Book 31: "Sundiver" by David Brin
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 21:49![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeThe ship swooped through the turbulent chromospheric crosswinds, tacking on the plasma forces by subtle shifts in its own magnetic shields ... sailing with sheets made of almost corporeal mathematics. Lightning fast furling and thickening of those shields of force -- allowing the tug of the conflicting eddies to be felt in one direction and not another -- helped to cut down the buffeting dealt out by the storm.
Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolerable forms. What got through was sucked up into a chamber to drive the Refrigerator Laser, the kidney whose filtered wasteflow was a stream of x-rays which clove aside even the plasma in its path.
Still, these were mere inventions of Earthmen. It was the science of the Galactics that made the Sunship graceful and safe. Gravity fields held back the amorous, crushing pull of the Sun so the ship fell or flew at will. The pounding forces of the center of the filament were absorbed or neutralized, and duration itself was altered by time-compression.
Sundiver is set less than thirty-five years after First Contact with the Galactic Civilisation. Virtually all space-faring species were uplifted into sapience by a patron race, so humanity's lack of a patron race is unusual and their status is increased by having two client species of their own, having recently uplifted chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins, and not everybody in the galaxy is happy about that. There are two groups of humans who have very strong opinions on the subject; the Skins, who believe that humanity uplifted itself through evolution, and the Shirts who are certain that we were uplifted by an alien race and then abandoned by them.
This book is basically a detective story. Jacob Alvarez is invited to join the Mercury-based Sundiver project because the crews of the expeditions ships have started seeing strange things on their trips into the sun's chromosphere, ghostly figures that seem to be herds guarded by shepherd who sometimes transform themselves into humanoid shape and seem to be trying to communicate. Are these sun creatures real, and if so, could these sun creatures be humanity's lost patrons? It's a good mystery story, and I liked the aliens, especially Kant Fagin and Bubbacub, but the human characters were less so. Still, I am looking forward tot he rest of the series.
Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolerable forms. What got through was sucked up into a chamber to drive the Refrigerator Laser, the kidney whose filtered wasteflow was a stream of x-rays which clove aside even the plasma in its path.
Still, these were mere inventions of Earthmen. It was the science of the Galactics that made the Sunship graceful and safe. Gravity fields held back the amorous, crushing pull of the Sun so the ship fell or flew at will. The pounding forces of the center of the filament were absorbed or neutralized, and duration itself was altered by time-compression.
Sundiver is set less than thirty-five years after First Contact with the Galactic Civilisation. Virtually all space-faring species were uplifted into sapience by a patron race, so humanity's lack of a patron race is unusual and their status is increased by having two client species of their own, having recently uplifted chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins, and not everybody in the galaxy is happy about that. There are two groups of humans who have very strong opinions on the subject; the Skins, who believe that humanity uplifted itself through evolution, and the Shirts who are certain that we were uplifted by an alien race and then abandoned by them.
This book is basically a detective story. Jacob Alvarez is invited to join the Mercury-based Sundiver project because the crews of the expeditions ships have started seeing strange things on their trips into the sun's chromosphere, ghostly figures that seem to be herds guarded by shepherd who sometimes transform themselves into humanoid shape and seem to be trying to communicate. Are these sun creatures real, and if so, could these sun creatures be humanity's lost patrons? It's a good mystery story, and I liked the aliens, especially Kant Fagin and Bubbacub, but the human characters were less so. Still, I am looking forward tot he rest of the series.
