Sundiver

David Brin is an excellent science fiction author, but like any author, his quality varies. My more oenophile science fiction book club has chosen poorly in this regard, although it must be admitted that Brin's best is within series rather than at the beginning of one. The problem with the first book in a series is the same as the pilot for a series, except worse: it must both establish the nature of the universe and provide a compelling story. Unlike a pilot, an initial book must stand on its own, lest the book do well enough to sell but not well enough to justify a sequel. In a genre such as science fiction, a book can rely on many conventions - the quality is determined not by how common the tools are, but how the author uses them.

The beginning of Sundiver reads as though Brin had written a story that was absorbed and overwhelmed. It is necessary to establish the nature of the society that your protagonist comes from, but that can be a challenge when the real story lies elsewhere in an environment that is not conducive to expo-speak. Many of the details of this particular future history probably come from Brin's non-fiction book The Transparent Society, which would explain how swiftly and smoothly the details are covered. It would have been nice to know more about the Shirts and the Skins (although perhaps not the Spider-tracer up the backside), but it's better to have details to inspire the imagination than describe everything in detail and lose focus. If you want to describe everything, you should write fantasy, not science fiction.

At its heart, Sundiver is a murder mystery embedded in galactic politics. The basic premise of the Uplift Universe is that the galaxy is full of aliens with superior technology. The measure of status in the galactic society is 'uplifting', genetically raising client species to intelligence. Apparently R&D is expensive, since the client species have a long time of indenture before they can join galactic society as a full citizen species - the Uplift Universe is based on species, not individuals. Humans are an affront to the concept of Uplift - either their patrons abandoned them, or they are a 'wolfling' species, an occasional phenomenon of naturally occurring evolution. In either case, the procedure would have been for an established species to take them as a client, if not for the fact that Humans had already uplifted chimpanzees when first contact was made and therefore qualified as a patron-level species. Some aliens are not happy about these upstarts, but since Humans are a patron level species, the only ways to demote them are either to identify the neglectful patron species of Humanity and therefore which extant lineage should take over their education or to prove that Humans need guidance and then 'generously' offer to guide them. This ain't the Federation, folks!

The setting for the meat of the story is a base on Mercury and the titular Sundiver, a sunship which, as its name implies, can withstand the environment of the Sun - the corona specifically, rather than deeper realms. I am not familiar with a story that does so (perhaps I should borrow the Hal Clement collection from the library again). The Solarians, the inhabitants of the Sun, seemed implausible to me, but I have been informed that they are not as ridiculous I had thought. They don't seem to be especially intelligent, but the mentality of a plasma being is probably quite different than that of a carbon-based life-form.

The Library, the database that contains the knowledge that galactic society uses for many purposes, but in the context of Sundiver, schematics for spaceships. Although Earth's Library branch is miniscule compared to that of established races, its knowledge base is immense compared to that of pre-Contact Humanity. The Library is so well-established that no new research is done within galactic society - whatever you need to do, the Library has the schematics to build it. The Library, essentially, is a lazy high schooler's dream. Bubbacub, an alien from a species called the Pil and resembling a psychotic teddy bear, is operating from an assumption of superiority and is profoundly embarrassed that he cannot find any reference to the Solarians in the Library. The solely Human discovery of the Solarians validates the idea of research and cements the status of Humans as responsible members of society. Humans do have access to the Library but the database is organized according to alien principles which Humans must learn. I understand why science fiction in other media assume that any trained pilot can operated any spaceship for the sake of keeping the pace, but it is nice to see an acknowledgment of the effort to learn new systems.

Sundiver is a good introduction to the Uplift Universe, but not an essential read if you want to get into this 'verse. Like many people, I read the following book, Startide Rising, before I read Sundiver
and, really, that's the best way to approach the separable books in the series. The Uplift Universe stories never return to Earth in a meaningful way, preferring to focus on the greater galactic society and the havoc which Humans and their anomalous status produce in it.