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| View Larger Image | Hybrids (Neanderthal Parallax)
by Robert J. Sawyer
| | List Price: | $7.99 |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 243737 | | Studio: | Tor Science Fiction | | | Binding: | Mass Market Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 400 | | Publication Date: | November 01, 2004 | | Publisher: | Tor Science Fiction |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In the Hugo-Award winning Hominids, 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 sapiens 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.
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 41 reviews)
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Good to Great Writer, poor choice of protagonists 
These three books are the first books I've ever read by Robert J. Sawyer. He is a very good writer, but I have a real problem with his choice of the main characters. First is Mary, homo sapien. At the beginning of the series she is attacked and raped by a white man. That sets the whole story line from there. The second main character is Ponter. Neanderthal. He comes across as being straight out of a romance novel. Very manly. In every extreme. Even his faults are manly and forgivable. The books are well written, but come across as way to much of an attack on American White Males. Mary becomes pretty much what many men would call a Femi-Nazi. Every thing is the fault of men, white men most of all. Even through the author at times seems to try to reign this in, in the end it just gets to the reader. As an American White, even if I am a liberal white male, the tirades the trilogy goes off on become offensive. There is nothing that white males can do right.
Ponter comes across, as I stated before, as just a bit to manly. Super strong, a lover to beat all others, understanding, ect. ect.
The whole problem with the series is that there is no balance, no opposing point of view. Judgment is given, but no defense. With the main characters given there is no journey of discovery, no growth. Ponter and his world start out perfect and remain perfect in the end (by keeping male homo sapiens from it). Mary starts out hating males (white males and white AMERICAN males most of all) and ends up still hating males, in fact even feeling more resolved about her feelings.
Although the story is great the main characters and the diatribes about the evils of being a male keep the trilogy from being great. I can't really say if I would recommend it or not. I can say that if you are a male (white male, white AMERICAN male) with any sense of dignity that you WILL be offended much of the time making this trilogy very hard to read. I kept hoping at least Mary would learn the error of her Femi-Nazi ways, but alas, she only end up strengthening them.
March 02, 2008 | |
Disappointing 
Very disappointing - I waited a long time for all three of these to be in paperback so I could read them all together. They weren't anywhere close to as good as the rest of his work and I'm a big Robert Sawyer fan as well as a feminist. Mary, the primary female character, was not a very sympathetic person although I'm sure she was meant to be. Lots of potential that just never quite got there.
September 08, 2007 | |
The Camel is in the tent 
Hybrids
Hybrids is the book Sawyer has been leading up to all along. You should definitely read all three books in this trilogy. Hominids (Neanderthal Parallax)], ][[ASIN:0765346753 Humans (Volume Two of The Neanderthal Parallax), and now Hybrids (Neanderthal Parallax).
I mentioned in an earlier review that with respect to Sawyer's Liberalism" he let the nose of the camel come peeking under the tent. Well, in Hybrids the camel is all the way inside the tent and it has taken a dump in the middle. I'm going to have to hold my nose if I read any more of his stories. In fact I'm going to go read[ [ASIN:0743499204 A State of Disobedience]] just to balance out Sawyer.
Points include the old Military Industrial Complex as the boogieman.
Universal homosexuality being apparently espoused.
Anyhow it is a good story ,but...
I noticed that it didn't win any awards like the other two. Now I know why.
Gunner August,2007
August 05, 2007 | |
More a romance novel than science fiction
I thought long and hard over how many stars to give this book and eventually opted for two because it's just not quite good enough for three but it is a fairly strong two. The first books in the trilogy are better however and I would rate them each three stars.
Without going into too much detail about the story, the three books cover what happens when a link to an alternate universe where Neanderthals supplanted humanity as the dominant hominid race opens up. Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, is transported to our universe and Mary Vaughan, a genetic expert, is appointed to study him and over time they fall in love. As humanity learns more about the Neanderthals, dark forces plot to take their universe over for the human race. Of course everything turns out okay in the end.
Sawyer paints an interesting picture of how different the science and culture in the Neanderthal universe is compared to ours but spends too much time on religion. Apparently the Neanderthal brain is structured in such a way that religious experience is beyond their understanding. What irritated me the most though was the concentration on the love story. At times I thought I was reading a Mills and Boon romantic novel and some of the romantic interaction later in the book came over as just plain silly.
I think that the Neanderthal Parallax could just as well have been fitted into two books. This book has its occasional moments but isn't a real winner as far as I'm concerned.
April 27, 2007 | |
All right, having read the previous ones...
Reviews of this book seem to belong to two categories:
A. very negative ones, usually written by ultra-religious folks and
B. very positive ones,written by non-religious folks who had read the other two instalments.
It is my belief one should be somehow more considerate in reviewing this book.
Obviously, it has not got the inventiveness and the fast pace of the first, or of the second.
It does, nonetheless, ask uncomfortable questions and provides also some food for thoughts.
It therefore should not be dragged down.
You need to read the two other volumes first, but once you do, if you are not from a ultra-strict religious upbringing, you are most likely to enjoy this book, which is, inter alia, about tolerance, something in very short supply these days...
After reading all the negative reviews, I first hesitated about buying it and then I expected it to bomb.
I was actually wrong. I quite liked it for the reasons I mentioned above.
Thank you, Mr Sawyer.
July 30, 2006 | |
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