Actually, I just finished rereading David Brin's Startide Rising, which swept the awards when it came out (Hugo, Nebula, and Locus, I believe). Sorry. Don't see it. It's a ponderous book. I found myself skimming, which is unusual for me on a first read (or a reread after this amount of time -- I read it originally in the 80s). At this point Brin wasn't a strong enough stylist to pull it off.
The concept is interesting, the whole idea of Uplift as a means by which species gain sentience and advanced civilization, although it strikes me as a little bit von Daniken-ish. (Come to think of it, I think he was popular about that time.)
Nor is he really all that successful in portraying aliens. We just get the feeling that the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good, without any sense of difference.
Anyway, I kept plugging away to the bitter end, which contains a partial resolution. I'm now working on The Uplift War, which appears to be just as ponderous, and, from the perspective of twenty-five years later or so, transparently obvious. It's probably an effect of experience lived since then, but people like Delany and LeGuin had already brought a high degree of subtlety into science fiction narratives in the 1970s, particularly with regard to characterizations, and I've gotten used to that,so I'm looking at it through that filter.
And now I have to go write some music reviews -- Mozart and some examples of Baroque Church music from Bolivia. I've almost run out of things to say about Mozart -- I need to take a break for awhile. And the Baroque is not my favorite period in music, except there's a piece by Locatelli on the disc, and I like Locatelli.
Oh, well -- I suppose it goes with the territory.
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