Talk:The Uplift War

Motive for the Hyperspace Shunt

It was not build for the hypothetical Garthlings, but for the next stage Uplift ceremony of the Neo-Chimps, who the Gubru wanted to "inherit" as Uplift Consorts. Albmont 15:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Part 4, Chapter 56, Galactics, on Page 358-59 of the paperback says the following.

[The Suzerain of Cost and Caution] proposed that the new construction projects be abandoned. ... They had been begun on the assumption that these “Garthling” creatures would be found. Now it was simply pointless to continue building a hyperspace shunt and ceremonial mound!

The shunt was started on the basis that there were Garthlings. The change to the next stage Uplift ceremony of the Neo-Chimps was an attempt to recover costs. --David A. Harding 15:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Seconded - David is correct, as I read the book. Toby Douglass 12:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

German translation

"Das Ufer der Unendlichkeit" is more like "Infinity's Shore". Please check. Verdi1 19:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

plot and reception

Even though the article should not only cover plot, the plot should be properly covered. The article seems to stop mid-way in the novel. This is not encyclopedic writing. Then, talk about the critical reception of the book. Every published book review should normally be listed. DGG (talk) 18:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Plot

The page's plot description reads more like a history lesson than a summary of a novel.--Pooneil (talk) 17:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"100,000 years"

I really don't think that's in the book. Also, the character of Lydia McCue should be included... AnonMoos (talk) 22:37, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: This is killing me. I'm quite sure that 100,000 years is the standard indenture period for a client species, (while some are able to "graduate" early, and others like the Pring get demoted and take even longer) but I am having trouble finding where this is explicitly stated. I thought I'd find it in Contacting Aliens and I kinda sorta did, in the section on the Norruhk, it is mentioned that they are 70,000 years in and have 30,000 to go. I'm sure it is explicitly spelled out somewhere in the several thousand pages of the novels, but I only have them on paper, so there's no practical way to search for a specific phrase. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Derp, found it, on page 7 of the GURPS manual. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:25, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I have "Contacting Aliens", but not "GURPS Uplift" (and if it's not written by Brin, I'm not sure how authoritative it is). Anyway, of the Xatinni, it's said on page 151 of "Contacting Aliens" that "They shaved almost a third of the standard 100,000 years off their indenture", but of the Pring it's said on page 42 that "After 112,000 years of supervised Uplift, the Pring are on the last few millennia of direct servitude". So it seems like 100,000 years is kind of the default, but it's far from being invariable or rigidly fixed. It might be considered a kind of synthesis to bring apply non-novel details to a plot summary of the events in the novel... AnonMoos (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

The GURPS manual contains a forward written by Brin, in which he praises the manual. Apparently he's an RPG fan himself and really wanted something that reflected a different perspective on space roleplaying games, where hurling missiles and lasers and other ships isn't the sole focus and you are expected to be careful not to harm any of the planets you visit. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm still not sure how relevant the 100,000-year period is to the plot summary of "The Uplift War", since it's a hypothetical speculation on the consequence of the Thennanin adoptions of the Gorillas/Garthlings which is not contained in the book itself, and could be considered a kind of "Original synthesis" (generally disapproved of on Wikipedia). AnonMoos (talk) 20:10, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

It's not a huge deal either way as far as I'm concerned, I was just responding to the "citation needed" tag. As I've been working through the articles on this series and fixing up the often disjointed plot summaries, I've started to contemplate just merging the entire series into Uplift Universe and severely reducing the plot elements to maybe a single paragraph for each novel. I've found if I try to actually summarize these plots the descriptions end up rather long, although it's more pronounced in the Uplift Storm trilogy because they are so many interwoven plot lines.Beeblebrox (talk) 20:17, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: -- Ok... It would certainly make a lot of sense to merge "Brightness Reef" (1995), "Infinity's Shore" (1996), and "Heaven's Reach" (1998) into a single article, since they're very closely connected. (Whether it would be a good idea for this single article to be "Uplift universe" is a separate issue.) It would not be a good idea to merge in "Sundiver" (1980), "Startide Rising" (1983), and "The Uplift War" (1987), since they're not too closely related -- "Sundiver" takes place many years before the other two, and "Startide Rising" and "The Uplift War" have no persons or places in common (at most the characters in "Uplift War" hear vague rumors about the ship Streaker)... AnonMoos (talk) 11:31, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

That's actually pretty much what I've concluded. The first three books are part of a series, while the last three are a true trilogy. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Follow up: I've done the merge, now at Uplift Storm trilogy. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:41, 17 April 2022 (UTC)