The Uplift War

In this galaxy no species reaches intelligence alone. Each is uplifted by a patron race through genetic engineering and then indentured to it for a hundred thousand years, and the whole civilisation runs on that debt. Humans are an embarrassment: they appear to have done it themselves, which the ancient species consider either a lie or a heresy, and they have already uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees without permission.

The Gubru, a fastidious avian species obsessed with protocol and precedence, invade Garth, a human colony world whose ecology was wrecked by its previous tenants and is being painstakingly repaired. Their aim is not conquest but leverage: they intend to seize the chimpanzee population as hostages, because holding a client race gives them a legal claim over humanity.

The resistance is run out of the mountains by Robert Oneagle, an unserious young man who grows up quickly, Athaclena, the daughter of an alien ambassador, and above all by Fiben Bolger, a chimpanzee infantryman who is funny, insubordinate and the best character Brin wrote.

The Gubru chapters, in which three bickering commanders conduct an invasion as a series of ceremonial precedence disputes, are a genuinely good comedy of bureaucracy.

Underneath the adventure sits a real argument. Uplift is presented neither as a gift nor as slavery but as both at once, and the chimpanzees of Garth are three centuries into a process that has given them language, law and a vote, and left them owned.

Brin also takes the ecology seriously: Garth is a damaged world under restoration, and much of the guerrilla campaign is constrained by the need not to break it further.

Around six hundred pages, busy with viewpoints and lighter in tone than its predecessor.

It follows Startide Rising but takes place elsewhere with a largely new cast, so it can be read first. Best for readers who want galactic politics with a sense of humour and an alien species worth arguing about.