Hugo Quest: HOMINIDS
It looks like I left off posting Hugo award book reviews after I read SPIN, by Robert Charles Wilson.
I read PALADIN OF SOULS after I read SPIN, but I said I’d review HOMINIDS next, so that’s what I’ll do.
HOMINIDS, as you can see, is a Hugo award winner for Best Novel written by Robert J. Sawyer. It won the Hugo in 2003. It’s about a neanderthal from a parallel universe full of neanderthals who comes to the homo sapiens sapiens’ universe.
I think it’s interesting to line this book up against SPIN, because Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson are both prominent science fiction writers who are also Canadians. Since I’m a Canadian-American and I want to be a science fiction author too, I was really excited to read both of these books.
When I finished SPIN, I was blown away by its quality. When I finished HOMINIDS, I was glad it was over. It made me wonder how these two books could have won the same award. HOMINIDS had a lot of promise when I first started it…but then…it didn’t.
It fuses quantum mechanics with neanderthals and tries to portray scientists as real people, especially female scientists. All good…in principle. It fails in the implementation.
It fails at the quantum mechanics pretty spectacularly. It’s just scientifically wrong.
It treats the neanderthals as magic noble savages who have a perfect society because they don’t have religion, which really doesn’t have anything to do with neanderthals, does it?
It turns one of the female scientists into a complete sex object who uses her appeal to manipulate men, and it turns the other into a rape victim that it uses to justify its claims that the religion-free neanderthals are simply better for no apparent biological or anthropological reason.
And then the big, strong neanderthal physicist comes in to protect the little, weak rape victim, just like all men should, right?
I found the book’s politics and misogyny-disguised-as-feminism to be a big let down.
Wouldn’t read again.
