SF Book Review – The Neanderthal Parallax

Award-Winning Trilogy by Leading Sci-Fi Author Robert J. Sawyer

Apr 25, 2009

With the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome on the horizon, now is a good time to read or revisit Robert J. Sawyer's award-winning trilogy, The Neanderthal Parallax.

An updated Utopian vision of intelligent life and community on earth, Sawyer’s series is also a provocative thought experiment. What if the Neanderthals had culturally evolved and Homo sapiens had become extinct? To answer this question, Sawyer creates an alternative history of life on Earth and a parallel Neanderthal world which present not only an appealing picture of how human culture could have evolved but also an unsparing critique of contemporary human society and culture.

An Advanced Neanderthal Civilization

Sawyer presents readers with a technologically advanced Neanderthal civilization in many ways equal to ours, one with sophisticated institutions and behaviors when dealing with everything from justice and governance systems to the environment, gender relations and population control. Indeed, it is during a botched experiment with a quantum computer at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, coincidentally the same site in both worlds, that the main protagonist, Neanderthal scientist Ponter Boddit, is accidentally propelled into our reality.

The story unfolds as he and then other members of his species interact with our species both in the Homo sapien (Gliksin) world and the Neanderthal (Barast) universe. Gliksins and Barasts alike suffer a considerable degree of culture shock and Sawyer throws no punches in suggesting that the Neanderthals have more reason to be baffled, disgusted and bemused than the Homo sapiens.

An Intelligent and Sexy Neanderthal

Finely crafted, inventive and credible, (Hominids won the Hugo Award for the best science fiction novel of the year and Humans was a finalist in the balloting), the novels move along at a brisk narrative pace and present a variety of highly compelling characters, especially the Neanderthals. Indeed the hero is, contrary to 30,000 years of vilification and underestimation on the part of the dominant species on earth, a highly intelligent, sensitive, and sexy Neanderthal.

Sawyer is perhaps at his best in depicting a Neanderthal world that is in sync with our preconceptions about the species and yet displays the kind of sophistication we would expect from an evolutionary path parallel to our own. The most intriguing and educational dimension in the novels, though, is how much they say about Homo sapiens and our modern world, a world that comes across as far less appealing than that of the Neanderthals’.

A Utopian Vision of How Earth Could Be

Through the eyes of Ponter Boddit, readers see an Earth that is crowded, polluted, irrational, sexist, superstitious, and violent. In contrast, the Neanderthal world is a utopian vision of social order and harmony with the natural environment. The ecologically enlightened Neanderthals have controlled their population, eradicated most crime, and found creative solutions to problems involving the sexes and family arrangements. Sawyer’s imagined bi-sexual society is one of the more creative aspects of this series.

Such is the creative force of The Neanderthal Parallax that by the end of the first novel, the reader is likely to want to abandon the Homo sapien Earth and travel through the portal into the Neanderthal world. At the very least the series compels readers to confront their complacency about the myriad problems humans face and, in the best utopian tradition, dare to imagine a better world.

The three books that make up The Neanderthal Parallax, Hominids (2002), Humans (2003), and Hybrids (2004), are published by Tor Books.

The copyright of the article SF Book Review – The Neanderthal Parallax in Alternative History Fiction is owned by Jeanne Lombardo. Permission to republish SF Book Review – The Neanderthal Parallax in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.