Customer Reviews

Hybrids (Tor Science Fiction)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm a big fan of Sawyer. I loved the first two books of this trilogy, and Hybrid lived up to what I've come to expect from Sawyer. It was a real page turner -- UNTIL about 2/3rds through the book.

Did Sawyer just get tired of writing this trilogy?

All of a sudden, the book turns to silliness. It's almost a parady of Sawyer's work. The theological thoughts are no longer delightful little subplots of a page or two, but drag on and on into endless garbage. The ending reads like a B-Movie from the 1950s with a crazed individual trying to destroy a world. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's -- well, I don't want to spoil the ending for you. It was bad enough for me to have to read it myself.

I often recommend Sawyer's books to friends, but I can't recommend this one. Hopefully this doesn't reflect Sawyer's future work.

Like most of the other reviewers, I too found this final book in the trilogy quite a let down and had to flog myself to finish reading it. My reaction to the end was more outrage at Sawyer for inflicting such a farce on us than anything else.

Perhaps the most unsatisfying aspect of the book, and indeed the whole series, was the superficiality of the characters. In particular the central female, Mary Vaughn, is shallow and one dimensional. And, for a doctorate in genetics, she seemed to have a strikingly random intelligence. For example, she loved her neandertal man Ponter dearly and wanted to "marry" him but it didn't occur to her until well into this third book that their chromosonal incompatibility would render then infertile. Sharp thinker, that Mary.

Also, her obsessive Catholicism made her appear ridiculous and confused. Sawyer obviously needed her religiosity to explore theology and mirror its lack of logic and reason. The goal was met, but at the cost of one of his primary character's credibility.

The other peripheral characters were stock and embarrassingly devoid of personality too. Cornelius was a totally unbelievable bad guy, too much irrational ranting about women and the general unfairness of the world to be anything but a caricature; Louise Benoit, the hottie French quantum physicist, is a brunette version of Pamela Anderson and just about as flimsy; Dr. Reuben, a shaven-headed black Haitian more benign that even a fantasy physician has the right to be. What a rainbow of characters! What a bunch of cardboard people!

The creative underpining of the series - divergent species of humans allowed to evolve into their own culturally distinct potentials - is excellent, and especially well realized in the first book. In addition, Ponter, who is the only truly developed character in the set, is an engaging person with much to teach us, even if we can never shuffle back and forth between his almost-but-not-quite-perfect world and ours.

The "Stranger in a Strange Land" concept is always delightful and this, perhaps more than any ever written, offers much for meditiation. It will definitely stay with the reader long after the books are reshelved.

So, here's my suggeston: read the first book HOMINIDS and if you like it, go for the second one HUMANS, just don't expect scintillating personalities. Avoid the final one, HYBRIDS, though. It'll just be a disappointment.

Robert J. Sawyer's first book in this series, Hominids, was enjoyable, in spite of the hand-waving explanation of the connection between the universes. The characters, especially Ponter, were interesting and well-drawn.

The second book, Humans, represented the beginning of Sawyer's descent into one-world kumbaya utopian preaching.

This volume, Hybrids, consists of a thin plot grafted onto Sawyer's personal PC worldview.

Everyone in the Neanderthal world is an atheist bisexual environmentalist and their world is just about perfect, cue John Lennon. And let's not forget the obligatory Dan Brown-ish attack on the Catholic Church, can't have a enlightened book these days without that.

Among other ludicrous lines, the sapiens world North Vietnamese government is described as kind. Not as bad as many totalitarian regimes? Sure. Not as corrupt as the South Vietnamese regime? Could well be. Kind? Oh dear lord.

Sawyer quotes Solzhenitsyn's phrase that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart, but very tellingly fails to include the entire statement. I quote from The Gulag Archipelago Two:

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them.

The full context of Solzhenitsyn's quote is precisely contrary to Sawyer's portrayal of an atheistic neo-Marxist Neanderthal paradise.

But my favorite was Sawyer's list (via Mary) of the handful of decent men in the world. The list included Phil Donahue. I laughed because I thought at least Sawyer was showing a bit of wit. Then I realized he was serious.

Never mind the mysteries of how a race which eschews competition could produce a technically advanced culture (especially with less than 1/20th of the population of the sapiens Earth, better breeding for intelligence doesn't explain that). Maybe there is an explanation, but Sawyer doesn't offer one.

Prior to the development of the Companion how did the Neanderthals judge whether someone had committed a crime? 80 years of supposedly perfect justice being used to wean out bad genes doesn't explain what mistakes may have been made were made in the past, when justice was far less perfect.

Occasionally Sawyer raises problems in the Neanderthal culture (such as unreported spousal abuse). But these read as throwaway issues so he can avoid the charge of writing a complete whitewash. He never explores how such issues could lead to wholesale difficulties. Again, any problems in the Neanderthal society are portrayed as minor individual trifles, never anything systemic.

Frankly, this trilogy reminds me most of Harry Harrison's trilogy, Stars and Stripes (an alternative Civil War history where the bumbling British manage to attack both the USA and CSA, and the combined USA and CSA forces pretty quickly smash the Brits, take Ireland, and conquer London).

One side is nearly perfect and decent and brilliant and the other side is nefarious and cruel.

There are no complexities, just the good guys triumphing over a bunch of bad guys. Take Harrison's trilogy, substitute Neanderthal for Americans and evil white men for the British, stir in a lot of politically correct attitudes, and you'd produce something similar to Sawyer's trilogy.

The best alternative history accepts complexities and portrays all cultures as something far less than pure. Sawyer, due to his obsession with pushing his weltanschauung ahead of everything else, fails miserably in this regard.

I read the first of the series and really enjoyed it, so I bought the other two here and continued reading them. A certain political slant was discernible even in the first book, but there it was a little more subtle and you could still enjoy what was a very interesting story. As I rolled through the second and third books the political slant was more and more "hit you over the head with it, just in case you were too dumb to notice it earlier". I still enjoyed the story with the second book and moved onto the third where it actually started becoming ridiculous to the point where it actually started detracting from the story. Oh yes, the story. In the third book, you keep waiting for them to get back to the story as where it initially seems to be doing is diverted into these weird meaningless tangents. The main human character Mary, is eventually turned into a ridiculous caricature. I'm not sure if it was Sawyers intent (and let me say up front that I have ready many of his books and thoroughly enjoyed them) to make this character unlikable, but that is exactly that happens. Some of the stuff that she comes up with is so out of left field...like seriously considering creating a genetic disease that would only kill men, since they are the cause of all the evil in the world. (she actually seriously considers doing this). By the end of the book, the constant male, American (and I am a Canadian), free market bashing made it harder and harder to take the story seriously. At one point you are treated to a Mary's realization that not all men are evil, and she lists a few including Pierre Trudeau, Ralph Nader, and Phil Donahue. (seriously...Phil Donahue???...what, Michael Moore wasnt available?). It just became silly and the plot so out there. I finished the book because I wanted to see if it ever got back on track, and it never really did. Right up to the end the characters got more and more bizarrely distorted that I was happy to see the end of the book getting closer and closer. I liked this series, but Hybrids REALLY didnt deliver. Mary is the biggest victim in this series. She starts it as a reasonably sympathetic character, and ends it as a unsympathetic almost unlikable caricature, and her opponents are reduced to one dimensional villans worthy of a Captain Planet cartoon.

The first book was great! A nifty sci-fi premise. The second book was slow and filled with heavy handed gender politics.

Hybrids just plain ruined the series. I forced myself through to the end just to see if it redeems itself. It does not. I won't waste time listing the ridiculous politics of this book. Politics in sci-fi is great if it is subtle and contributes to the story. Sawyer just used a decent sci-fi story to beat us crudely over the head with his opinions of men, Caucasians, and Americans.

Rather than explore the interactions between two worlds, this novel contrasts a utopia with our flawed, failing world just to show us all how awful we are. The villains have almost no motivation besides being White American Men!

Enjoy the first book. Skip the last 2!

This was phenomenal! In the first two books, "Hominids," and "Humans," Sawyer deftly described the 'alien' in the form of the Neanderthals in such a way as to show us our own failures as human beings, but at the same time, with such a light touch that it did not come across as preachy. If you haven't read those two, then stop now, head on over, and pick up "Hominids," first.

The story in the first two books introduced us to a wide range of neanderthal and human characters, living on parallel earths, and rudely made aware of each other when a single neanderthal, Ponter, falls through into our earth. In the second tome, relations are opened between the world, and a Synergy Group formed. Ponter's relationship with a human woman, Mary Vaughn, grew toward love, and the differences between their two cultures began to show the startling way in which humans have really failed. Indeed, in this book, one of the characters, Jock, begins to see just how poorly humans have handled their world.

There is much to this book that is easily missed - Sawyer has put gender issues, sexuality issues, racism, violence, criminal systems, enviromental practices - all of it is on display in this series, and in the third book, it is in the character of Mary that we get to explore both worlds with her biased human eye.

As the collapse of our Earth's magnetic field continues (it flips now and then, and is doing so now), Jock, Mary, and the rest of the Synergy group are slowly realizing what it could possibly mean to humanity, while at the same time Mary explores options of potentially creating a hybrid child with Ponter, the neanderthal she has fallen in love with.

Most interesting to me (as a gay reader) was Mary's intellectual and emotional wrestling with the Neanderthal relationship structure (they each have a man-mate and a woman-mate, and live in same-gendered relationships for most of their lives, with about four days a month spent in opposite-gender relationships). As Mary moves towards adopting the Neanderthal way of life, she slowly allows herself to consider the option of a woman-mate, and the eventual outcome of her thoughts and feelings really struck me.

Just as interesting was the religious debate that has been ongoing in this series. The Neanderthals, very uncurious and entirely unreligious, are shown to be lacking whatever brain components are required for 'faith.' When Mary and Ponter decide to have a child, the Catholic Mary needs to figure out if her child should have the gene for faith, or not. It's an amazingly good thought process for both of them, and again I tip my hat at Sawyer.

Where the story finally goes took me by surprise, and left me satisfied about the trilogy at large. This was superb, and as always, I wait for Sawyer's next great novel. There's a reason he's one of only sixteen people to have both a Hugo and a Nebula for best novel, folks.

'Nathan

Robert J. Sawyer has an uncanny ability to combine current, cutting-edge science with a fantastical plot and flawed, credible characters to produce science fiction that truly gets you thinking about philosophy, ethics, politics, and religion. Despite the technical mastery of things scientific and the serious themes of his writing, the story always moves quickly and the dialogue is very real, even amusing at times, mixing in the mundane minutae of everyday existence with the search for universal truths. This yields a product that is both accessible and enlightening--something that I strive to do in my own writing. See the amazon listing for Forced Conversion to see what Robert J. Sawyer has to say about that effort.

As the main characters in the book would say, "Christ what a dog". I've read all three of the trilogy. The first book was marvelous a great concept. But it has been downhill all the way. As a French-Canadian I can relate to the Canada references but the anti-americanisms in volume 3 start to smell up my nose (even though it's a sapiens nose and not a neaderthal nose). It gets trite, pedantic, overly PC and heavy handed. You Canadians don't carry guns says the evil american as he whips out his semi-automatic. Give me a break.

The female Sapiens character in love with the male Neaderthal is such a whinny character. I'm in love, now I want my male to do this and that and change some more. Oh, and why don't you just move to my universe and give up yours. The best part was that the male Neanderthal wasn't going to give in to her whinning.

I could go on and on but then I'd just be getting as boring as this book was. To some it all up MERDE

"Hybrids" is the third novel in Robert J. Sawyer's trilogy dealing with the encounter between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthals from an alternate universe. "Hominids," the first novel in the series, was truly excellent, with vibrant speculations about the nature of reality, consciousness, and quantum theory. Unfortunately it is downhill from there. The middle novel of the series, "Humans," suffers from all of the usual shortfalls of a bad sequel. "Hybrids" is just plain awful. The storyline is trite, stereotypic, implausible, and at times flat-out revolting. During Law School I heard enough pap about how awful those White Males are to last a lifetime. In this novel Sawyer tries to administer a force-feeding of it, and few readers will be able to get it down. I can handle some political axe-grinding in a novel, if the novel is good. This novel is not good. I finished it because I wanted to finish the series, but really, this novel is not worth the reader's attention. Not recommended. RJB.

These three books are the first books I've ever read by Robert J. Sawyer. He is a very good writer, but I have a real problem with his choice of the main characters. First is Mary, homo sapien. At the beginning of the series she is attacked and raped by a white man. That sets the whole story line from there. The second main character is Ponter. Neanderthal. He comes across as being straight out of a romance novel. Very manly. In every extreme. Even his faults are manly and forgivable. The books are well written, but come across as way to much of an attack on American White Males. Mary becomes pretty much what many men would call a Femi-Nazi. Every thing is the fault of men, white men most of all. Even through the author at times seems to try to reign this in, in the end it just gets to the reader. As an American White, even if I am a liberal white male, the tirades the trilogy goes off on become offensive. There is nothing that white males can do right.
Ponter comes across, as I stated before, as just a bit to manly. Super strong, a lover to beat all others, understanding, ect. ect.
The whole problem with the series is that there is no balance, no opposing point of view. Judgment is given, but no defense. With the main characters given there is no journey of discovery, no growth. Ponter and his world start out perfect and remain perfect in the end (by keeping male homo sapiens from it). Mary starts out hating males (white males and white AMERICAN males most of all) and ends up still hating males, in fact even feeling more resolved about her feelings.
Although the story is great the main characters and the diatribes about the evils of being a male keep the trilogy from being great. I can't really say if I would recommend it or not. I can say that if you are a male (white male, white AMERICAN male) with any sense of dignity that you WILL be offended much of the time making this trilogy very hard to read. I kept hoping at least Mary would learn the error of her Femi-Nazi ways, but alas, she only end up strengthening them.