Startide Rising (Uplift Series #2)

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written.  Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War—a New York Times bestseller—together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time.  Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race.  But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history.  Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret—the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.

David Brin's Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written.  Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War—a New York Times bestseller—together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time.  Brin's tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being "uplifted" by a patron race.  But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history.  Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret—the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars.

Publishers Weekly

In its original paperback editon of 1983, this novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Brin's extensive revisions make this first hardcover edition an SF event. What remains most impressive is the complex background of political, cultural, linguistic and many other connections and missed connections among innumerable different species. Against the backdrop of an ancient spacefaring conglomerate, whose shared traditions have not halted their wars, the upstart Earthlings humans, dolphins, chimpanzeesalso stand divided. Brin raises questions not only of understanding but of ethics, for a "patron'' race may genetically uplift another only to indenture them. His depiction of the dolphins' gains and losses now that they've become space pilots is particularly moving. Although Brin's characterization and storytelling are less adept here than in the work he has since written, this is one of the outstanding SF novels of recent years.

David Brin is the author of Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, The Practice Effect, The Postman, Heart of the Comet (with Gregory Benford), Earth, Glory Season, Brightness Reef, and Infinity's Shore, as well as the short-story collections The River of Time and Otherness.  He has a doctorate in astrophysics and has been a NASA consultant and a physics professor.  He lives in southern California.