Heaven's Reach

Orbit, 1999. Very Good. The final book in Brin's Uplift Storm Trilogy (Infinity's Shore; Brightness Reef) sets space opera against a canvas that spans the galaxies, colored w ith interstellar conflict and peopled with smart-mouthed chimpanzees, overw helmed humans and neo-dolphins who form the stalwart crew of the spaceship Streaker. The narrative, which unfolds at frenzied speed, opens with the Ea rth under attack by an alliance of evil aliens, the essence of space itself shaking apart and the beleaguered Streaker, captained by Dr. Gillian Baski n, trying to outrun a Jophurian battleship that seeks to destroy it. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of a wormhole that delivers the Streaker to the Old Ones, the godlike beings responsible for nurturing sentient life throu ghout the Five Galaxies and for inaugurating the UpLift process. While Bask in and her crew fear that the Old Ones are offering them "the embrace of gr avitational tides," an interplanetary form of comfortable retirement, they learn that in fact they have been selected for a very special purpose: to j ourney to remote space, where the missing eight of the original Thirteen Ci vilized Galaxies wait to be contacted. Tension builds and builds?and then s tumbles to a stop. Brin fans will find plenty to gorge themselves on here, including Niss Machines, Galactic Library cubes and Zang ship-entities.