Brightness Reef (Uplift Storm Trilogy, #1)

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Brightness Reef (Uplift Storm Trilogy #1)

by David Brin (Goodreads Author)

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 4,233 ratings · 69 reviews

David Brin's Uplift novels--Sundiver, Hugo award winner The Uplift War, and Hugo and Nebula winner Startide Rising--are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction tales ever written.Now David Brin returns to this future universe for a new Uplift trilogy, packed with adventure, passion and wit.

The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected b...more

Paperback, 672 pages

Published October 1st 1996 by Spectra (first published 1995)

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Jan 27, 2011 Ben Babcock rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, 2011-read, science-fiction

You cannot ask for a better premise than Uplift. Of all the science fiction series I've read, David Brin has something special here. Uplift is more than just panspermia, because Brin has taken the idea of aliens genetically engineering pre-sapient life to full sapience and wrapped his own entire mythos around the concept. As a result of Uplift, galactic civilization is a network of intricate social relationships defined and bound by literally millions of years of tradition. Client races are beho...more

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Sep 07, 2009 Tatiana rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sciencefiction

These are getting better, though the author still has some writing quirks that annoy me. These last three Uplift books are apparently all one long story. The first one, Brightness Reef, introduces us to the planet Jijo, and to the six erstwhile starfaring races that dwell there in exile illegally. Some of the storylines and characters are quite captivating, like that of Rety and of the Stranger. Others like Alvin, Huck and friends, I wish to get through quickly and move on. He has learned to go...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 10, 2011 Servius Heiner rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm sure Brin has lots of fans... and in a way I might be one of them. His work reminds me of Vernor Vinge, just not as good. The story itself is great, but the writing is awful. There is no time sequencing between character point of views. Even when the the story combines two points of view taking place in the same scene. by the time he gets around to the other point of view you already know what the outcome is. I don't know why he does this, but he does it often. It doesn't bring anything to t...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Dylan Harris rated it 4 of 5 stars

The fundamental theme behind David Brin’s various Uplift series of novels makes me feel uncomfortable. But that’s a good thing; one of the strengths of science fiction is that it can be used to explore uncomfortable themes without the associated cultural baggage.

The Uplift series explores race and racism without obvious reference to the terrible history of the first half of the 20th century. This allows Brin to consider this deeply disturbing subject without the baggage of antisemitism, or other...more The fundamental theme behind David Brin’s various Uplift series of novels makes me feel uncomfortable. But that’s a good thing; one of the strengths of science fiction is that it can be used to explore uncomfortable themes without the associated cultural baggage.

The Uplift series explores race and racism without obvious reference to the terrible history of the first half of the 20th century. This allows Brin to consider this deeply disturbing subject without the baggage of antisemitism, or other living anti–X cowardices which so poison the question of race in the modern world. He can look at the core principles of race and racism and explore their core characteristics, exposing the unavoidable genocidal characteristic underlying the attitude, without invoking the clouds of violent passion caused by recent and contemporary world history. Those clouds? So many governments stoke fear of foreigners to keep their population distracted from the real cause of their problems, those very governments.

In the Uplift universe, intelligent species are almost always “uplifted” by others, changed from dumb animal to intelligent animal by another species’ biotechnical intervention. But the newly uplifted species remain in the debt of the uplifters, and that species that has to pay off the debt. Individuals do not matter a hoot; your fate is determined by your choice of parents. Race is at the core of the culture of the five galaxies.

One thing that isn’t explored is the difference between race and nation, something particularly relevent in our contemporary world. In these novels, species is race is nation. It’s a pity, but there’s a lot to chew over in any case.

Brightness Reef is set on an isolated planet, Jijo, in a galaxy left fallow for wildlife to recover and develop new candidate species for uplift to appear. Renegades and criminals from varies species, “sooners”, have arrived to illegally settle Jijo. Different species arrive at different points, and fall into racist war with each other. But after the last species, humans, arrive, and after more wars, a “commons” is established in which the various species live together, in a tense peace, in service to their common religion & planet, not their species. This is something of a cross between an American experience (lots of different peoples arriving from outside and coming together to create a new society) and the European experience (lots of warring tribes exhausted by total war and working together instead). Underlying the commons is the uniting religion: each species has given up their advance technology so they can devolve back to animal status, so future aliens can uplift them again, having lost the sins / debts that currently stain their species. At least, that’s the religious ideal.

Then along come a bunch of starfaring aliens, with their starfaring technology, to stir things up. These are criminals, not here to join the devolution, but to steal biological material for illegal projects. Unfortunately, these criminals need to cover their tracks by eradicating the existing population. They try to go about this by creating false divisions between the peoples of Brightness Reef. These false divisions invoke false fears that sound much like the false fears raised by nationalists and racists in the modern media. Brightness Reef is relevent.

These criminals are human and Rothen, who claim to be the species who uplifted humans. What interests me in particular is that the Rothen are presented in the same way as racists present “aliens within”, and that presentation isn’t questioned. The Rothan, here, are the jews of the uplift universe (or should we say muslims now?), and that’s one thing that makes me particularly uncomfortable about this novel. But it’s sci–fi, it’s exploring these themes, it’s bringing the attitude to attention without the usual baggage. This is interesting indeed. That the “jews” are the ones sowing the fears reveals the underlying truth: using the race card is all about gaining, using and abusing power, dividing your perceived enemies, making them fall. The divisions are fake. The people you are encouraged to hate are your natural allies; the real enemies are those wanting you to hate.

The adventure is good and told well, with many characters taking their part in its progress. There’s much jumping between characters, but the tales are all pretty much contemporary to each other, and they’re not difficult to follow.

The different races are physically different. I enjoyed imagining their physical experiences, there are some deliciously inventive ideas in here. However, the psychological difference is much smaller: a matter of timbre, not depth. This disappoints me, as always: it’s so rare to see genuinely different ways of thinking in sci–fi, unfortunately. Even so, relative to too many novels, they’re inventive and enjoyably different aliens.

A key character is a man who’s undergone a very serious head injury, losing his ability to speak. His stark injury is dealt with interestingly and sympatheticly. He needs to be mentioned, but I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about such injuries to know whether his protrayal is accurate. However, his pyschological experience is stranger than those of the alien characters. I think this reinforces my opinion of the weakness of the psychology of the aliens.

One of my favourite characters is a young “hoon” who has the good taste to be very fond of 19th and 20th century anglophone literature. He calls himself after Alvin, from Clarke’s The City and the Stars. His friend calls herself Huck, and her name gives a taste of their particular adventure. But I have to thank Alvin for his description of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a description of the novel that describes what I love to find in poetry.

Brightness Reef is not a standalone novel; unless you don’t mind some seriously unanswered questions. It is well written, adventurous, ambitious, tight and with enough depth to entertain most people well. I certainly enjoyed listening to George Wilson’s narration, and found it good. I will follow up with the other books in the trilogy when I can. This book’s worth an exploration. (less)

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Apr 02, 2013 Darth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not sure why i keep at theses Uplift books.
I dont by the setup - I am not overwhelmed by any ideas in the story, the setting, the premise, etc...
They arent bad, they just dont do much for me. I find it hard to imagine people taking species responsibility over the course of thousands of years. It is hard to get most people who study a specific thing - to agree what happened 100 years ago. So to think we or any like species would carry any guilt for thousands of years seems unlikely.

For this part...more

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Aug 26, 2011 Bria rated it 4 of 5 stars

A high four. Some of my favorite things were things that I appreciated in thought more than enjoyed as I read it, but that may be my harshest critique. I sometimes complain that science fiction is so concentrated upon its jawsome ideas that it forgets to also be literature, but the sort of self-aware literary technique in the secondary story line seemed a bit out of place sandwiched between the more conventional sections. Perhaps if the whole book had been written that way it would have worked,...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Kirk Lowery rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi

Brin is an excellent writer, no matter that his cosmology and worldview is upwhacked. In particular, the Uplift series of books are especially inventive and entertaining.

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Sep 01, 2012 Ben rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oi. This book...just...not a fan. I really wanted to like this book, and I gave it a hard, honest try...I just couldn't do it.
I came into the series with moderately high hopes. I'd read the first Uplift trilogy and enjoyed all three of those books. This one however...not so much. Most of the characters have no depth. The plot is interesting...but takes forever to get going. I just couldn't find anybody to relate to here. I really liked the idea of the book; I just didn't actually like reading i...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Mercurybard rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a hard one to muddle through--it wasn't until I realized that this trilogy is contemporary to the events of the Uplift Trilogy that I started to get interested.

Brin is experimenting with perspective--from the alien Asx to the Stranger who has lost all language when introducted to Alvin, the young hoon who tells his story in a first person journal style.

Of course, since it's Brin, the intrigue is thick.

Gone are the weird time passage "burps" from earlier books. Everything seems to flow n...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Cjbrew rated it 1 of 5 stars

Couldn't get past the first few chapters, and I'm not one to wuss out on a book. His writing style irritated me immensely, particularly the incessant diversions to describe his ridiculous imaginary creatures -- rather than letting us glean information along the way. I also found his characters rather shallow and difficult to sympathise with.

The change in voice between different species is also a bit annoying -- other authors seem to pull this trick off a lot better. Although some other reviewers...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

The planet Jijo is forbidden to settlers, its ecology protected by guardians of the Five Galaxies.But over the centuries it has been resettled, populated by refugees of six intelligent rac

...more

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Dec 16, 2010 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

The new Uplift trilogy continues the adventures of the crew of Streaker, though they don't figure much in the first volume. It takes place on the distant planet Jijo, where members of several different Galactic races (including humans) have colonized illegally. These "sooners" live in constant fear of discovery by Galactic authorities. It's a great story but you keep wondering when the Streaker is going to make an appearance.

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Apr 18, 2013 Dark-Draco rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, science-fiction-series

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic!! I loved this story and the world that was created on Jijo. I read for a second time and it was even better. Having read the previous three books, I understood a lot more of the references to The Streaker and now understand who the Stranger actually is. I have the last two books to read and can't wait to see how the story turns out.

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Mar 15, 2013 Maria rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

There were so many separate plot threads that it took 2/3 of the book to establish a good sense of suspense within any of them. Had I not been stricken with curiosity about the universe after reading the previous trilogy, I wouldn't've bothered.

It finally builds up steam towards the end. Maybe the rest of the trilogy will justify the slow beginning?

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Jun 02, 2012 Julie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thought-provoking, easily read story encompassing complex subjects, such as cultural clash and overlap, specialties (linguist; other scientists; librarians) among humans and specialization in natural evolution, intergalactic politics and war; engaging writing style; no cheap talk or blow-it-up violence

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Sep 20, 2011 Sffgeek rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: _gave-up, study_left

So disappointed with this. I loved Brin's earlier work (Sundiver, Startide Rising, and also The Practice Effect) but then he turned all "Literary" - long-winded, verbose, obscure. I forced my way through The Uplift War, and decided to give him one more chance with this. I didn't manage to finish it...

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Jan 06, 2012 Jon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mr. Brin never fails to reward the careful reader! This first novel in the newest Uplift trilogy is deeply weird, steeped in ideas and unbridled imagination, and best of all - full of wonderfully fallible and heroic characters (very few of them are human!). Brin's favorite trick is to drop a megaton reveal late in his novels and he does so here with jaw-dropping results - the last 100 pages were a complete blur compared to the sometimes plodding first almost-600.

I set this one down and immediate...more

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May 29, 2011 Emily Leathers rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this entire trilogy. Interesting pictures of alien races, some suspense and action, and a lot of cross-culture politics and diplomacy. Altogether fun.

I can't remember whether I liked one of the books more than the others, so I'm just giving them all a 4 for being great reads.

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Apr 17, 2011 Kelly Flanagan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a good book.the 6 different species on the planet Jijo are well created and interesting. There was lucklily a picture at the end of the book and after looking at that I understood the shape and parts of the different types of aliens there. There is also an interesting idea of 'Patron' species. In other words a species that takes another fledgling group and begins to uplift them. Genetically changing them slowly as well as teaching them things to make them into the next star-faring specie...more

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Aug 17, 2011 Martin L. Cahn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not quite as good as the second two books of the first trilogy, but excellent in comparison with a lot of other science fiction. A little hard to keep up with the different races at first, but it gets easier as you get into it. As for the core mystery -- who The Stranger is -- it's both obvious and surprising at the same time. Not many authors can do that. And there are more mysteries to be discovered as I head off to the next book, Infinity's Shore.

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Feb 16, 2011 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-in-a-series, fiction, science-fiction

I loved the first Uplift series. I read it relatively early in my scifi reading career and I was blown away. Brin writes such a great combo of hard sf and space opera. He aims BIG and then he delivers. He's so original.

This book, like his often are, was tough to get into because it is so complicated, and he let's you figure it out on the way; he doesn't hold you by the hand. He pulled it together and I was very impressed. But the real story, drama, and power of this story has yet to come and I'...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Jon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Took a long time to get going, engaging a lot of time in setting up Jijoan civilization and hobbled (as is the whole trilogy) by switching between too many points of view. The alien narrators and sheer amount of invented vocabulary hinder early immersion.

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Dec 15, 2009 Teddie rated it 3 of 5 stars

He writes excellent prose, but the pace was infuriating. Some of the sci-fi elements were a bit dubious, but there was a surprising, interesting theory about proto-Indo-European language stuck in the middle that made it all worthwhile.

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Feb 21, 2013 Andre rated it 3 of 5 stars

A Brin novel - brinning with ideas/concepts, characters you like/dislike, a traitor/treason and stakes that involve you. This one starts more slowly than the other Brin novels i read and I did not "get into it" until half of the novel.Also, it feels like part 1 of an ongoing story instead of the stand-alone-novel-within-a-trilogy feel of the first uplift trilogy.

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Jun 07, 2010 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Not one of Brin's best, but still enjoyable. Some really interesting concepts, and some neat use of language. Like in the other Uplift books, Brin has a good time communicating the weirdness of alien languages.

I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't picked it up explicitly looking for some space opera. Instead I got a bunch of low-tech refugees who hadn't seen a starship in thousands of years. How frustrating!

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Apr 19, 2010 Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: David Brin fans

Shelves: sci-fi

I love David Brin, but this was a hard book to get into. In typical Brin fashion, there are tons of characters, twisty plot and an interesting universe. But, for me, this book had pacing problems. The first 2/3 to 3/4 of the book were a slog to get through. The last part picked up nicely and redeemed the book somewhat. Perhaps, being the first of a new (and planned - the first trilogy wasn't exactly planned, IIRC) trilogy, this pacing makes sense. But as a stand-alone work, this didn't work for...more

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May 04, 2013 Michael Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ok, I originally thought this wasn't great, but once I got through the juvenile language of the first few chapters uttered by the adolescent aliens, it actually turned out pretty good. The scope of the story is epic. There are two main themes in these 6 books that are very well explored:

1)intelligence is too complex to be evolutionally emergent, so it took 4-5 billion years for it to happen the first time, and every time since has been the result of genetic manipulation by intelligent species t...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Jud rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi, notfinished

Couldn't get past 'Alvin's story' - it read like an American teenager's boring life with his girl friend 'Huck', the only difference being throat sacs and eye stalks. I didn't waste my time going any further.

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Sep 05, 2011 John Sorensen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 04, 2011 Neil Rickards added it

The best part of David Brin's books are the endings... and this book doesn't have one. In a change of style he's gone for the trilogy option. Not a bad read though apart from that

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About David Brin

David Brin is a scientist, speaker, and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Existence, his latest novel, offers an unusual scenario for first contact. His ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends...more

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“Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.” — 33 people liked it

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Brightness Reef (Uplift Storm Trilogy #1)

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