Hominids

Hominids is an intriguing speculative fiction book. The main premise is based on Quantum theory. Parallel to our world are many other worlds. Some very close to ours and some not. In our story, Ponter Boddit, often referred to as Scholar Boddit, is one of our main characters. He is a Quantum Physicist from a parallel world. While working on a Quantum computer, he is translated into the same location in our Universe; unfortunately it is the center of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Then the true adventure begins. Ponter is given Canadian Citizenship, which is unusual because he is a Neanderthal. One could argue however, that a Neanderthal emerging from an INCO mine in Sudbury might not be that far out of the question. Many around the world believe it is a hoax - some believe it is true and a Ponter cult begins. Some want to control him and his knowledge. In our sister earth, they have not ever had a global war, not developed nuclear weapons, or destroyed the environment the way we have. There is much we could learn from our cousins in this world. Follow Ponter as he develops friendships, experiences religion and learns that we don't have to be homo sapiens to be human.

Robert J Sawyer is known for his non-genre SF writing. This is a guy who steers clear of spaceships and death rays and, instead, gives the reader pause for thought. In Hominids, Sawyer proposes (using quantam physics) that the universe split during the Great Leap Forward and two realities were created. One world is present-day Earth. In the other, neanderthals lives on while humans died out. In Hominids, through an accident in a physics lab, the two universes come into contact with one other and an evolved neanderthal ends up on our Earth.Sawyer has created an interesting construct based on sound scientific and historical principles. His characters are strong and believable and, most importantly, help to further the scientific supposition rather than get in the way. the book read squickly and contains all of what a good novel should: conflict, suspense and strong character development.Hominids is a stand-out in the new crop of SF, and Sawyer has shown, once again, that he puts the Speculative in SF.

A very good read. I enjoyed the day I spent reading it. The physics seemed fine as far as I could tell and I really appreciate the reading list at the end. But if I were the editor I would have moved some of that peripheral stuff as well as Sawyer's offputting two pages on "T" and "TH" in Neandertal (current German) versus Neanderthal (19th Century German) and then English to Sawyer's great home page and saved a few trees. The economics seems less well handled than the physics. In our world no non-agricultural people has had a scientific or industrial society. It seems to me that it is unlikely that a pastoral or hunter-gatherer society could progress technologically so as to be ahead of us in a similar span of time. Also the economics of relationships between men and women in the alternative world could use some more examination. The biology of the Neanderthal also seems not well examined. Why should the Neanderthal all be white? By the way the next movie on the Cro Magnon should make them brown. They were just out of Africa and hadn't had long enough in the North evolve the pink skins of their Euopean descendants.As for the Neanderthal most of them surely have spent the last 30000 years since they whipen out our ancestors in or near the tropics and those would be brown for the same sunshade reasons East Indians and Africans are brown. Perhaps Sawyer will enlighten us in the next two volumes.

What a fun book this is!! Rob Sawyer likes to takes fantastical happenings (alien encounters, visions of the future, etc..) and plop them down in the middle of regular people doing regular things. I also enjoy the book's Canadian's setting as I often get tired of books being set in Los Angeles, New York, etc.. If you like any of Sawyer's other books, you'll like this one and if you like this one: make sure you read his other books. The initial premise should tell you most of what you need to know. Its not a heavy SciFi book, but focuses more on events and characters.

I wavered between 4 stars and 5 for Hominids, but ultimately decided on 5. Although Hominids as a stand-alone book is perhaps not quite in the same league as FlashForward or Calculating God, it is only the first of a three-volume series, and the next installments will presumably flesh out some of the details that were glossed over in volume I. In any event, it is head and shoulders above most of the SF being published today, and, like all of Sawyer's work, a terrific read. Like a number of Sawyer's prior books (Illegal Alien, Calculating God), Hominids is as much social commentary as it is SF. As in those works, he drops an "alien" (here, a Neanderthal from a parallel universe) into our midst and then proceeds to have the newcomer examine our world, compare it to his/her own, and then explain the myriad ways in which our society is comparatively flawed (too violent, too greedy, etc.). Hopefully the second installment will examine the flip side of the equation, because Ponter (and Neanderthal society) are portrayed as just a little too perfect for the criticism to work as effectively as it could with a more nuanced and balanced treatment. For example, Sawyer strongly implies that the vicious homo sapiens killed off the neanderthals in our universe, but never even addresses the question of what happened to the homo sapiens in Ponter's world. Whether the most likely scenario is true -- that they did the same thing to us in their world as we did to them in ours -- must await volume II. And what about the ethical and societal downside(s) to wearing a permanently implanted "alibi recorder" in your wrist? Or the genetic cleansing practiced by the Neanderthals? One has to hope that Sawyer will critically examine these aspects of Neanderthal society in the next installment. Hominids is extremely well written, and the fictional "news reports" Sawyer uses to begin several new chapters strike me as so on-target as to be uncanny. (And the Letterman-inspired "top ten reasons why we know that Ponter Boddit must be a real neanderthal" is laugh-out-loud funny.) The science of quantum mechanics and alternate universes is well presented, but really serves as little more than a backdrop to the main event: Sawyer's forcing us to examine what makes us human, and getting us to think about how the world might become a better place. Hominids is a great book. I can't wait for volume II.