!!!Caution!!! May Contain Spoilers!!!

“Startide Rising” by David Brin.

Rating: 3 of 5

Startide Rising falls into a genre of Science Fiction I call “talking dolphin books”. The cover art contains prominent images of dolphins so that they talk isn’t a surprise.

What I liked:

• The book creates an authentic feeling experience of what it means to be an “uplifted dolphin”. A dolphin with Genetic Grafts that make it think like a human.
• The different dolphin languages were kind of neat.
• I liked the idea of humans/chimps/dolphins living together. The idea of the gene graphs to “uplift” the dolphins was one of the less ridiculous reasons for talking dolphins that I’ve read.
• The space and water battles were pretty exciting.
• The Dolphin characters (Takkata-Jim, Captian Creideiki, etc) overall were pretty good.
• The universe constructed for the novel containing the “Galactics” and their information “libraries” was pretty novel/interesting.

What I didn’t like:

• I found most of the human characters to be arch-typically dull. Gillian & Dr. Metz were fine but the rest - puke. Tom Orley read like some “super man” and I found him lame because he was “so awesome”. Of course Toshio eventually bags the sexy slightly older but not too old Dennie who’s main role seams to be to provide sexual tension.
• Contains some strange potential dolphin/dolphin and dolphin/human/dolphin sexual innuendo. For me this was the worst part of the book. Call me prude but some vague description of a possible three way with two humans and a dolphin is just too weird. I find three way sex in novels awkward in general and for me this was just too much.
• I had hard time visualizing the other interstellar races. I kind of get an idea which were reptiles and which were insects but I found it somewhat confusing.
• The novel seems to be pointing to some “human” exceptionalism which I find a little cheesy.

The other book I’ve read with sentient dolphins is Robert Sawyers “Starplex”. Since David Brin published his book book in 1983 and Starplex appears to have been published in 1996 I’m curious if Startide Rising influnenced “Starplex”.

All in all Startide rising was a pretty easy read and I’d recommend it if you are interested in reading some oddball space alien Science Fiction. I’m not sure its as good a novel as other Hugo/Nebula award winners I’ve read before, but its not a “bad” book.

I think this book is part of a series called the “uplift war”. I’m not sure I’ll read the other books, I kind of want to know how the story turns out, but I’m not sure I liked it enough to read the rest…