Hominids

Hominids examines two unique species of people. We are one of those species; the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they became the dominant intelligence. The Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but with radically different history, society and philosophy.

Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. Almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist, he is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended—by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence, and especially by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport.

Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter?



Genre: Science Fiction

"Hi-tech Neanderthals from a parallel continuum, with a social system like none we ever heard of. Can two very different people bridge that gap? While our world begins changes we can only try to understand. In Humans, Sawyer gives us a rich mix of mind-stretching concepts and personal crises." - F M Busby

"Robert Sawyer hits another SF homerun with Hominids: an utterly intriguing conceptual seed, state-of-the-scientific-arts theory, challenging social consciousness, and characters you want to take home for dinner." - Jane S Fancher

"Sawyer has carried the banner of Asimovian science-fiction into the twenty-first century. Hominids is based in cutting-edge contemporary science--paleoanthropology, quantum computing, neutrino astronomy, among others--and furnished at the same time with touching human (and parahuman) stories. Precise, detailed, and accomplished. The next volume is eagerly anticipated." - Robert Charles Wilson