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ospalh finished reading Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Robert J. Sawyer: Hybrids (Paperback, 2004, Tor Science Fiction)

Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh finished reading Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

Robert J. Sawyer: Hominids (2003, Tor Science Fiction)

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

ospalh reviewed Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Ran out of pages

3 stars

Content warning plot relevant genetics

Again outdated biology. Significant parts were outdated when Sawyer wrote this. Like the whole bit with »there is no fusion site, the telomeres from gene 2 and 3 (should have been 12 and 13) completely disappeared« was known to be wrong for over ten years by then. There are basically two telomeres stuck together in the middle of chromosome 2. That is how we know it was a fusion, and have known since 1991.

The end was very rushed, narratively. What to do with the personal villain? Have him commit suicide. Elaborate what it means that only women but not men can move to the parallel world? Eh, not worth more than about a page of text. What to do with the whole god organ? Have everyone have a vision at the same time, but I’m out of paper, so I can’t do anything with this.

And one more thing for the whole trilogy: The thing is very gender essentialist. Men this, women that. Men have XY chromosomes, women XX. Men are hunters, women gatherers. Oh, yeah. Literal mammoth hunters. Looking at real hunter gatherer societies, it is never that strict. Even here we have one woman hunter, but she’s a literal outlaw, in the »not protected (!) by law« sense.

Again, you can read this without thinking too much about it, and than it is an OK book.

ospalh reviewed Humans by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #2)

Robert J. Sawyer: Humans (Paperback, 2003, Tor Books)

Book two of a trilogy

2 stars

So, which parts of the story are in part 2. Let me think. No, that was part one, that was part three. Not all that much happening. Well, not that much apart from all the discussions of god – believing in one is good, because otherwise people wouldn’t we OK with politicians sending people to war¹ – and eugenics – great, all you need is a society without classes or poverty, and without different races to start with.

Yeah, no. I used to like it, but my thought was »Well, obviously eugenics won’t work, because we have racism and poverty« but if that is the point you want to make, you have to hammer it home mercilessly. That wasn’t done here. And a few sentences on a web page along the lines of »I don’t believe in what I write in my novels« doesn’t cut it for me.

Oh, and …

So, which parts of the story are in part 2. Let me think. No, that was part one, that was part three. Not all that much happening. Well, not that much apart from all the discussions of god – believing in one is good, because otherwise people wouldn’t we OK with politicians sending people to war¹ – and eugenics – great, all you need is a society without classes or poverty, and without different races to start with.

Yeah, no. I used to like it, but my thought was »Well, obviously eugenics won’t work, because we have racism and poverty« but if that is the point you want to make, you have to hammer it home mercilessly. That wasn’t done here. And a few sentences on a web page along the lines of »I don’t believe in what I write in my novels« doesn’t cut it for me.

Oh, and here we are getting more and more bits, where the science here became outdated. The paleontology i mean, the parallel universes is the fiction bit in science fiction. Mainly the Neanderthal genome project, the gene flow between Homo species &c. Stuff like the Denisovans: he, let’s sequence the genome from this Neanderthal bone next. ... Hmm. You know, that isn’t a Neanderthal, but another species of human.

1 I think that was the point of the Vietnam war memorial scene? That believe in god makes what should be unbearable – people dying in a pointless war – bearable.

ospalh reviewed Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

Total surveilance is great

3 stars

... if people just weren’t people. That is, if they weren’t interested in pelf and power and weren’t at all curious. I don’t believe a word of the note added at the top here: sfwriter.com/privacy.htm You don’t write a whole novel about how great it would be if you could always prove your innocence if you didn’t mean it.

I believe that Bruce Schneiers burn stung so much that Sawyer thought he had to do something. »(W)henever I see a tourist attraction with a guest register, (...) I sign “Robert J. Sawyer, Toronto, ON”—because you never know when he’ll need an alibi.« www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/robert_sawyers.html

Anyway, if you don’t think about it too much, it’s a fun¹ story. Neanderthal quantum physicists!

1 OK. Entertaining. The trauma the author thought he needed to inflict on the protagonist to get an unsolved crime – see what happens without alibi archives! – is no fun.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Content warning plot relevant genetics

But every evil man, by definition, had to have a Y chromosome (...)

(...)

Testing for a Y chromosome was easy enough: just pick a gene from the Human Genome Project database that appeared only on that chromosome.

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 320)

That is oddly unspecific, and oddly specific.

She wants to genetically identify men. The choice for that is not »a gene from the Human Genome Project database that appeared only on (the Y) chromosome«. It is to use SRY. That gene is called the ex-determining region of Y-chromosome, but it was discovered by looking at XX male patients. Again, by 2003 (©-date), that was an old hat, known for more than 10 years.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Content warning about sexualized violence

Not all men were evil. She knew that. She really did. There was her dad, and her brothers, and Reuben Montego, and Fathers Caldicott and Belfontaine. And Phil Donahue and Pierre Trudeau and Ralph Nader and Bill Cosby.

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 318)

Mary’s motivation thruout the trilogy is that she has been raped. So. When thinking of »good men«, which, one would assume, would include not being a rapists, ... Bill Cosby comes to her mind. Man, has this book aged poorly.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Content warning plot relevant genetics

So, in a Neanderthal, you’d find these sequences:

At the end of chromosome 2 [sic]: …[other genes][gene ALPHA][telomere]

At the beginning of chromosome 3[sic]: [telomere][gene BETA][other genes]…

Those sequences wouldn’t exist anywhere in Gliksin DNA. Conversely, in Gliksin DNA, millions of base pairs away from any telomere, you’d find t his sequence, a combination completely absent from Neanderthal DNA: …[other genes][gene ALPHA][gene BETA][other genes]…

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 302)

Why would you think that? Why would you think the telomeres on the ends of then-chromosomes 12 and 13 (not 2 and 3; now 2a and 2b) would just disappear?

Wouldn’t you expect basically one telemore and then the other telomere, but backwards stuck between those genes alpha and beta? And the rest of an inactive centromere in the spot analog to 2b’s centromere?

Hey, look! »We have identified two allelic genomic cosmids from human chromosome 2, c8.1 and c29B, each containing two inverted arrays of the vertebrate telomeric repeat in a head-to-head arrangement, 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3'. Sequences flanking this telomeric repeat are characteristic of present-day human pretelomeres.«

»In situ hybridization, under low stringency conditions with two alphoid DNA probes (pYα1 and p82H) labeled with digoxigenin-dUTP, decorated all the centromeres of the human karyotype. However, signals were also detected on the long arm of chromosome 2 at approximately q21.3–q22.1.«

Those are from 1991 and 1993. That was an old hat when the book was written. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC52649/ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1587535/

So, actually it is more like …[5'-other genes][5'-gene ALPHA][5'-pretelomere][5'-telomere][telomere-3'][pretelomere-3'][gene BETA-3'][other genes-3']... in H. sapiens vs. …[5'-other genes][5'-gene ALPHA][5'-pretelomere][5'-telomere] and [telomere-3'][pretelomere-3'][gene BETA-3'][other genes-3']... in H. neandertharensis

I mean, sure. Narrative convenience. But the first book got pages and pages explaining how long 1/100’000 of a day is. He could absolutely have written an authors note that he took some genetic shortcuts here.

Then again, what they should have been looking for is the absence of the fusion site. No 5'(TTAGGG)n-(CCCTAA)m3' with large numbers n and m.

(Thanks to Gutsick Gibbon on youtube, who explained this very nicely. Search "Gutsick gibbon chromosome 2 fusion".)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

“You never developed airplanes?” (Jock Krieger) said. “No,” said Ponter. (...) “I have seen the long landing strips that your airplanes require. I think only a species that was already used to clearing large tracts of land for farming would have considered it natural to do the same for runways, or even roadways.”

“One of the reasons we do not fly nearly as high as you do is so that our cabins do not have to be sealed; we bring in fresh air constantly to avoid the build up of pheromones”

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 237)

[cough]seaplane[cough] Seriously. Up to about the second world war, flying boats were the most common form of long range civilian aircraft. Exactly because you didn’t need long runways. And many large inland cities have rivers nearby that work as seaplane ports.

... Huh? We also bring in fresh air into the aircraft cabins. That is the odd thing about banning smoking on aircraft. Airlines loved that because they could reduce the amount of air that they had to bring in – and heat – and so they could save a bit on fuel. So, bringing in more fresh air is possible. Admittedly, they air is too dry. That is a problem.

Then again, i think we never learn how their helicopters are powered. Not by burning fossil fuel.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Content warning Oblique references to violence

Without a victim’s accusation, no crime has been committed. (...) The truth might come out, and again (there would be criminal proceedings)

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 229 - 232)

What is it? Since about the middle of Book 1 the rule is without a victim’s accusation, there is no crime. That is the whole Ponter–Adikor dynamic. This scene starts the same way. And ends with talk about consequences if »the truth might come out« with the victim definitely not make an accusation. Sawyer has painted himself into quite the corner. Not sure if he didn’t realize it, or if he was just hoping the readers wouldn’t.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

“Well, then, let’s table that one.” Vissan looked at the table in front of her. “Pardon?”

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 211)

And everybody else: “Pardon?” The confusion is perfect. Let’s look it up at Wikipedia: table, the verb, in Canada:

»In a non-parliamentary context the British meaning is generally preferred (...)«

The British meaning, discussing a topic, is exactly what is not used here. »(….) the Canadian Oxford Dictionary recommends using a different verb altogether«.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

she had been missing Dilbert.

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 175)

Another bit where this has aged like milk. Written before the Dilbert guy went off the deep end.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

“But surely,” said Bandra, “the society as a whole is more important than any individual.”

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 148)

One more discussion of eugenics, and i’ll turn into a Thatcherite.

Actually, this seems to be the poodle’s core, why Sawyer is so gung-ho for eugenics.

No, for an individual, society is not more important than that individual.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

approximately thirty-five kilometers (...).” Hak translated the Neanderthal units for Mary, although Ponter had probably heard something like “70,000 armspans”

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 143)

Ugh. So we have established that 1 armspan ≈ 2 m. So 35’000 : 2 = 70’000 Somehow i can’t exactly follow the math here.

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

“Hello, Mary,” said a synthesized voice. It sounded as though it were coming from the middle of her head, exactly between her ears. “Hello,” said Mary. “Um, what should I call you?” “Whatever you wish.” Mary frowned, then: “How about Christine?” Christine was Mary’s sister’s name. “That’s fine,” said the voice in her head. “Of course, if you change your mind, you’re free to rename me as often as you like.”

— Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3) (Page 128)

The last time i read this was before i read Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. That equivalent scene there is hilarious: Many BrainPal™ users find it useful to give their BrainPal™ a name other than BrainPal™. Would you like to name your BrainPal™ at this time?

“Yes,” I said.

Please speak the name you would like to give your BrainPal™

“ ‘Asshole,’ ” I said.

You have selected “Asshole,” the BrainPal wrote, and to its credit it spelled the word correctly. Be aware that many recruits have selected this name for their BrainPal™. Would you like to choose a different name?

“No,” I said, and was proud that so many of my fellow recruits also felt this way about their BrainPal.

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ospalh finished reading Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh finished reading Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

ospalh reviewed Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

Ran out of pages

3 stars

ospalh reviewed Humans by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #2)

Book two of a trilogy

2 stars

ospalh reviewed Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #1)

Total surveilance is great

3 stars

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)

ospalh quoted Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer (Neanderthal Parallax, #3)