Hominids is a combination hard SciFi/murder mystery/parallel universe tale that makes it to the top of my ratings for the year. Well worth the read, and the audiobook is excellent.
Ponter Boddit is a Neanderthal physicist working on quantum computing. Louise is a French Canadian human physicist working at the Neutrino Observatory deep underground when Ponter appears in her heavy water neutrino detection tank.
I imagine Sawyer having one of those “what if” moments that are at the heart of many SciFi tales. What if Neanderthals had won out?
At some point, around 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Sapiens (that’s us) both walked the earth. Neanderthals are extinct. Sapiens aren’t. Woo hoo for us! Sawyer probably asked himself how the world would be different if Neanderthals had survived and Sapiens had gone extinct. As a species, they had a lot going for them: their brains were likely 10% larger than ours, they were more muscular, and they had larger eyes, potentially giving them better vision (disputed by some), and may have had a better sense of smell (endorsed by Sawyer, but disputed by some paleoanthropologists).
That’s a lot of evolutionary advantages. Glad it turned out in our favor.
If it had just been a book about “what if the Neanderthals had won?” It would still have been interesting. Instead, Sawyer does a parallel universe story which allows him to tell us about both cultures from the eyes of Neanderthals. That makes all the difference.
The research that Sawyer did for Hominids is apparent and makes for some delightful details in the novel. His descriptions of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory made it very easy for me to place myself there. For the science geeks out there, follow the link to learn more about the SNO. It’s over a mile underground in a mine that was dug to extract the nickel out of a meteor that impacted 1.85 billion years ago. The location just screams out for a SF novel.
Sawyer navigates some very sensitive topics, including rape, PMS, and human-caused extinction of some species. He uses the narrative to make us question our own society. Nicely done.
On the Feral Scale, it’s a 9 for the story and a 9 for the science. Check it out.
A couple of nits to pick – not really spoilers.
The Neanderthals don’t use fossil fuels, but we’re never really told what they do use. Nuclear power? Solar? There’s a very short reference to superconductivity, but otherwise it is glossed over, noting that the lack of fossil fuel usage on the Neanderthal world leaves a better smelling place.
Other news:
A while back I was interviewed by Peter Clemenson for his Opionistics podcast. It went live yesterday and you can listen to it here.
He describes me as a Science Fictionist. I’ll take that. Robert Sawyer is clearly also one.
It’s a shortish interview and comes in at about 20 minutes.