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I really liked Startide Rising for its spacefaring dolphins, particularly how their attitudes contrasted with Humans' and the other uplifted or alien species –

I really liked Startide Rising for its spacefaring dolphins, particularly how their attitudes contrasted with Humans' and the other uplifted or alien species – great concept overall, playful and sometimes poetic. And ‘Earth’ also had some great concepts and predictions, if you discount the global war against Switzerland. I didn’t like ‘Existence’, because (to me) the structure and characters seemed primarily to be a vehicle for Brin to make impassioned points about humanity. They may be good thought-provoking points, but they killed any suspense. YMMV

WorldMaker 2y ago
The global war against Switzerland is an interesting idea because it was a Boomer "child of WW2" idea that both understood banking in general as needing great reforms (especially in light of stolen Nazi goods being money laundered through Swiss bank accounts), and yet misunderstood a few true root causes and pointed fingers in the wrong directions (the money launderers at the top of the "funnel" rather than the ones making the most profits). As a prediction it doesn't survive things like the 2008 mortgage crisis, but as a concept it was meant to signify lack of certain globally-minded banking regulations and eventual banking fights like the 2008 mortgage crisis and the stalemate that was "Occupy Wall Street". That was certainly not quite a "global war", and certainly wasn't against Switzerland, but in a ballpark of what Earth seemed concerned with. Also "war with Switzerland" is just a silly concept for fiction whether or not it was meant to be predictive.