Brin, David
SUNDIVER
David Brin
Bantam Specter 1980
PB 340 pages
ISBN #
0-553-26982-8
Do you like hard science-fiction? If you're going to read Sundiver then you are going to have to get out your old college physics text, the chemistry book, and both the sociology and psychology ones as well. Better dust off the encyclopedia and the dictionary too, while you're at it. No--scratch that: Brin's expositories should explain everything.
Sundiver is set in a distant Earth future where "E.T.'s" are commonplace and social discord has taken an unusual turn. Our hero, Jacob Demwa--an expert in interspecies relations--is called into the Sundiver project to help solve the mystery of ghosts in the sun. One mystery of course, twists into several and Jacob's subtle intelligence is needed as the project heats up, in more ways than one. This assignment of literally diving into the sun becomes more dangerous than his last, the one previous having taken the life of his beloved wife and scarring his personality.
It took patience for me to make it to the end of this book, through the heavy expositions, and I had trouble trudging that last lap into the climax as the main character constantly stopped to analyze his own psyche in the midst of clock-ticking danger. So, do I recommend Sundiver? Only to someone who loves astrophysics in combination with an excellent imagination.
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