Hominids

Robert Sawyer's last four SF novels have all been nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula(R) Award. Those very different books had only their strengths in common: imaginative originality, unique scientific extrapolation, and great stories. Hominids, the first book of the Neanderthal Parallax, is a story of parallel worlds, ours, and another in which neanderthals, not homo sapiens, became the dominant intelligent species. In that world, neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but very different in detail and philosophy. During a risky physics experiment deep in a mine in Canada, a neanderthal physicist, Ponter Boddit, is accidentally transferred to our universe, where another experiment is taking place in the same mine. He is captured and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. Back home, Ponter's research partner is left with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around, and a murder trial that he can't possibly win because he doesn't know what happened. Talk about a scientific challenge! When luck, curiosity, imagination and inventiveness combine to save the day, it's not the end at all but a new beginning, with two worlds eager to learn more about what links them and what holds them apart.