david brin

Ultimately, Existence (2012) is about communication. This book really captured my attention when Sato discusses the tower of babel with Tor. Maybe most people conjecture that it was an act of fury, I haven’t really thought about it. Sato, meanwhile, considers the tower to delay progress- by...

I’m just about to finish Sundiver and I’m staggered and annoyed at how poor it is. The ideas are compelling enough and the pace is good, but the characters are ridiculous and it reads like a first draft. Contradictory sequences of sentences, atrocious grammar, random upper casing, MISSING full...

I heard or read a short somewhere where the premise was that every star system is surrounded by a shell that's invisible from the inside and invincible from the outside, so that in order to travel interstellar space a species has to break through the shell (that they probably don't know about)...

I've been trying to remember several books I've read and another is stumping me. I can only remember a few plot lines. There is some interstellar war and a main character is crash landed on a planet with the daughter of an alien ambassador. They are humanoid but have tentacles on their head...

Hi everyone, I'm Rick and new here to this forum. I've had excerpts from this book in my head for years now and I just can't remember what it was named. I read it as a teenager so it should be dated from, say 1970 to 1985. It was about an intergalactic war with humans involved but not always as...

I recently came across this article again and was wondering what Chrons thought of it. EDIT: Wanted to add a link the the follow up article.

Half a century in the future, the human race has survived several brushes with extinction. True AI has been created but - so far - has been benign and helpful. A terrible nuclear incident has taken place, but humanity has endured. As each bullet is dodged, so mankind's chances of survival...

Hey guys, first post here and I hope someone can help (although this is tenuous at best)! I remember reading this book as a teenager (mid-90s) and I'm fairly sure it was in the young-adult fantasy genre. The main character was a young girl, who has run away from home, or something similar. I...

Back in the 80s? I read an SFF book where the people created items by using them for their intended purpose. For example, if you sat on a stump often enough, it would become a chair. The more often it was used, the better made it became. Anyone have any idea what this book was? Thanks in...

Book 1: Sundiver

Please help! I'm trying to find a book that a read only a few years ago. No memory of title or author, unfortunately. What I do remember is that the entire book takes place on a single planet with five or six distinct alien species. They referred to themselves as the Five (or Six) Races, I...

Hi, I'm trying to remember a book/author in which the protagonist 'bakes' several clones of himself that only last a day, one that does the chores, one that does organisational work etc, but then gets kidnapped, and the clones attempt to rescue him. Each of the clones is a 'specialist' in a...

After years of not reading nearly as much as I'd like to, I've started enjoying books again. My main interests are science fiction and fantasy, and I'm trying desperately to find the name or the author of a book I read years ago and would love to reread. It involved a planet that orbited super...

Hi, I'm searching for a book which I read in german (I think) but is most definitely from a UK/US author. The story takes action on a planet which is (possibly) post-nuclear, forested and the main actor maintains/builds a retainment dam (?) with his father (?). There's also a girl who reads...

This story was first published over twenty years ago, but it's taken me this long to catch up with it. It is set something like half a millennium into the future, in Brin's 'Uplift' universe (the setting for a total of six novels so far). The Five Galaxies of civilisation are swarming with...

Back in the 1980s, before other priorities distracted me from reading much SFF for a decade or two, I read and enjoyed a few books by David Brin, The Practice Effect being a particular favourite. So when Kil'n People cropped up in the Modern SF reading list, I acquired a copy with some...

Anyone read him? Looks quite interesting...

These are probably both long shots... but any help would be very appreciated. Firstis a book I lost at summer camp several years ago, I bought it at a used book store and never could remember the name. It was about a black hole that fell into the center of the world, and had to somehow be...

This saga consists of 6 books: Sundiver Startide Rising The Uplift War and the trilogy: Brightness Reef Infinity's Shore Heaven's Reach. Who's read any of these books and what did you think about them?Why do you like/dislike this series?

Infinity's Shore Second book of the second Uplift Trilogy. The blurb: Two thousand years is a very long time to hold a grudge! A lot of this is probably my fault for entering the series halfway through. But bearing in mind current discussions in General about where modern Sci/Fi is going...