Sundiver

I just finished David Brin's Sundiver the other day.

I said in my other post that I was doing this so that I could say that I've read all the books on my shelf. I don't like having books on my shelf that I've never read. Funny thing, however, is that I don't even have a copy of this book. This is the first book in the Uplift Saga. On my shelf is one of those old Sci-Fi Book Club omnibus editions of the second and third Uplift Saga books.

So reading Sundiver is basically just homework to get to the point where I can start reading the books on my shelf. I've heard that these Uplift Saga books are good, though, so I was happy to do it. I was excited.

I may not be the right audience for this book, though. While I wouldn't say it was bad, because it definitely wasn't that, it was too far on the hard sci-fi side of the spectrum to really peak my interest. 

It's about human beings who have suddenly found themselves in a strange atmosphere of alien politics after making first contact recently. In that environment, they are making a scientific exploration of the sun, and have discovered that there is some sort of life there, a completely different life than anything anyone has ever known.

Some hard sci-fi nuts would love that kind of thing, but I'm not that kind of a nut. It was fine, and I made it through the book easily, but I never got to that point where I really wanted to get back to the story and find out what happened next. That's the feeling that hooked me into becoming a reader and probably into trying my hand at being a writer as well. 

I suspect that many others would disagree with me and say that's exactly the feeling they got from this book, and I would believe them. I think reading is very much an embodiment of that old saying, "to each his own." My mom was an avaricious reader, but she only read romance novels, boxes and boxes of romance novels. I read one or two of her books when I was a kid, but they didn't really appeal to me very much...except the steamy sex scenes, that part was interesting to a young man going through puberty.

What does that mean? Will I continue on to read the books that are actually on my shelf? There's Startide Rising and The Uplift War still to go. I definitely will. At the very least, I'll read the next book. As I said, I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it either. I have so much time to burn while driving to and from work that it wouldn't hurt me a bit to listen to a book that isn't absolutely inspiring.

Besides, in this election year of 2024, reading fiction is about the only place I can run to escape the ever-present, pervasive shit quick sand of the political arguments that fill every leisure space that used to be a refuge for people. It's in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, television, movies, music, comic books, broadway plays, puppet shows, and even on CNN. I get enough of that at work, there's gotta be somewhere I can go to be free of it for a minute or two, and reading old books like these is my solution.