clashing nicely and then shifts over to a soap opera of sorts. That, I was not thrilled with!

      The book picks up where Volume 1, Hominids, left off. Humans could somewhat stand on its own, but go ahead and read Hominids first.

      It was fun to read about Ponter and the new ambassador and how they deal with the alternate Earth (us). As the story goes on, there is an assassination attempt (which fails) and the solution the ambassador has for the assassin is surprising to say the least.

      Instead of shutting down the “portal” between the two worlds, the ambassador brings over the best and brightest of their generation to our Earth for further cultural exchange. She guesses rightly that the High Gray Council would not shut it down and leave them stranded. This was great! I could hardly wait to see how our Earth scientists, sports fiends, artists and so on deal with the new and exciting world of the Neantherdal.

      And then he drops it. Sawyer drops it. Oh my!

      Throughout the narration we have Ponter talking to his shrink (“personality sculptor”) which I thought a good vehicle from which we could quickly move through the story. The rest of the book however deals with Mary’s frustration and guilt she feels over a rape that happened back on Volume One, and Ponter’s response to it. We also have Mary falling madly in love with our caveman with a somewhat explicit sex scene in a hotel room.

      But the love triangle of sorts – man-mates, woman-mates, Mary, her lover, and what about the rapist and her ex, all come together.

      Hey, what happened to all those artists and scientists?

      Bottom Line:

      The book flows well, easy to read and Sawyer sets us up to get the skinny on the relationships between a human and a Neanderthal. But why keep us guessing on the other stuff? Plot points dropped, questions lay waiting for answers.

      Recommended for only the most rabid of Sawyer fans. But hey, I’ll read Hybrids anyway. I want to see what happens next!


    • 4/5
      I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this follow-up novel to 'Hominids'. What I like are the scientific explanations and discussions that are built into the stories. There is a lot of sociological discussion as well. Big things. The human-neanderthal romance that was begun in 'Hominids' becomes much more of a driver to the story. I see it as the vehicle that gets this story done. It doesn't really interest me. But the stuff around it does. For example I thought the scene at the Washington Mall where the woman explains the Vietnam Memorial was quite well done. To me, this second novel is as good or a little better than the first. The religious discussions are even interesting (mostly). I think the character development of several principals is well done. I was rather surprised at a few things as well. There is a mystery that involves a rape that was carried over from the first novel that is resolved by book's end here. I was bothered by the technological advances of the neanderthals in the first book and it only gets worse in this one. Still, I'm looking forward to the final book of the trilogy, 'Hybrids'. I hope it doesn't let me down.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as good as Hominids. It will be interesting to see if the 3rd in this trilogy continues the downward trend, or if Humans just suffers from MOTS. The chief villain is not well thought out.

      I would not recommend this book to YA readers or younger due to the details provided concerning the consummation of Mary and Ponter's relationship.

    • 4/5
      A generally pretty good sequel to Hominids. There are some further interesting discussions between characters about differences in human and Neanderthal customs, attitudes and technological development. However, unlike its predecessor, there isn't a great deal of action throughout much of the book, the main focus being on Ponter Boddit's growing relationship with Mary and the conundrums and tensions this throws up. The ending was rather unpleasant. Given the sex scene in this novel, and the fact that the third one is called Hybrids, it's fairly obvious what that will be about!
    • 5/5
      I just read a fantastic book trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. It is sci fi and works on the premise of multiple universes-kind of the same idea as that tv show Sliders. Well, the two universes in this triligy are both on earth-one earth is the world as we know it today-the other earth is populated in a reality where Neanderthals became the dominate species and man died out. During an experiment in the Neanderthal world-they are more technically advanced than us- a member of that world is transfered into ours. His name is Ponter Boddit and he is as surprised to be here as we are to have him here. The first book introduces him and his society. Neanderthals are environmentally friendly-no gasoline powered anything, no agriculture-which means little disease as we know it, very clean, sparsely populated the planet-do not even live all over the planet, peaceful, loving, kind, totally cool society. They are bisexual. Each adult takes a same sex and opposite sex mate-not everyone but most. To control population children are born only every ten years. To ensure that, men live with men and women live with women and only come together for 4 days a month when "two become one". Violence and many forms of inherited disease have been bred out. A violent criminal is sterilized-so is eveyrone else containing 50% of his DNA-that means parents, siblings and children. Scary, yet effective.It is fascinating and light sci fi-for those non-technical people-such as myself. the characters are fantastic-definetely fully dimensional, life like and well realized. The story is implausible but definetely makes you think about where our species is headed.
    • 4/5
      The Hominids interact with humans. Compares different societies.
    • 5/5
      Humans wasn't quite as good as Hominids, probably because the situation was no longer quite so new. However, Humans was still a terrific book that took the characters and ideas from Hominids and explored their relationships and concepts with ever greater depth and passion. Another excellent read.
    • 3/5
      Humans turns out to be a somewhat tepid follow-up to the fascinating Hominids. The story picks up where it left off in the previous book and revolves around the growing relationship between the Neanderthal Ponter and the human Mary (technically Neanderthals are also human, but for brevity’s sake I'm using the term to stand for Homo Sapiens). Mary travels with Ponter to her world as the portal between the two alternate Earths is opened up for trade. There we get a closer look at Neanderthal society as Mary tries to adjust to its norms. Ponter also finds that he has to come to term with how his time on our Earth and his love for Mary has changed him.In terms of plot structure and inventiveness, Humans is inferior to its predecessor. Ponter and Mary aside, the other supporting characters don’t develop at all and seem to recede into the background. None of the new characters take on three dimensions. We don’t see much of Neanderthal society that we haven’t already seen before. Even the social and political ramifications of the establishment of links between the two worlds is avoided altogether. The only plot threads with any weight are those of the love between Ponter and Mary and Ponter’s growing ambiguity about religion – a concept he had initially dismissed as illogical and even detrimental to the functioning of a well-adjusted society. These are interesting themes but neither are handled well enough to give the book the kind of depth and pull of Hominids.This is not to say that Humans is a poor read. Sawyer’s prose is as fluid and easy on the eye as ever, and our interest in this interweaving of the two Earths carries over from the first book. The urge to discover what happens next provides a powerful incentive to keep reading. All in all, it’s a decent read and forms a bridge to the third book that is sufficiently entertaining, for the reader to want to complete the journey.
    • 4/5
      This is the second book of three in the "Neanderthal Parallax" series, which begins with Hominids. Most of the action takes place on "our" earth.