Hybrids [Format Kindle]

Like most of the other reviewers, I too found this final book in the trilogy quite a let down and had to flog myself to finish reading it. My reaction to the end was more outrage at Sawyer for inflicting such a farce on us than anything else.

Perhaps the most unsatisfying aspect of the book, and indeed the whole series, was the superficiality of the characters. In particular the central female, Mary Vaughn, is shallow and one dimensional. And, for a doctorate in genetics, she seemed to have a strikingly random intelligence. For example, she loved her neandertal man Ponter dearly and wanted to "marry" him but it didn't occur to her until well into this third book that their chromosonal incompatibility would render then infertile. Sharp thinker, that Mary.

Also, her obsessive Catholicism made her appear ridiculous and confused. Sawyer obviously needed her religiosity to explore theology and mirror its lack of logic and reason. The goal was met, but at the cost of one of his primary character's credibility.

The other peripheral characters were stock and embarrassingly devoid of personality too. Cornelius was a totally unbelievable bad guy, too much irrational ranting about women and the general unfairness of the world to be anything but a caricature; Louise Benoit, the hottie French quantum physicist, is a brunette version of Pamela Anderson and just about as flimsy; Dr. Reuben, a shaven-headed black Haitian more benign that even a fantasy physician has the right to be. What a rainbow of characters! What a bunch of cardboard people!

The creative underpining of the series - divergent species of humans allowed to evolve into their own culturally distinct potentials - is excellent, and especially well realized in the first book. In addition, Ponter, who is the only truly developed character in the set, is an engaging person with much to teach us, even if we can never shuffle back and forth between his almost-but-not-quite-perfect world and ours.

The "Stranger in a Strange Land" concept is always delightful and this, perhaps more than any ever written, offers much for meditiation. It will definitely stay with the reader long after the books are reshelved.

So, here's my suggeston: read the first book HOMINIDS and if you like it, go for the second one HUMANS, just don't expect scintillating personalities. Avoid the final one, HYBRIDS, though. It'll just be a disappointment.

I'm a big fan of Sawyer. I loved the first two books of this trilogy, and Hybrid lived up to what I've come to expect from Sawyer. It was a real page turner -- UNTIL about 2/3rds through the book.

Did Sawyer just get tired of writing this trilogy?

All of a sudden, the book turns to silliness. It's almost a parady of Sawyer's work. The theological thoughts are no longer delightful little subplots of a page or two, but drag on and on into endless garbage. The ending reads like a B-Movie from the 1950s with a crazed individual trying to destroy a world. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's -- well, I don't want to spoil the ending for you. It was bad enough for me to have to read it myself.

I often recommend Sawyer's books to friends, but I can't recommend this one. Hopefully this doesn't reflect Sawyer's future work.

Robert J. Sawyer's first book in this series, Hominids, was enjoyable, in spite of the hand-waving explanation of the connection between the universes. The characters, especially Ponter, were interesting and well-drawn.

The second book, Humans, represented the beginning of Sawyer's descent into one-world kumbaya utopian preaching.

This volume, Hybrids, consists of a thin plot grafted onto Sawyer's personal PC worldview.

Everyone in the Neanderthal world is an atheist bisexual environmentalist and their world is just about perfect, cue John Lennon. And let's not forget the obligatory Dan Brown-ish attack on the Catholic Church, can't have a enlightened book these days without that.

Among other ludicrous lines, the sapiens world North Vietnamese government is described as kind. Not as bad as many totalitarian regimes? Sure. Not as corrupt as the South Vietnamese regime? Could well be. Kind? Oh dear lord.

Sawyer quotes Solzhenitsyn's phrase that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart, but very tellingly fails to include the entire statement. I quote from The Gulag Archipelago Two:

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them.

The full context of Solzhenitsyn's quote is precisely contrary to Sawyer's portrayal of an atheistic neo-Marxist Neanderthal paradise.

But my favorite was Sawyer's list (via Mary) of the handful of decent men in the world. The list included Phil Donahue. I laughed because I thought at least Sawyer was showing a bit of wit. Then I realized he was serious.

Never mind the mysteries of how a race which eschews competition could produce a technically advanced culture (especially with less than 1/20th of the population of the sapiens Earth, better breeding for intelligence doesn't explain that). Maybe there is an explanation, but Sawyer doesn't offer one.

Prior to the development of the Companion how did the Neanderthals judge whether someone had committed a crime? 80 years of supposedly perfect justice being used to wean out bad genes doesn't explain what mistakes may have been made were made in the past, when justice was far less perfect.

Occasionally Sawyer raises problems in the Neanderthal culture (such as unreported spousal abuse). But these read as throwaway issues so he can avoid the charge of writing a complete whitewash. He never explores how such issues could lead to wholesale difficulties. Again, any problems in the Neanderthal society are portrayed as minor individual trifles, never anything systemic.

Frankly, this trilogy reminds me most of Harry Harrison's trilogy, Stars and Stripes (an alternative Civil War history where the bumbling British manage to attack both the USA and CSA, and the combined USA and CSA forces pretty quickly smash the Brits, take Ireland, and conquer London).

One side is nearly perfect and decent and brilliant and the other side is nefarious and cruel.

There are no complexities, just the good guys triumphing over a bunch of bad guys. Take Harrison's trilogy, substitute Neanderthal for Americans and evil white men for the British, stir in a lot of politically correct attitudes, and you'd produce something similar to Sawyer's trilogy.

The best alternative history accepts complexities and portrays all cultures as something far less than pure. Sawyer, due to his obsession with pushing his weltanschauung ahead of everything else, fails miserably in this regard.