Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide To David Brin's Uplift Universe

When the black monolith appears in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey, or the demons in Childhood's End, that is Uplift. But what if humanity has reached into space and yet somehow avoided uplift? That is the premise of David Brin's Uplift sequence.In the universe of the six novels that make up this sequence, galactic civilisations uplift races that are capable of space travel. In a highly structured and hierarchical society, the patron races then have certain rights over the races they have uplifted. But humans have no patron, though it remains unclear whether their patron abandoned them or whether they achieved interstellar travel all on their own. The lack of a patron makes humans the weakest of the many races that make up the Civilisation of the Five Galaxies, but because they have themselves uplifted chimpanzees and dolphins, they have become a patron race in their own right and therefore are theoretically free of interference by other races.It's a crowded universe, with many different races each vying for territory and for status, which means that the novels tend to revolve around duplicity, betrayal and conflict, with the rough and ready, anti-hierarchical approach of the humans tending to win out, though often only with the help of their chimpanzee and dolphin companions. It is skilful, varied and convincing portrayal of so many different aliens, each with their different customs and motivations, that is the real strength of this series.The series begins with Brin's first novel, Sundiver, but this really acts as a prologue to the series with the action confined to our solar system. It is with the second book, Startide Rising and its sequels, The Uplift War, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach that the series really gets going, with continuing characters and a canvas that takes in many different worlds and races. Startide Rising won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards, while The Uplift War also won the Hugo and Locus Awards. It was a big series that marked the arrival of a major talent on the sf scene.