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    Hybrids: Volume Three of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Unavailable
    Hybrids: Volume Three of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Unavailable
    Hybrids: Volume Three of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Ebook412 pages6 hours

    Hybrids: Volume Three of the Neanderthal Parallax

    By Robert J. Sawyer

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In Hominids, Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer introduced a character readers will never forget: Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist from a parallel Earth who was whisked from his reality into ours by a quantum-computing experiment gone awry-making him the ultimate stranger in a strange land.

    In that book and in its sequel, Humans, Sawyer showed us the Neanderthal version of Earth in loving detail-a tour de force of world-building; a masterpiece of alternate history.

    Now, in Hybrids, Ponter Boddit and his Homo sapien lover, geneticist Mary Vaughan, are torn between two worlds, struggling to find a way to make their star-crossed relationship work. Aided by banned Neanderthal technology, they plan to conceive the first hybrid child, a symbol of hope for the joining of their two versions of reality.

    But after an experiment shows that Mary's religious faith--something completely absent in Neanderthals - is a quirk of the neurological wiring of Homo sapiens' brains, Ponter and Mary must decide whether their child should be predisposed to atheism or belief. Meanwhile, as Mary's Earth is dealing with a collapse of its planetary magnetic field, her boss, the enigmatic Jock Krieger, has turned envious eyes on the unspoiled Eden that is the Neanderthal world . . . .
    Hybrids is filled to bursting with Sawyer's signature speculations about alternative ways of being human, exploding our preconceptions of morality and gender, of faith and love. His Neanderthal Parallax trilogy is a classic in the making, and here he brings it to a stunning, thought-provoking conclusion that's sure to make Hybrids one of the most controversial books of the year.



    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 28, 2010
    ISBN9781429914611
    Unavailable
    Hybrids: Volume Three of the Neanderthal Parallax
    Author

    Robert J. Sawyer

    Robert J. Sawyer is the author of Flashforward, winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series. He is also the author of the WWW series—Wake, Watch and Wonder—Hominids, Calculating God, Mindscan, and many other books. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards—making him one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel. He was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

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    Reviews for Hybrids

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this 3rd book in Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax series. From the ending, it looks like a 4th book will be coming. As usual, Sawyer uses his story to display his ideas about technologies. These are interesting and worth reading about. However, this leaves the plot-lines a little thin. Still, the book is worth reading and gradually becomes a page-turner.
    • 4/5
      This book was good, it had me enthralled into the mystery of what might happen if this or that happen, oh no what if they do this other thing! it was good
    • 4/5
      I really liked the other books in the Neanderthal Parallax, and I liked this one, too. However, I can't remember if the other books were as ham-handed in their politics as this one was. I wasn't quite ready for being beaten over the head with the "point." Otherwise, it was a fun read, as expected.
    • 3/5
      The third book in The Neanderthal Parallax series returns to the soft science fiction theme of two cultures colliding. This final book has a single antagonist, a racist (or would it be species-ist?) bigot who wants to take the unexploited and unpolluted Neanderthal world for Homo sapiens. Of course to do so will involve a minor case of genocide but he has the tools and he has the technology, kindly provided by the Neanderthals themselves. Mary, the geneticist heroine from the last book, has to stop him. She is still annoying and she is still a bag of internal contradictions but her hard to understand romance with the Neanderthal, Ponter, is demoted to a major subplot rather than the main story.
      I have a hard time with the Mary character because she simply does not make sense. She is described as a devout Catholic and accepts that the Pope speaks for God but she doesn’t seem to agree with Catholic doctrine on pretty much anything including divorce, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, or celibacy for clergy. So why, I kept asking myself, does this woman identify with this particular faith when, in fact, she doesn’t agree with its stand on most issues? Why does she get defensive when Ponter questions her about religion? She is supposed to be a brilliant scientist and self sufficient woman but she comes across as intellectually and emotionally weak for not asking herself these questions a long time ago given her positions on these issues.
      The main scientific flaw that continues to bother me and which makes it hard to really suspend disbelief enough to go with the flow of the story is the reliance on the assumption that human consciousness, a particularly tenuous and inexact concept, emerged suddenly 40,000 years ago because of a shift it the Earth’s magnetic field. There is finally some techno-babble to explain this but it is far from compelling although the whole scientific community in these books seems to accept it as established fact.
      I do like the contrast Sawyer draws between the ethically enlightened Neanderthals with the selfishly competitive Homo sapiens. This shines the light of inquiry on our species and all good soft science fiction must do that in some way. But this contrast, I think, would have been clearer and more believable if the Neanderthals were described as ethically, philosophically and even perhaps artistically more advance while Homo sapiens retained the clear edge on technology and science. Giving the Neanderthals an arguable advantage in almost all areas made them simply too good to believe.
    • 1/5
      This was a disappointing end to a rather preachy series. I think the plot really fell apart in the end. If you thought 'Lost' (the TV series) ended well, you will like this. If you think 'Lost' was a cop-out, so was this.
    • 3/5
      I thought that this book was really a weak finish for this interesting trilogy. The story progresses like a slow lava flow and really lost momentum. Part of the problem was an endless insertion into the story of explanations ... who what when where and why, with who and more, of things from the first two books. This of course so that some random person starting this book without having read either of the two previous ones wouldn't be confused. The result for me though was a boring boring finish. I can safely say that this would have worked better as two books with a tightening up of the end story and elimination of the recap upon recap.Overall this rates as a 3 star interesting, but not exceptional, series. I don't think I was ever convinced that the neanderthal society was a better one although I thought there were some good ideas mixed with some poor/bad ones and it also was never believable to me.
    • 3/5
      Hybrids is the least likeable of the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. The implications for Man of a doorway to another alternate Earth is put aside as a subplot in favor of Mary’s transformation.

      Mary has fallen in love with Ponder, one of the Neanderthal scientists. The “Barasts” have their own code of ethics and Mary struggles with it as it interferes with her Catholic faith.

      Much is made of Mary’s beliefs and her struggles, much more than she deserves. She’s a flighty character, who discovers that Man’s religious beliefs, thanks to a pseudo-scientific experiment, creates religious fervor. But the atheistic Barasts don’t have this “fault.”

      Much is also made of the genetic device, banned on the Neanderthal world, that can rewrite any DNA and makes it possible to have a human/barast child, thus the Hybrid part of the tale.

      Do we get a cure for AIDS or cancer? Do we finally handle birth defects? Nope. Let’s create a bio weapon!

      Sawyer rushes the end and I’m really disappointed to see that. Most of the time Sawyer’s writing is pretty good, pace is good and not a lot of characters are cardboard.

      But as Mary goes from being concerned about her husband’s divorce (“I don’t want us to be excommunicated!”) to not giving a whit that her kid will not have the “religion gene”, it was just too much to sort out.

      Bottom Line: Not a lot of story regarding the scientists, athletes and so on, as they improve Man’s lot. Instead we get a woman who wants all men to die (at least the ones with a special Y chromosome, since that’s why some men are evil) and develops a bio weapon to handle that. Oh, and the New Year’s scene and the final wedding scene are highly disappointing.

      Not recommended, except for Sawyer purists.


    • 3/5
      I thought this was the weakest of the trilogy. As in Humans, there was relatively little action for much of the book, but a rather excessive, for me, amount of brain dumping on genetics. There was also the same lengthy exploration of scientific, ethical and political ideas, interesting and valid in themselves, but rather overdone and a little too unsubtle for my tastes. The constant presentation of the perfect peace loving Neanderthals (Barasts) as opposed to the violent, planet destroying Humans (Gliksins) I found a little wearing at times. No doubt this book would also give right wing anti political correctness campaigners, a breed with whom I have very little sympathy, some ammunition as the only two white males are a rapist and a scientist plotting genocide of the Neanderthals. I found the ending on our Earth rather unrealistic as well. All that said, a follow up novel about the life of Mary and Ponter's hybrid daughter facing the inevitable prejudice she would no doubt face in both worlds might be interesting. 3/5
    • 5/5
      I just read a fantastic book trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. It is sci fi and works on the premise of multiple universes-kind of the same idea as that tv show Sliders. Well, the two universes in this triligy are both on earth-one earth is the world as we know it today-the other earth is populated in a reality where Neanderthals became the dominate species and man died out. During an experiment in the Neanderthal world-they are more technically advanced than us- a member of that world is transfered into ours. His name is Ponter Boddit and he is as surprised to be here as we are to have him here. The first book introduces him and his society. Neanderthals are environmentally friendly-no gasoline powered anything, no agriculture-which means little disease as we know it, very clean, sparsely populated the planet-do not even live all over the planet, peaceful, loving, kind, totally cool society. They are bisexual. Each adult takes a same sex and opposite sex mate-not everyone but most. To control population children are born only every ten years. To ensure that, men live with men and women live with women and only come together for 4 days a month when "two become one". Violence and many forms of inherited disease have been bred out. A violent criminal is sterilized-so is eveyrone else containing 50% of his DNA-that means parents, siblings and children. Scary, yet effective.It is fascinating and light sci fi-for those non-technical people-such as myself. the characters are fantastic-definitely fully dimensional, life like and well realized. The story is implausible but definitely makes you think about where our species is headed.
    • 4/5
      This is the third book in Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. In this book Ponter Boddit and his homo sapien lover, geneticist Mary Vaughan are trying to sort out how they can make their relationship work between their parallel worlds. With some of the Neanderthal technology they are planning to conceive the first hybrid child. Hybrid provides a satisfying conclusion to the tale. It also provides much for thought regarding gender, selective breeding, looking through jaded eyes at an unspoiled world.
    • 5/5
      Somehow Sawyer writes books that ask thought provoking questions like: what is our nature? What if there was no violence? And combines it heart pumping action and romance. Ponder Boddit and Mary Vaughn return, asking is it possible for them to forge a life together? Can Mary have their baby? With banned Neanderthal technology the answer is yes. But —Mary’s boss is U.S. military and attempts to take that technology to deliver a weapon that will kill the Neanderthals so we can have their unpolluted world.
    • 5/5
      the entire series is greatNov 2006Not only is this simply a good story with believable characters and relationships, but also great in terms of social commentary and scientific theory. I am already looking forward to rereading the series all over again. I definitely recommend beginning with Hominids, then proceeding through the series to Humans, then Hybrids.
    • 5/5
      A terrific conclusion to a terrific series. For a while I was afraid that Sawyer had allowed his story to become more of a standard thriller (not that I don't like thrillers), but he pulled the pieces together very nicely. I certainly hope that Hybrids is not the last appearance of Ponter Boddit.
    • 4/5
      This is the third book of three in the "Neanderthal Parallax" series, which begins with Hominids and continues with Humans. My main complaint with this last volume is that it should be two books at least. Several sudden plot and character twists are plausible but would feel more authentic if we were given more development of each one.