Contacting Aliens

June 24, 2002
Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin teams up with illustrator Kevin Lenagh to offer Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe, the definitive guide for any fan of the Uplift series or, as Brin would have it, a training handbook for Terragen Field Agents. From biological and psychological descriptions of aliens (the Thennanin have "gill-like breathing slits," the Hoon are "stodgy pencil-pushers") to clan alliances and the 12 official languages of Galactic society, this volume overflows with Uplift information, not to mention humor and imagination.

May 15, 2002
Brin's Uplift Universe is one of the major hard-sf sagas distinguished by world building of the highest order and as imaginative an array of nonhuman species as has ever been committed to paper. Here we have an illustration by Lenagh of a representative member of each of those species alongside Brin's physical, cultural, and technological descriptions, which include their clan affiliations and the date and agent of their Uplift. In the tradition of such guides, " Con"tacting Aliens purports to be a guide for human travelers in the Uplift Universe, and it induces the necessary suspension of disbelief respectably enough. Lenagh's artwork occasionally smacks of " Star Wars," especially in the depiction of the Mos Eisley cantina, but thousands of passionate Uplift readers probably won't mind that much if at all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)