As those members of the crew who are still loyal to the now-injured captain and the human crew of the Streaker devise a plan for escaping the planet and returning home through the alien armies - a plan that does not guarantee the survival of all - the sinister nature of one crew member is fully revealed.Īs I mentioned in my post on Sundiver, Brin establishes English (or Anglic as he calls it) as the official language of Earth, and those species who the humans uplift are genetically manipulated to be able to speak English with varying degrees of proficiency. Meanwhile, the crew discovers a race of natives who are prime candidates for uplift, which they seek to hide from the warring aliens in the skies above to prevent these little creatures from being unfairly exploited by malicious alien patrons. As the Streaker‘s crew tries to make repairs to their vessel, dissension breaks out among the ranks, resulting in an attack on the dolphin captain that causes severe neurological damage.

The crew of the Streaker had discovered a fleet of derelict spaceships, perhaps belonging to the Progenitors, as well as one alien body, and the information that they have collected is both so precious and so dangerous seemingly everyone in the galaxy wants to either claim it as their own or destroy it. The Plot: Startide Rising takes place quite a while after Sundiver and features two of Jacob Demwa’s students in primary roles. The novel opens as starship Streaker, crewed by 150 dolphins, seven humans, and one chimpanzee, crashes on a supposedly uninhabited planet after suffering damage from being chased all over the galaxy by hoards of alien races. Furthermore, I found Brin’s illustrations of the high stakes of English language politics just down-right admirable. For starters, 1983 Brin had a much better idea of how to use paragraph breaks than 1980 Brin, and I found myself overall less troubled by the writing. After a long hiatus (the semester began, complete with ridiculous amounts of reading for seminars and 40 freshman writers), I am back with David Brin’s Startide Rising, which won both the Hugo and Nebula in 1984.

Startide rising