Sundiver

With all the cloned sheep making headlines nowadays, the idea of using genetic manipulation to advance a species into a sapient state sounds almost feasible. And it is this very idea that forms the background for the Sundiver novel - humans share the Earth with neo-chimpanzees and neo-dolphins, who, although occasionally still lapsing into their pre-sentient behaviour, make a valiant contribution to the efforts of humankind.

The idea of one sentient species uplifting another, however, does not stop with the Earth. In Sundiver, the universe is full of sentient beings, who, at one time or another, were uplifted by another race. This gives rise to a strict hierarchy, with the young races in virtual slavery of their sponsors. The trouble is, nobody knows who uplifted humans, which makes it hard to fit the human race into the hierarchy. Many species view humans as mere upstarts who need to be put into proper place.

Naturally, this is not the only trouble humans have. With aliens came the Library, a vast collection of knowledge that makes all human struggle seem useless - everything was done before by someone else, everything is in the Library. One of the few independent endeavours that survive the information inflation is the Sundiver project, a daring expedition looking for sentient life inside the Sun. Many hopes rest with the project - surely it will show that human technology can still compete with the aliens, that humans can still discover new knowledge - and of course, something is going terribly wrong ...