Review: Foreigner by Robert J. Sawyer

by Chriss Cornish published: December 2, 2007 No Comments

This Book Is About

Alien minds in the tradition of James White. The Quintaglios are a race of intelligent dinosaurs (evolved descendants of dinosaurs rescued in prehistory from Earth) who have learned of a threat to their very existence. Now they must quickly advance from a culture equivalent to our Renaissance to the point where they can leave their planet. While the Quintaglios rush to develop space travel, the discovery of a second species of intelligent dinosaurs rocks their most fundamental beliefs. Meanwhile, blind Afsan-the Quintaglio Galileo-undergoes the newfangled treatment of psychoanalysis, throwing everything he thought he knew about his violent people into a startling new light.

My Thoughts On This Book

Foreigner is one of my favorite books. I first read it in 1994 when it was in it’s ACE Books mass market edition. It was on one of those revolving racks at the Linda Vista Library in San Diego. I later purchased my TOR trade paperback edition at Mysterious Galaxies in 2000-something and I’ve read it about three times. I’ll probably re-read it many times more.

What I love about this novel is the complete cultures and belief systems that Sawyer builds. The characters are all bipedal, sentient tyrannosaur-type dinosaur people, but they’re so human. His writing is also very engaging and fast-paced, with short chapters divided into sections following three groups of related characters key to their society’s development.

The pacing is such that the reader is never bored with a character or event, because there’s no time. Despite being so quick in pace, the reader never feels rushed. Just caught-up in the action.

Oh, and then there’s the space elevator. Foreigner has the most well developed space elevator concept I’ve ever encountered or heard of. I would recommend this book just for that, regardless of the excellent world building.

Robert J. Sawyer’s science is very well done. In fact, he has won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for his science fiction.