Science Fiction (mostly)

Heaven's Reach by David Brin
Final installment in Brin's second Uplift trilogy. Uplift, the central social structure of Brin's "Five Galaxies," consists of the idea that pre-sentient races may be "uplifted" to sentience by elder races, thus forming a patron-client relationship. Species and their clans gain eminence by tracing their patronage back over billions of years. Humans, having no known patrons of their own, are considered a "wolfling" race; and since they uplifted chimpanzees and dolphins prior to interstellar contact, are patrons in their own right — the sole fact that keeps older, more powerful, and potentially malevolent clans from declaring patronage over the races of Earth and co-opting their genetic makeup to suit the elder clan's tastes.

Into this delicate balance comes Streaker, the first dolphin-crewed and -commanded spaceship, which stumbles across ancient artifacts that threaten to destroy fundamental beliefs throughout the Five Galaxies. Suddenly everyone wants to get their hands (or tentacles, or pseudopods) on the ship, Streaker is on the lam, and civilization — as well as the fabric of the known universe — begins to dissolve.

A fascinating series. Brin is an expert at creating sentient races that go far beyond, say, the typical crinkly-headed and pointy-eared humanoids of Star Trek; for example, a tree-like traeki is a stack of independent and specialized toroids, mentating and communicating with each other via scents and wax drippings, and choosing courses of action for the "whole" via consensus. Brin's neo-chimps and neo-dolphins are most interesting, showing thought patterns molded by their human patrons but with deep-seated traces of their own pre-Uplift social structures and languages. Both trilogies are excellent, though I enjoyed the first a bit more. (Sundiver / Startide Rising / The Uplift War / / Brightness Reef / Infinity's Shore / Heaven's Reach)