- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Bantam (Jun 25 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0553377965
- ISBN-13: 978-0553377965
- Product Dimensions: 15.3 x 1.2 x 22.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #316,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin teams up with illustrator Kevin Lenagh to offer Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe, the definitive guide for any fan of the Uplift series or, as Brin would have it, a training handbook for Terragen Field Agents. From biological and psychological descriptions of aliens (the Thennanin have "gill-like breathing slits," the Hoon are "stodgy pencil-pushers") to clan alliances and the 12 official languages of Galactic society, this volume overflows with Uplift information, not to mention humor and imagination.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Brin's Uplift Universe is one of the major hard-sf sagas distinguished by world building of the highest order and as imaginative an array of nonhuman species as has ever been committed to paper. Here we have an illustration by Lenagh of a representative member of each of those species alongside Brin's physical, cultural, and technological descriptions, which include their clan affiliations and the date and agent of their Uplift. In the tradition of such guides, Contacting Aliens purports to be a guide for human travelers in the Uplift Universe, and it induces the necessary suspension of disbelief respectably enough. Lenagh's artwork occasionally smacks of Star Wars, especially in the depiction of the Mos Eisley cantina, but thousands of passionate Uplift readers probably won't mind that much if at all. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exactly what it claims to be,
By A Customer
This review is from: Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe (Paperback)
This book is exactly what it claims to be. It is an excellent reference book laid out in an easy to read and intellectually pleasing format. It does contain a few minor inconsistincies but you can figure them out for yourself. If you play a game such as GURPS Uplift, this is an invaluable resource. Just one warning: this book does have a few spoilers in it so you might want to read the Uplift series first.
4.0 out of 5 stars
fun stuff,
By Vaevictis Asmadi (Minnesota, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe (Paperback)
I loove the Uplift universe (really galaxies, not the entire universe, but whatever). This is an excellent guide book to the series, fleshing out previously-introduced races and providing new information on others. However, DO NOT read this book until you have read Startide Rising, The Uplift War, and Sundiver. Contacting Aliens contains spoilers to the conclusions of those books. One thing, I hope a second edition of this comes out, because there are a few little errors/contradictions in it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing and Impudent,
By
This review is from: Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe (Paperback)
If you're like me and sometimes you have trouble keeping track of which species is which in David Brin's Uplift Saga, then this book will prove to be a valuable resource. All of the major players are listed (including those so prominently featured in the "Heaven's Reach" trilogy), along with their patrons and clients, which is very helpful in sorting out the various allegiances and alliances. Most of the entries are quite short, just giving a brief description of the physical appearances of the races, how they were uplifted and what unique gifts were cultivated, and their role or fate in galactic society. Many patrons that have retired or are being urged in that direction by their juniors are included here, along with some races that are now extinct.The artwork is not phenomenal like you might get from, say, Jim Burns or some of today's prominent artists from graphic novels, but it's got a sly and impudent sense of humor in my opinion. This fits well with the overall tone of the book, which purports to be a field guide for agents of the Terran Clan, i.e. good ol' Mother Earth. So the text often offers up tips on which races are friendly to humans, which want to destroy us, and which are indifferent, and provides hints on how to deal with some of these. (Of a particularly violent and prosletyzing race of religious zealots, the book notes that an agent's only two options are to flee or "to convert [them] to some less noxious creed".) Also, there are some interesting "real world" web resources listed at the back of the book. As a general refesher for the fan of Brin's work, this works well, but it's not likely to succeed in attracting new readers to the saga. Really, it's a solid supplement to the accumulated material of the novels and can be of some use, but it's not critical to own.
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