Hominids
Volume One of the Neanderthal Parallax
By Robert J. Sawyer
Tor Science Fiction (distributed in Canada by H.B. Fenn)
PB, 448 pgs. US$7.99

When worlds collide

By Mark Wegierski
web posted January 5, 2004

Robert J. Sawyer is among the most successful Canadian and
science fiction authors in the world today. *Hominids*  has won
the Hugo Award as best North American science fiction novel,
chosen by about five thousand paying attendees at the so-called
Worldcon, held in late August 2003, in Toronto (called Torcon
3, since it was the third such convention held in Toronto). Rob's
win will invariably raise the profile of Canadian science fiction in
the world, an endeavour to which Mr. Sawyer has devoted
enormous energy, beginning in those days more than twenty
years ago when he was just a smart science fiction fan, rather
than a professional science fiction writer.

Rob Sawyer has published a dozen best-selling novels, including
*The Terminal Experiment* which won the Nebula, the primary
professional science fiction award -- one of over twenty-five
literary awards won by him. Mr. Sawyer maintains a massive
website at www.sfwriter.com. Most of Mr. Sawyer's novels are
set in the near-future, and are based on copious amounts of
research into various scientific areas, such as genetics and
cosmology. *Hominids* is the first volume of *The Neanderthal
Parallax* trilogy. The following two volumes, *Humans*, and
*Hybrids*, have appeared in 2003. However, *Hominids*
reaches a satisfying conclusion on its own; it certainly doesn't
leave the reader hanging in mid-air.

The basic premise of *Hominids* is the cross-over to the
current-day world of a single Neanderthal scientist. He comes
from a parallel dimension where Neanderthals became dominant,
and what in our world are standard humans, died out. The place
where the Neanderthal crosses over is The Sudbury Neutrino
Observatory in Canada. While Mr. Sawyer uses various real
places in Canada for his settings, the characters he writes about
are his own.

A science fiction book of this type requires various types of
research. Presumably, Mr. Sawyer has visited the various places
(Sudbury, York University) he writes about. Secondly, he has
immersed himself in the paleoanthropological literature about the
Neanderthals. The arrival of the Neanderthal scientist has
occurred as a result of an accident in a physics experiment in the
other dimension, which causes great consternation and turmoil to
those who where close to him. With obvious skill and relish, Mr.
Sawyer constructs an entire Neanderthal society, which has,
over tens of thousands of years, advanced technologically, but
with vast differences from our own human societies. The
narrative of what happens on our current-day Earth is
intervowen with narrative occurring on the Neanderthal Earth.
Mr. Sawyer's world-building of the Neanderthal society includes
snippets of the Neanderthal language, alternative paths of
technological development, and extensive comment on social and
sexual mores and arrangements.

Given the fragmentary archeological evidence available, Mr.
Sawyer has done a formidable, if idiosyncratic, job of world-
construction. Recalling from *2001: A Space Odyssey*, the
Nativity-like scene among the early humanoids (before the
Monolith's arrival) -- the reviewer does not see it as likely that
Neanderthal society would so spectacularily diverge from the
father-mother-children model of existence. That Mr. Sawyer
posits that nearly all Neanderthals would be bisexual within a
rather bizarre socio-sexual set-up seems too much like an
attempt to bring some current-day outlooks into one's
anthropological speculations.

Another major element of the book is the reaction and
commentary of the Neanderthal scientist towards the current-day
world in which he finds himself. This typically embraces some
pointed criticisms of our human ways, including our
aggressiveness and propensity to religion. Neanderthal society is
far less violent and less ecologically destructive than ours, owing
to, among other things, round-the-clock electronic monitoring
through advanced computer-like devices implanted in the hand.
However, this is not considered a totalitarian invasion of privacy
in the Neanderthal world, but rather a guarantee of safety and
security for everyone. This view of the benefits of the abolition of
privacy (which Mr. Sawyer somewhat facetiously argued for in a
later *Macleans* article)  is certainly questionable. It is likely that
an almost entirely *public* society would either be an utopia, or,
more probably, a nightmare.

Mr. Sawyer also interprets the archeological evidence about
Neanderthals as implying that they have little impulse to religion.
However, their lack of religion does not necessarily lead to a less
moral existence. While they are pretty well indifferent to many
things our-Earth humans would consider immoral, they come
down very hard on crimes of aggression. The question of
whether human beings can be good without God is certainly an
important one, but Mr. Sawyer's understanding of traditional
religion is rather thin. He seems to ignore an important lesson
about the operation of religious belief in society, succintly
summarized by Doestoevsky's dictum, "with God, anything is
possible [i.e., bad things can happen], but without God,
everything is *permissible*."

After the turmoil of his arrival, the Neanderthal scientist is
welcomed to Canada by a few notable characters, including the
geneticist Mary Vaughan. Because of the threat of a cross-
dimensional plague, he is confined to a doctor's house. While
Mr. Sawyer certainly has some memorable and warm characters
and character-interactions in his book, it is highly unrealistic that
the Neanderthal scientist would be allowed to stay with just three
or four people in a private home. This artifice allows Mr. Sawyer
to portray a budding relationship between Mary Vaughan, who
is painfully recovering from a recent sexual assault, and the
Neanderthal scientist, who turns out to be the perfect, sensitive,
New Age guy.
 
There is a distinct element of irony, humour and satire in the way
Mr. Sawyer portrays Canada, as well as the hypothetical
Neanderthal society, in his book. It could also be argued that the
book embraces the sensibility of current-day CanLit, as a sort of
feminist (though also somewhat satirizing feminism), post-modern
fable about gender and sexual relations, and enthusiastic
celebration of various dimensions of Canadian multiculturalism.

Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher.

Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com