"Startide Rising" by David Brin, which was first published in 1983, is the second in the "Uplift" series of science fiction novels and that very rare thing, a sequel to a great book which is even better. It deservedly won both Hugo and Nebula awards.
Brin attempts and achieves something really challenging: the Earth starship "Streaker" which is at the centre of the story is commanded and mainly crewed by dolphins, with just seven humans and one uplifted chimpanzee as the other members of the crew. Brin uses dolphins, humans, the chimp and various members of the fleets of fanatical alien races who are trying to capture Streaker as his various viewpoint characters, and manages to make their voices believeable.
Like the first book in the series, "Sundiver," this novel thinks big, asking huge questions about man's place in the universe and coming up with answers - true in the context of the novel - which are quite terrifying, yet it remains entertaining, accessible and easy to read, and manages to address issues of the need to cherish our planet and environment without becoming in the slightest degree preachy.
"Startide Rising" begins, in an imagined and very scary future a few centuries from now, as the Earth Starship "Streaker" is hiding underwater on the largely ocean plaent Kithrup, with entire fleets of fanatical alien religious extremists fighting in the skies above about which of them will get the chance to capture Streaker.
When human spaceships found "Eatees" (e.g. ETs, Extraterrestials) we discovered that the galaxy is a very frightening place where intergalatic laws to protect planetary environments, biodiversity, and especially infant special with the potential for sentience, are ruthlessly enforced.
What's wrong with that? Well, for example, we are told that a human colony founded on another world before we met the glactic civilisation and knew anything about their rules was labelled unauthorised and "sequestered" by the Eatees (e.g. species from earth removed from the biosphere of the planet - not explained exactly what that meant but it doesn't sound good.)
The intelligent species of Earth have been saved from the possibility of being turned into slaves only by the chance that status in Galactic society is based on having "uplifted" other species towards greater sentience - and humans have done just enough to help chimps and dolphins in that direction that we qualify as galactic "Patrons."
However, about a month before the main action of the book started, while exploring a remote corner of the Galaxy, Streaker discovered a vast fleet of abandoned or dead spaceships, well over a billion years old and each the size of a moon. These ships may represent the reality behind the fabled "Progenitors" from most of the main Galactic religious, the legendary first species to begin the process of uplifting others.
Sending a message back to Earth about what they have found, Streaker's dolphin captain Creideiki is ordered "Go into hiding. Await orders. Do not reply.”
Earth's leaders, the Terragens council, are afraid that every alien race of religious fanatics in the galaxy with a powerful fleet, of which there are many, will send it after Streaker. They are only too right ...
A visionary book.
This book, it's predecessor "Sundiver" and the third in the first trilogy, "The Uplift War" are three of the best science fiction novels I have ever had the privilege of reading.
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