Hybrids

The Neanderthal Parallax consists of three books which take us through the story of Mary Vaughn and the Neanderthal Ponter Boddit. If I had to pick a favorite book, it would be the first of the series, but it made me want to read the complete trilogy so I wouldn't recommend reading only one of the books.

The story was great science fiction, in that it gave great insight into our present-day world. The author showed many contrasting points about the Neanderthal which made commentary on religion, our environment, over-population, feminism, violence and crime and punishment. The contrast of the worlds was especially poignent in the first book, Hominids, when every chapter conveyed simultaneous events in each of the parallel worlds.

This, like a lot of Sawyer's books, left me wondering just how much of the research he presented was true (especially the parietal lobe and religion), but left me with no reason to doubt it, it fit into the story perfectly.

Some specific names, however immortalized they may be, felt dated today: Kofi Annan, Dick Clark.

I like the fact that the author said the Neanderthals couldn't produce the /i/ (“ee” as in bee) phoneme, due to the structure of their mouth. Because of this, they couldn't say Mary's name, only the first part “Mar”, which in the Neanderthal language meant “beloved” and also sounds the same as the French word “mère” (mother – see book #3). It may have been the narrator of the audiobook, but it seemed the Neanderthals could say /j/ (“y” as in you) in some of the examples, which is a glide that requires the /i/ to commence. I wouldn't think this would be possible.

Bon, goed. Goed, bon. 't Is afgelopen.

In Hybrids, Ponter Boddit and his Homo sapiens lover, geneticist Mary Vaughan, are torn between two worlds, struggling to find a way to make their star-crossed relationship work. Aided by banned Neanderthal technology, they plan to conceive the first hybrid child, a symbol of hope for the joining of their two versions of reality.

But after an experiment shows that Mary's religious faith – something completely absent in Neanderthals – is a quirk of the neurological wiring of Homo sapiens brains, Ponter and Mary must decide whether their child should be predisposed to atheism or belief. Meanwhile, as Mary's Earth is dealing with a collapse of its planetary magnetic field, her boss, the enigmatic Jock Krieger, has turned envious eyes on the unspoiled Eden that is the Neanderthal world . . .

I cringed. This series started really good, but somewhere on the way to the final book, this slipped from SF to the romance with the Neanderthal genre...
Interesting story overall, but poor execution in my opinion.