  Adam and I just finished reading the Neanderthal Paralax ,  a trilogy by Robert J.  Sawyer which includes Hominids ,  Humans ,  and Hybrids . nbsp;  The story is about a portal accidentally opening between our world and a parallel universe inhabited by Neanderthals. nbsp;  This sounds like an episode of Sliders ,  but Sawyer's in depth descriptions of real scientific theory& nbsp;
lends realism to the novels ( keeps them from being Hokey)
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 Sawyer has a good sense of humour in his writing,  too.
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 Plus,  the bulk of the&
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trilogy is set in Sudbury,  Ontario.
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 Trè s cool.  &
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 I do have a beef about Hybrids ( the 3rd book)  and it concerns the character of Mary Vaughan,  a geneticist who experiences a brutal rape,  and later falls in love with Ponter Boddit,  a neanderthal physicist who loves Coca Cola.
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 For one of the world's foremost geneticists,  Mary is a bit of a nimrod .
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 I constantly want to shake her as she takes pages and pages to figure out stuff that the reader ( that's&
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me)
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gets&
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after one sentence.
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 Her idiocy can be explained away in the first book because she is distracted by having just been raped,
 by the third it is no longer an excuse.
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 She's supposed to be an ü berintelligent geneticist who gets published in all the prestigious journals.
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 Sawyer mentions all these papers she's published,  and her prestige around the world,
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 then turns around and hints that the only reason she got a York University tenure position is because of affirmative action hiring practices.
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 What's up with that,  Rob?
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 Nevertheless,  I highly recommend the trilogy to anyone who likes science fiction.
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 Adam liked it too.
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