BRIN, David 1950-

PERSONAL: Born October 6, 1950, in Glendale, CA; son of Herbert (an editor) and Selma (a teacher) Brin; married Cheryl Ann Bringham (a doctor of cosmochemistry), March, 1991; children: two sons, one daughter. Education: California Institute of Technology, B.S. (astronomy), 1973; University of California,San Diego, M.S. (applied physics), 1979, Ph.D. (space science), 1981. Hobbies and other interests: Backpacking, music, science, and "general eclecticism."

ADDRESSES: Home—11625 Montana, Number 9, Los Angeles, CA 90049-4676. Office—Heritage Press, 2130 South Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90007. Agent—(literary) Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., 164 East 64th St., New York, NY 10021; (film) Vince Gerardis, Created-By Agency, Formosa Bldg., 1041 North Formosa Ave., Hollywood, CA 90046.

CAREER: Hughes Aircraft Research Laboratories, electrical engineer in semiconductor device development in Newport Beach, CA, 1973-75, and Carlsbad, CA, 1975-77; managing editor, Journal of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 1979-80; Heritage Press, Los Angeles, CA, book reviewer and science editor, 1980—. San Diego State University, instructor in physics and writing, 1982-83, also taught at San Diego community colleges, 1984-85; postdoctoral research fellow, California Space Institute, La Jolla, CA, 1983-86; Westfield College, University of London, visiting artist, 1986-87. Has also worked as a visiting scholar at the Center for Study of Evolution of Life at the University of California, Los Angeles, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NSCORT for Exobiology. Member of board of advisors for corporations and nonprofit institutions.

MEMBER: Science Fiction Writers of America (secretary, 1982-84), Planetary Society, British Interplanetary Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: John W. Campbell Award nominations, 1982, for best new author, 2003, for Kiln People; Brazil SF Award, 1983, for novella The Postman; Hugo Award nominations, World Science Fiction Convention, 1983, for novella version of The Postman, 1985, for short story "Cyclops," 1986, for novel The Postman, 1987, for short story "Thor Meets Captain America," 1989, for short story "The Giving Plague," 1991, for Earth, 1994, for Glory Season, 1995, for Brightness Reef, and 2003, for Kiln People; Balrog Award, 1984, for The Practice Effect; Locus Award, Locus Publications, 1984, for Startide Rising, 1986, for The Postman, 1988, for The Uplift War, and 1995, for Otherness: Collected Stories by a Modern Master of Science Fiction; Nebula Award, Science Fiction Writers of America, 1984, for Startide Rising; Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1984, for Startide Rising, 1985, for short story "The Crystal Spheres," and 1988, for The Uplift War; John W. Campbell Memorial Award, 1986, for The Postman; American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults citation, 1986, for The Postman; Nebula Award nomination, Science Fiction Writers of America, 1986, for The Postman, and 1988, for The Uplift War; Obeler Freedom of Speech Award, American Library Association, and McGannon Communication Policy Research Award, both 1999, both for The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?; Analog Award for best novella, c. 1999, for Stones of Significance; Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, 2003, for Kiln People.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

The Practice Effect (science fiction novel), Bantam (New York, NY), 1984.

The Postman (science fiction novel), Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Gregory Benford) Heart of the Comet (science fiction novel), Bantam (New York, NY), 1986.

Earthclan, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1986.

The River of Time (short stories; includes "The Crystal Spheres"), Dark Harvest (Arlington Heights, IL), 1986.

Dr. Pak's Preschool (novella), illustrated by Alan Giana, Cheap Street (New Castle, VA), 1989.

Earth, Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Piecework (short stories), Pulphouse (Eugene, OR), 1991.

(With Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, and Gregory Benford) Murasaki (includes Brin's novella Genji), Bantam (New York, NY), 1993.

Glory Season, Bantam (New York, NY), 1993.

Otherness: Collected Stories by a Modern Master of Science Fiction, Bantam (New York, NY), 1994.

Foundation's Triumph (novel; based on Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series), HarperPrism (New York, NY), 1999.

Forgiveness (graphic novel; part of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" series), edited by Jeff Mariotte, WildStorm Productions (La Jolla, CA), 2001.

Kiln People, Tor (New York, NY), 2002.

Tomorrow Happens (short stories), limited edition, NESFA Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

"UPLIFT" SERIES; SCIENCE FICTION

Sundiver, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980.

Startide Rising (first printed in a shorter version in Analog magazine as the novella The Tides of Kithrup), Bantam (New York, NY), 1983, revised hardcover edition, Phantasia Press (West Bloomfield, MI), 1985.

The Uplift War (sequel to Startide Rising), Phantasia Press (West Bloomfield, MI), 1987.

Brightness Reef: Book One of the New Uplift Trilogy, Bantam (New York, NY), 1995.

Infinity's Shore: Book Two of the New Uplift Trilogy, Bantam (New York, NY), 1996.

Heaven's Reach: The Final Book of the New Uplift Trilogy, Bantam (New York, NY), 1998.

OTHER

(With Thomas Kuiper) Extraterrestrial Civilization (nonfiction science), American Association of Physics Teachers (College Park, MD), 1989.

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom? (nonfiction), Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1998.

(With Kevin Lenagh) Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's "Uplift" Universe, Bantam (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of novellas The Loom of Thessaly and Stones of Significance, published in Lamps on the Brow, 1998, and of graphic novel The Life Eaters. Contributor to Far Frontiers, Baen, 1985; Thinking Robots, an Aware Internet, and Cyberpunk Librarians: The 1992 LITA President's Program: Presentations by Hans Moravec, Bruce Sterling, and David Brin, Library of Information Technology (Chicago, IL), 1992; and anthology War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, 1996. Creator of computer games, including Tribes, with Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games, 1998; Ecco the Dolphin, 1998; and GURPS Uplift, Steve Jackson Games.

Contributor of articles to professional journals, including Astrophysical Journal, Information Technology & Libraries, Internet Life, iPlanet, ABA Journal on Dispute Resolution, and Liberty Magazine; and of stories and articles to popular magazines, including Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Popular Science, Amazing Stories, S.F. Age, Liberty Magazine, Omni, Nature, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Contributor of articles to newspapers, including Los Angeles Times Book Review and the London Times. Contributor to online publications Salon.com and Caltech Hyperforum on Sustainability. Brin's manuscript collection is maintained at the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, University of California, Riverside.

ADAPTATIONS: A film adaptation of The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, was released by Warner Bros. in 1997. The Postman, Sundiver, and The Uplift War have been adapted as audio recordings; the novella The Loom of Thessaly has been recorded on audio cassette by Off-Centaur Press. Startide Rising has been optioned for a film production.

SIDELIGHTS: Astrophysicist and author David Brin is an award-winning science fiction writer who is best known for his "Uplift" series, which begins with the novel Sundiver. By the time the second book, Startide Rising, was released, Brin had become famous as one of the genre's most promising new writers. Sweeping the field's major awards, this 1983 novel won the Hugo for its popularity among readers and the Nebula for impressing the critics. Brin has also won numerous other awards, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel for The Postman.

Though Brin's first two novels were most commended by the science-fiction community, the ideas and ethical concerns they explore have earned them recognition from outside the genre, said reviewers Debra Rae Cohen of Voice Literary Supplement and Donald M. Hassler of Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review. At home on both sides of that boundary, the novels also provide "space opera characteristics," noted Hassler. Both Sundiver and Startide Rising are set in the Progenitors universe, which teems with inhabited galaxies and their numerous races and is complicated by conflicts and technological problems on an epic scale. The most intelligent races in its five galaxies believe they were "uplifted" to sapience through the efforts of an elder but now-missing species, and that it is their duty to use genetic engineering to raise other species to the status of participants in their culture. "Some of these 'Galactics' are moderates; other races appear fanatical to a beleaguered humanity," Brin explained to CA. Without the presumably necessary aid of patrons, humans have achieved the ability to travel in space and have "uplifted" dolphins and chimpanzees. Such audacity must be checked, believe the "fanatics" who fight each other for the right to "adopt" the humans into a remedial retraining program.

Brin further explained to CA his thoughts behind creating his Progenitor universe: "I wanted to explore [genetic engineering, specifically] the ethical problems involved in changing more sophisticated creatures such as dolphins or apes, to give them the capabilities to become fellow-citizens in our culture. Do we have the right to meddle with species that have their own dignity? There are serious ethical questions about this whole matter of uplift, of being patrons of a client species. We'll face these questions in the real world in just a few years. . . . I [also] wanted to come up with a scenario in which a civilization would be possible in the galaxy which would have conservation of so-called 'nursery worlds' like the earth as a paramount objective. . . . It's basically a 'gedanken-experiment' or thought experiment. One role of SF is to explore the limits of an idea."

Sundiver introduces this universe; Startide Rising, taking place two centuries later, shows the Earth ship Streaker pursued by aliens and grounded on the water-world planet of Kithrup for repairs. The few humans aboard are observers of the ship's crew, a team of uplifted dolphins who speak in a poetic language akin to haiku, which Brin indicated to CA was derived primarily from his imagination—"it comes straight from the back of [my] skull." "Each of Brin's dolphins is a distinct and unique individual, without ever losing an essential dolphinity," wrote Stephen B. Brown in a Washington Post Book World review. In Brown's opinion, "the care and empathy with which Brin describes the relationships between his aquatic characters elevates this book into a substantial achievement." Brown commended the author for skillfully weaving "the byzantine intrigues of . . . various dolphin factions," while consistently developing "the idea that a viable human/dolphin collaboration can be something greater than each race on its own."

"Brin's toying with the vision of evolution is probably the strongest feature in both books," Hassler remarked. The author's "notion of managed development" as opposed to natural selection, "which by contrast seems blind, [and] inefficient," said Hassler, allows the author to examine ethical problems that result from the subordination of uplifted species to their patrons, and the universal search for the Progenitors, the supposed first species, as well. Hassler commented, "Such tales of origins and the running debate between [Charles] Darwin and [Erich] Von Daniken are truly sublime." Whereas most reviewers praised Startide Rising's fast-paced action and complex plot, Minneapolis Tribune contributor D. R. Martin expressed his wish that "someone—Brin or his editor—had tightened things up along the way." Brin revised the book extensively for its hardcover printing in 1985, a reissue a Publishers Weekly critic dubbed "an SF event."

Because he feels that the creation of fictional worlds can foster egotistic and "self-indulgent" writing, Brin once explained to CA interviewer Jean W. Ross that he limits himself to write no more than two books in a row about any given universe. Consequently, he interrupted the telling of the story of the search for the Progenitors with a third novel in a lighter vein. In The Practice Effect, he gives indulgence full play, venting "all the bad puns" that do not belong, as he told Ross, in his "more serious work." "The Practice Effect [is] a light adventure-fantasy and romance which is accessible to bright children," Brin explained to CA: "I decided to have some fun with a strict formula piece that was completely self-indulgent. . . . It's a romp, it's fun."

Accordingly, reviewers have found The Practice Effect an enjoyable time-travel romance in the tradition of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Not surprisingly, in an interview with CA, Brin named Twain one of the "many . . . old masters" who greatly influence him. Like Twain's "Yankee," Brin's Dennis Nuel enters a strange world, rescues a princess, defeats a formidable enemy, and contributes to progress by virtue of skills that would be considered quite ordinary at home. This formula has been used often since Twain wrote the prototype, observed some reviewers, but Brin gives it a new twist: Nuel finds himself in a world where repeated use improves objects instead of wearing them out. Sequences showing what many simple objects become as the result of "practice" (flint knives become super-sabers; a zipper becomes a saw) are interlaced with Nuel's adventures "which can only be called rollicking," wrote Baird Searles in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Adding to the fun are sometimes oblique references to "the great moments of SF history," noted the reviewer, who believed that "the high spirits and inventiveness" of the practice "more than compensate" for the plot's occasional "repetitiveness" and the author's somewhat "collegiate" humor.

Brin gives a new treatment to another branch of fiction with The Postman, his portrayal of life in North America after a nuclear world war. Unlike other post-apocalypse novels that bemoan total destruction, The Postman depicts what Brin told Ross is "the real horror of such a war"—the prospect of surviving in a holocaust-ravaged environment. As Brin explained to CA: "The real horror, to me, is not death and destruction. We've had that all our lives, and for thousands of years. If the curtain is all coming down, àla On the Beach, then it's all over; nobody suffers anymore. But it strikes me as more likely that some of our descendants would survive even the worst nuclear war, and they would probably go back to living like Michael Landon in Little House on the Prairie. But they would not be as happy as our pioneer forebears. They would be fundamentally scarred forever because of one fact: they would know how close we came to a sane, decent, better world, and that might-have-been would haunt them."

"The world Brin draws [in The Postman] is terrifying," said Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Ronald Florence, referring to the power-hungry paramilitary bands that tyrannize people who live in small, unprotected settlements. Stripped by the bandits, protagonist Gordon Krantz finds a mail carrier's remains and borrows the dead postman's uniform. Thereafter, the villagers see him "as a symbol of civilization," related Washington Post Book World contributor Gregory Frost. Maintaining ever-larger lies about his identity, Krantz accepts the role of public servant and civil authority they ascribe to him. The story develops "Brin's premise that people need something bigger than survival to believe in," noted a New York Times Book Review contributor. Analog critic Tom Easton found it a recommendable demonstration of "the value of myths." Like other reviewers, Frost noted several "weaknesses" that he later deemed "minor," and praised the "mythic dimension" Brin brings to almost every element of the novel.

When discussing the benefits of writing fiction of different lengths, Brin described why The Postman has "a mythical tone": "I feel I get different things from the three different lengths. The short stories are attempts at epiphanies, at making a ringing note that will hang in the reader's ear, like the effect Joyce achieved in his smaller works. It's like a painting; you take it all in. My large novels, on the other hand, tend to be very complicated. They're explorations of many ideas, woven together trying to make a complex tapestry. In between is the length known as the novella, which happens to be my favorite. This length allows one to explore a mythic theme that one can't afford to muddy up with all sorts of complexities. This is the length that I believe is right for legend. And I think this helps explain why The Postman, of all of my novels, has more of a mythic feel to it; it actually is made up of three separate novellas." The Postman was later adapted into a 1997 motion picture, directed by and starring actor Kevin Costner.

Brin's next book, The Heart of the Comet, according to Chicago Tribune Book World reviewers James and Eugene Sloan, confirms his place among those writers "who are busy putting the hard science back into science fiction." Works in the genre drifted toward "softer" speculation and fantasy during the past decade, John R. Cramer reported in the Los Angeles Times. However, he noted with pleasure that then-NASA scientist Brin and coauthor Gregory Benford present "accurate physics and biology" when narrating the conditions that threaten a crew of scientists as they ride Halley's Comet to the farthest point of its range and try to move it into an orbit closer to earth. Recounting his long distance collaboration with Gregory Benford, Brin described to CA how the book was organized: "We carefully outlined the book, divided it up among three points of view represented by three characters whose scenes alternated through the book. Benford took one character and wrote all of that person's scenes; I took another character and all of his scenes. We took turns with the third. It resulted in a very different voice for each character. It was a most intriguing, interesting experiment, and, I feel, a successful one." Applause from the critics included the Sloans remark that Heart of the Comet "may well be the masterpiece of [the hard science revival]. . . . Light years ahead of [Carl] Sagan's rival effort, this book is what science fiction is."

In The Uplift War, Brin goes back to the universe of his first two novels for a closer look at uplifted chimpanzees as they relate to humans in the struggle to rebuild an ecologically damaged planet while trying to resist alien invaders. "It's a very large book—220,000 words—and not so much a sequel as a parallel volume [to Startide]," Brin explained to CA: "I had a good time with the book. It's more fun than Startide, less ethereal. The apes get a little gritty at times. There's a scene in which a riot breaks out in a blue-collar, working chimps' bar. I think readers might like that." Brin's message, observed Easton, is the positive value of a sense of humor. "Humans and neochimps and Tymbrimi [a race of alien pranksters] together defeat [their attackers] and score massive points in the Uplift culture with the aid of one of the grandest jokes in galactic history," related Easton, who found Brin's handling of the Uplift concept enjoyable, his plots satisfying, and his ideas "beautifully" developed.

With 1993's Glory Season, "Brin begins by sticking his neck out a country mile," stated Tom Easton in an Analog review. The novel is heavily influenced by feminist theory: In an outlying colony called Stratos, which has become a woman-centered world, the female inhabitants have been engineered according to their original creators' ideal genetic standards and provided with the ability to clone themselves as a means of reproduction. However, men are still needed in order to create the biological diversity necessary to help the species adapt to change: to eliminate total reliance on cloning, mating continues on a limited basis, its frequency determined by the seasons. This continued reliance on males becomes one of the frictions in Stratos society, as an element of radical women wish to eliminate their presence altogether. Others want things to remain as they are; still others want men to have a more equal role in society. When Renna, a male representative from the colonizing planet, arrives to inform the Stratonians that they will soon be visited by their creators and that their society must become more egalitarian, these social tensions erupt.

"There is violence and death, pursuit and discovery, betrayal and maturation, immense enjoyment and final satisfaction, all in the service of a thoughtful approach to the question of intergender relations," commented Easton, comparing Glory Season favorably with Ursula LeGuin's classic The Left Hand of Darkness. While noting that the novel, which weighs in at 557 pages, is overly lengthy, Washington Post Book World critic Marin Morse Wooster praised Glory Season as a "cool and confident reexamination of a perennial science-fiction theme," and he called it "one of the most important sf novels of the year."

In 1995 Brin returned to his Uplift universe with a new trilogy including the novels Brightness Reef: Book One of the New Uplift Trilogy, Infinity's Shore: Book Two of the New Uplift Trilogy, and Heaven's Reach: The Final Book of the New Uplift Trilogy. All three books involve the planet Jijo, a world where six species coexist. The Buyur civilization has thus far protected Jijo from those that would continue their uplifting efforts because the planet possesses a fragile ecology that could be destroyed by such manipulations. In Brightness Reef the arrival of humans who want to uplift the species on Jijo wreaks havoc on the careful balance once maintained there. While a Publishers Weekly contributor complained that the first book ends too abruptly, the reviewer maintained that Brin "describes a universe that's immensely appealing, leaving readers hungry for more of this exciting, epic adventure." Furthermore, David Easton, writing in Analog, complimented the author for creating "a future both with immense potential for fiction and with such sheer biological and historical likeliness that it is easy to believe."

Infinity's Shore sees the return of the intelligent dolphin crew from the starship Streaker, which lands on Jijo, where the crisis is continuing and threatens the humans on the planet particularly. By the end of the book, the protected way of life the people of Jijo have enjoyed is gone as the planet experiences profound changes. The complex tale that evolves here is "demanding SF," as one Publishers Weekly reviewer put it; "but just as undeniably, it is superior SF as well." Brin ends the trilogy with Heaven's Reach, in which the author pulls out all the stops to tell a story that involves aliens invading Earth, the Streaker fleeing the planet Jijo with valuable information that could preserve peace in the universe, a meeting with godlike beings, a sentient chimp who works as an intergalactic crime investigator, and the threat to the stability of space itself. A Publishers Weekly critic, however, felt that the conclusion to the trilogy was a "letdown," though the reviewer thought many Brin fans would be happy with it. And Booklist critic Roland Green similarly considered the quality of the novel to be uneven, but added that Brin "manages enough [to be] . . . at the top of his form to please all Uplift followers and many others as well."

After concluding his sixth Uplift book, Brin decided he wanted to write an installment of another series, though this one was begun by another author: the late Isaac Asimov. Foundation's Triumph is the latest book to feature Hari Seldon and his epic efforts to save a crumbling galactic civilization through the establishment of the Foundation. Other authors, including Gregory Benford and Greg Bear, have similarly continued the series after the grand master of sci-fi's death in 1992. Brin's contribution to the Foundation books finds Seldon near the end of his life during a time when a mental illness is spreading throughout humanity and threatens to destroy everything Seldon has tried to preserve. At the same time, a civil war appears to be looming between two groups of robots: one that abides by the old code never to harm human beings, and another group called the Giskardian robots that has come to believe it is justifiable to hurt some humans if necessary in order to help them in the long run. Brin's effort to continue Asimov's storyline, attested one Publishers Weekly reviewer, does not do it justice. The critic complained of drab characterization, a "preachy" style, and "laborious sociological theorizing." On the other hand, Library Journal contributor Jackie Cassada praised the book and asserted that it "deserves a wide readership," while Roland Green, writing in Booklist, found the novel to be a "literature coda to a grand vision of human evolution."

With 2002's Kiln People Brin created a stand-alone science fiction novel involving an original twist on the idea of cloning. It is set in the near future, when technology has made it possible in America for people to create "dittos" or "golems" of themselves by imprinting their personalities on clay bodies that last only a couple dozen hours before they are disposed of like empty food containers. Brin combines science fiction with a murder mystery format when his main character, private investigator Albert Morris, sets out to solve a murder of a scientist who specialized in this imprinting technique. His continuing investigations reveal something even more sinister than murder, however; something that could turn the very structure of human civilization upside down. Although a Publishers Weekly critic felt that tension in the story was weakened by Brin's use of expendable dittos, including dittos of the main character who can be killed without major consequences to the plot, the reviewer complimented the author's deft exploration of "the issues of identity, privacy and work."

Kiln People treats the themes of technology's effects on society in a fiction format, but Brin has also written about this subject in his nonfiction, especially in his book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom? Here, the author explores the ways in which advances in computers, the "owning" of information, and surveillance technology—such as in the proliferation of cameras in public buildings and even on our streets—are making privacy a hot issue. But whereas many people would argue that the importance of personal freedoms and the right to privacy should lead to pressures that will change current laws, Brin feels that the solution to this issue lies not in restricting surveillance of people's activities but, as Christine Peterson explained in Reason, in "protecting freedoms through openness and accountability instead of secrecy. Openness—letting data flow where it may—promotes personal responsibility in both economic and social arenas. This in turn decreases the temptation to have the state intervene. By aligning the individuals' incentives with the results of their actions, accountability gives us more robust freedom than privacy alone can ever guarantee."

While Peterson felt that this half of Brin's argument was "brilliant," though, as the author admits, "not a new insight," she could not say the same about Brin's complaints against cyberpunks—those people who have been trying to protect private online communications through advances in encryption. Here, said Peterson, Brin relies more on "name calling and straw-man attacks" than on reason to argue against cyberpunk practices, which she considered sensible in light of the fact that it is easier to change one's own practices to protect privacy than it is to wait for politicians to change laws involving technologies they do not comprehend. In the end, however, Peterson asserted that The Transparent Society "is both convincing and relatively nonpolitical." Other critics felt that the book suffers from being superficial and from too many digressions that are not related to the author's main thesis. For example, a Publishers Weekly critic said that "despite a strong beginning, Brin's book ultimately lacks clarity and originality." Nevertheless, the same reviewer noted the book was useful for providing historical background to the issue and for offering information on encryption and other technology issues.

Besides writing on this subject, Brin has become more involved in advancing computer communications directly in his recent efforts to establish a company that will produce new realtime communication software that will represent a leap in human-to-human online interactions. He has also become involved in creating several new computer games. But despite these ventures, Brin will likely remain best known for his fiction writing, which has continued to be notable for its speculations into how technology and biological manipulations may one day affect human society.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 34, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Amazing, January, 1984.

Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact, November, 1983; July, 1984; March, 1986; November, 1987; November, 1990; November, 1993; January, 1995; February, 1996, Tom Easton, review of Brightness Reef: Book One of the New Uplift Trilogy, pp. 159-161; March, 1997; October, 1998, Tom Easton, review of Heaven's Reach, p. 133; June, 2002, Tom Easton, review of Kiln People, p. 132; February, 2003, Tom Easton, review of Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's "Uplift" Universe, p. 138.

Booklist, September, 1, 1987; August, 1994; September 1, 1995; April, 1998, Roland Green, review of Heaven's Reach, p. 1277; May 15, 1998, Mary Carroll, review of The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?, p. 1569; May 1, 1999, Roland Green, review of Foundation's Triumph, p. 1582; April 15, 2003, Regina Schroeder, review of Tomorrow Happens, p. 1454.

Book World, October, 19, 1986.

Chicago Tribune Book World, March, 23, 1986.

Fantasy Review, September, 1985; July, 1987.

Information Technology and Libraries, March, 1994.

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, December, 1983; July, 1984.

Library Journal, May 15, 1999, Jackie Cassada, review of Foundation's Triumph, p. 131; January, 2002, Jackie Cassada, review of Kiln People, p. 159.

Locus, June, 1990; July, 1990; August, 1990; February, 1991; March, 1991; July, 1991; April, 1993; May, 1993; October, 1993; February, 1994; July, 1994; October, 1994; February, 1995.

Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1985; April 1, 1986.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 15, 1985; January 12, 1986; May 20, 1990.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1986; March, 1996.

Minneapolis Tribune, December 25, 1983.

New York Times Book Review, November 24, 1985; July 8, 1990; July 14, 1991; June 13, 1993.

Publishers Weekly, August 12, 1983; September 6, 1985; October 11, 1985; January 10, 1986; June 13, 1986; March 27, 1987; May 11, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Earth, p. 252; April 2, 1993, review of Glory Season, p. 50; September 4, 1995, review of Brightness Reef, p. 54; November 18, 1996, review of Infinity's Shore, p. 65; April 13, 1998, review of Heaven's Reach, p. 56, review of The Transparent Society, p. 64; April 26, 1999, review of Foundation's Triumph, p. 60; December 17, 2001, review of Kiln People, p. 69; June 17, 2002, "July Publications," p. 48.

Reason, October, 1998, Christine Peterson, review of The Transparent Society, p. 69.

San Jose Mercury News, March 11, 1984.

School Library Journal, January, 1992; December, 1990.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review, September, 1983; November, 1983.

Science Fiction Chronicle, December, 1985; March, 1987; June, 1987; September, 1987; February, 1996.

Science Fiction Review, August, 1984.

Voice Literary Supplement, December, 1983.

Washington Post Book World, April 22, 1984; December 22, 1985; July 25, 1993.

ONLINE

David Brin's Official Web site,http://www.davidbrin.com/ (October 7, 2003).*