A David Brin Unofficial Fan Fiction Page
	by Vilyehm Teighlore
	"I give him high Marx." -- Mudfoot

Welcome to a very unofficial webpage of Uplift fan fiction and speculation. One that has been fully authorized by David Brin. In fact it was he who had had the idea that this page be set up.

(Maybe he thinks that the more time I spend on this project, the less time I'll have for emailing him even more crackpot ideas.)

Nothing is to be taken as the truth, everything is either speculative, or what if, or merely twisted, bent, and contrived in order to deliver up the bad pun at the end.

First, whose page is this, or who be it dat do dis?

William Taylor, born 1-9-1954. Science Fiction reader. More on this link.

Second, why am I doing this?

Force of habit, I guess.

Back in the late 70's I started reading the then recently issued reprints of H. Beam Piper and basically reconstructed his universe as far as possible. It was fun. Details here.

And then much later on in life, started doing the same thing to David Brin's Uplift Universe.

Our good Dr. Brin (I like to use the phrase "Our good Dr. Brin..." Its use is something akin to saying "Across the wine dark sea.") has filled his Uplift works with bad puns, inside jokes, Tuckerisms, and lots and lots of foreshadowing as to what may be next to come.

And I try to figure it all out because it seems that I have to. I can't leave it alone. It's too much fun.

More importantly, and take this in a kind way, Dr. Brin never starts or finishes anything. Every Uplift story starts in the middle. There's always a taste of what went on before. There's always more that can happen. Even the denouement is misnamed. It is not 1 : the final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work. It's the exact opposite: The baby is not yet born. Mudfoot has not left to go find the Tymbrimi. And Tyug was not mentioned. He left Kazzkark with Alvin. Where'd he wind up? The loose ends on and on and on....

...so that every now and then I send Dr. Brin another email. How about this character doing that? What's Alvin's sister's name? What's Dor-hinuf's mother's name.

And see all the detail that one has missed by not reading the Brightness Reef Trilogy. (Dr. Brin's preferred terminology. I think the fans started calling the first three Uplift novels a trilogy.)

I struggled with the books, the first time I read through Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach. Slogged through, I suppose. Then Contacting Aliens came out, with pictures and alien descriptions.

OK, with the aliens _NOW_ with an already existing fully developed mental picture, I went back and reread the novels at a much slower speed.

And found most of the detail and foreshadowing as to what is to come later that I had missed in the first read.

It's still too detailed. By the time I get to Heaven's Reach, I can forget some important fact first presented in Brightness Reef.

In any case, Jijo is the perfect setting for simple story telling. Science fiction without any need for knowing the higher forms of science; tales of strange beings without having to go into a "fantasy" mode.

Dr. Brin mentions in the Afterword to Heaven's Reach about throwing stones into a pond.

I'm looking for the stones that our good Dr. never knew existed.

Think of David Brin as being the magician. By transposing the actions of slight of hand into scenes, syntax, and sentence structure, his powers of illusion are used repeatedly to create the card trick called successful story telling.

I like to shuffle the cards to see what new tricks might emerge, and then hand the finished trick back to the magician.

Personally, I don't think I'm ready for my own deck and my own stage. Maybe that's another reason our good Dr. suggested this page.

I'm happy being a little Frankenstein.

That's from Brin's essay on writing. A Frankenstein being a wannabe author that's missing a few parts.

"Where do you get your ideas?"

The question is always asked an author in axiomatic splendor of self categorization. A proof positive that for some people, the road to authorship will be potholed with good intentions.

(Think of the classic answer to the definition of jazz.)

"How do you turn your ideas into such successful stories?"

A much better question.

And one I'm just now going to try to answer for myself.

Here are the rules to the fiction that follows:

1. Nothing has the status of being the truth. Everything here is to be both presented and considered as being forms of what if, maybe, and might be. Dr. Brin has approved of the presentation of the content, not the actual content as fact, although care has been taken that nothing untrue to his works has been included. As to the factuality of the content: His word is law.

2. There is a time barrier that will not be crossed. No story can take place in a time future to whenever/wherever Dr. Brin last left his characters. Actions on Jijo end a full year before Alvin's little story. Even then, any story involving Alvin at that time can't have any action that might relate to whatever's happening out there in the Four Galaxies. Actions that might relate to whatever Creideiki and Tom et al are doing are verboten.

   (Those ideas are what I email to our good Dr. directly.)

3. Comments are to be encouraged. For each of the four categories listed below, there'll be a posting of both selected reader comments and answers when appropriate. Dr. Brin has stated that he may every now and then dip his quill in and give both comments to the stories, and to the comments.

The following categories and titles have been passed as being acceptable topics. Everything hasn't been fully developed. (A lot of it needs to be rewritten.) When the color changes, it's up, it's ready, and it's readable.

• The Book of the Hoon

  • The Hoon both in the Civilization of the Five Galaxies and on Jijo.

  • The life of Alvin, Dor-hinuf, etc. up to the date of the denouement, Civilization, at the end of Heaven's Reach.

    • Dor-hinuf's first journal entry
    • In the Hoon's fur Past
    • "B" naughty fraid
    • Never Assume!
    • Dor-hunuf's mother
    • Dor-hinuf's grandmother
  
  
• Uplift Urbane Legends.

  Very short tales, notes, or zingers. Added detail that was left out of Contacting Aliens, and usually for a good reason. Everything is rumor, nothing is to be taken as the truth, and sometimes the entire purpose of the piece is to only serve as the lead up to some far fetched pun at the end. When some of this stuff gets thrown at the fan, you may want the reporting Terragen agent arrested for dereliction of doody.

  • Nish
  • Tytlal
  • Rousit
  • Rosh
  • Ynnin
  • Olumimun
  • Dorrvi
  • The Ahp'Churezz (Rumor)
  
  
• Speeches from the Slope Box.

  Tales from the past history of Jijo.

  • Between a Grok and a Hard Pace
  
  
• The Short Short Stories of Uplift.

  Any Uplift short story where the action deals with a race that is the height of the Tymbrimi, or shorter.

  • The Kidding stays in the Tytlal
  
  
• Filk
  • The Hoon don't need viagra.
  • At the Autopark in Kazzkark
  • We are the Tytlal folk we

In ending this page, let me give you an example of the way I think. A preview as to the forms of logic as to what is to come.

The answer to the half full or half empty question:

If the questioner does not define both the container and the liquid, then you have the right to define them yourself. The container becomes a foam cup and the liquid becomes gasoline. The question is then meaningless. If the questioner starts with water as the liquid, and a glass as the container, you then have the right to ask if the question is being presented to a tea totaller or an alcoholic. You can keep redefining the question, because for an answer to have any value, values must be assigned to the question.

Of course by this time the questioner is usually retreating to a far corner.....

The answer to which came first, the chicken or the egg:

The chicken comes first. Eggs don't have genitalia.

Sophonts have visited this archive since 3 April 2004.