Plot Outline and Major Themes
Ecology and stewardship of genetic diversity are major themes in the Uplift books. Religious orthodoxy and the behavior of static societies are also themes.
The first book in the Uplift series, Sundiver (1980), is essentially a detective story and occurs only decades after humanity's first contact with the Five Galaxies. In this story mankind discovers the sun's inhabitants and a plot to overthrow a patron race. This is the only novel to directly involve Earth.
The second book, Startide Rising (1983), occurs centuries later. It follows the Earthclan space ship Streaker (crewed by uplifted dolphins and their human patrons) which has discovered a colossal derelict fleet. The Streaker is pursued as rumors spread throughout the Five Galaxies that Streaker has found the remains of the Progenitors.
The third book, The Uplift War (1987), occurs around the same time as Startide Rising but in another part of the galaxy. An intergalactic war, sparked by the events of Startide Rising, results in a successful invasion of the Earthclan colony on the planet Garth, heavily populated by uplifted chimps. This book also introduces uplifted gorillas.
In 1995 Brightness Reef was published, the first book in a new Uplift trilogy. The "Uplift Storm" trilogy follows the survivors of the space ship Streaker as they continue to evade the various galactic powers. Along the way they encounter a hidden planet which has been inhabited by six races which have illegally settled and dropped out of the civilization of the Five Galaxies. They eventually make contact with the other orders of life.
The second and third books in the new Uplift trilogy are Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach.
The short story "Aficionado" or "Life in the Extreme" is set earliest of all the currently written work and gives an account of the early days of the human uplift program before Contact. The novella Temptation was set just after the ending of Heaven's Reach, and tells what happened to some of the characters from the trilogy after the main story ended.
Read more about this topic: Uplift Universe
Famous quotes containing the words plot, outline, major and/or themes:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. Anyone who takes no delight in the firm outline of an object, or in its essential character, has no artistic sense.... He cannot even be nourished by Art. Like Ephraim, he feeds upon the East wind, which has no boundaries.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)