n the first book of The Neanderthal Parallax, Hominids (2002), Robert Sawyer introduced us to a parallel Earth in which Neanderthals had reached a high stage of civilization, once their Cro-Magnon rivals went extinct—the exact opposite of our familiar history. In a scientific misfire, Neanderthal physicist Ponter Boddit got hurled across to our world. Seemingly exiled forever, he had to adjust rapidly to our strange civilization, in the process falling in love with a human woman, Mary Vaughan. By book's end, however, Ponter is home, and relations between the two timelines seem severed. However, in the sequel, Humans (2003), the Neanderthals decide to reopen the portal, and moves begin toward making contact permanent. The bulk of the middle book of the trilogy finds the two species adjusting to each other, trading diplomats and technology. The romance between Mary and Ponter grows. But problems loom on the horizon.
The current book finds all the many plots and subplots of the first two books well advanced, as they converge into a series of climaxes. First, as Mary chooses to spend more time in the Neanderthal continuum, she watches herself having to adjust to the strange culture of the Neanderthals. The mating and family arrangements among the non-homo-saps include bisexual arrangements, as well as male-female segregation for most of each month. Additionally, the Neanderthal society polices itself by means of an omnipresent surveillance technology. But overcoming her prejudices, Mary eventually adopts Neanderthal ways, and she and Ponter plan to have a child to cement their relationship—with the help of technology to jump the hurdle of differing genomes.
A rapist who appeared in the first and second books and who hurt Mary—a colleague named Cornelius Ruskin—assumes a larger and larger role in the narrative. When both he and Mary go to work for the mysterious U.S. government agency known as the Synergy Group, under a Machiavellian boss named Jock Krieger, Ruskin is enlisted by Krieger to craft an artificial virus on a borrowed Neanderthal "codon maker." Krieger's intentions for the virus plumb the limits of human perfidy.
But all the machinations of the humans and the Neaderthals ultimately appear inconsequential in the light of a cosmic phenomenon. As Mary's colleague Louise Benoît has theorized, an ongoing magnetic-field reversal of the globe's poles is poised to "crash" human consciousness. Whether there will be any humans left to take up the challenge of living in peace with their Neanderthal cousins seems in doubt.
Neanderthal cousins come alive
Science fiction has a long tradition of stories examining our hominid cousins, from early works such as L. Sprague de Camp's "The Gnarly Man" and Philip Jose Farmer's "The Alley Man" to Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh (1988). But few such works exhibit the degree of serious research and fertile inventiveness that Sawyer brings to his trilogy.
Certainly the most impressive accomplishment on display here is the creation of a believably odd yet empathy-inducing Neanderthal culture and mindset. From the bare bones (literally) of what we think we know about our extinct cousins, Sawyer fashions a consistent, engaging, logical history and society for his Neanderthals. Their physiology and mental capacities, so unlike ours, have resulted in a world where houses are grown from trees, religion is nonexistent and the needs of the individual are secondary to the needs of the species. All in all, it's an anthropological creation worthy of Le Guin.
This is not to say that Sawyer neglects characterization on the singular level. To the contrary, all his characters are charmingly well-rounded, whether Neanderthal or human. The moral and ethical issues that plague Mary Vaughan are real and consequential.
Moreover, Sawyer uses SF's particular strengths to examine in depth such hot topics as consciousness studies, the possible neurological basis for religion, and political systems, among many other topics. Ponter functions as a "stranger in a strange land," forcing the humans to question all their assumptions—and Mary serves the same role back in Ponter's world. All of this philosophical banter flows easily and never seems forced. Indeed, the Neanderthal world functions as a near-Utopia next to ours, and much of the delight of Sawyer's trilogy is that it dares to depict a more perfect world, rather than the more common dystopias other writers love to build.
Sawyer's Canadian heritage gets a good workout in the book as well: The portal between worlds lies in Canada, and most of the cast is Canadian (the Neanderthals even become Canadian citizens!). This non-American perspective is refreshing. Although sometimes Mary comes off as just too homespun for a cynical East Coaster such as myself: Using Phil Donahue as an example of all that's good about humanity stretches my tolerance.
In congenial, clear-eyed prose, Sawyer has constructed a mirror in which the brow-ridge-surmounted eyes of the Neanderthals gaze back into ours.
