Series Overview: the Uplift books by David Brin

The Uplift books are a series of generally intelligent adventure stories by David Brin,all set in a universe with a huge number of intelligent species, all of whom have been'uplifted' to intelligence by other intelligent species, who were themselves uplifted, allthe way back to the now mythical 'progenitors.' The only race to buck this trendappears to be humans, which causes a lot of upset politically across the galaxy.

One of the main reasons I like Brin's books is that he puts a lot of time in tocharacter development and the interactions between his characters, especially thenon-human races which have been uplifted on Earth. He's also not worried aboutkilling off characters where he thinks it's necessary, giving the stories an edge manyauthors don't have when you expect characters to survive the adversities they aregoing through.

About the only real criticism I have of the Uplift books is some of them havevery similar themes running through the stories. Startide Rising and Uplift War particularlyfelt very similar to each other - humans in adversity managing to think their way out ofdanger with the help of their simian / dolphin companions because of their unique viewof the galaxy. Still, if you don't do what I did and read them very close to each otheryou probably wouldn't notice, and they're still both good reads.

The David Brin website has a sectionon the Uplift books includingsample chapters.

Books in the series:

Sundiver
Startide Rising
The Uplift War
Uplift Trilogy 1: Brightness Reef
Uplift Trilogy 2: Infinity's Shore
Uplift Trilogy 3: Heaven's Reach

Overview by Paul Silver, 2004