Uplift - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Uplift Series is a fictional universe created by author David Brin. Two centuries into the future, humanity has matured as a species, cleaned up the Earth and even used genetic engineering to bestow sapience on chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins. However, humans and allies make contact with the rest of Galactic civilization, and find out that they're quite primitive, by Galactic standards. Every other spacefaring species got where it is by being "uplifted" by a patron race. Many species consider humanity's belief that they evolved sapience without engineering to be a blasphemy worthy of extinction or enslavement.

The Uplift Universe consists of two trilogies of novels, a novella, a short story, a GURPS supplement and a Universe Compendium.

The first series of novels is usually just called the Uplift Trilogy. It consists of:

Sundiver, which takes place about four decades after first contact. It tells the story of Jacob Demwa, a scientist who is asked to investigate mysterious phenomena in Earth's sun. It is the first Uplift novel published, and is considered the weakest novel of the Uplift Trilogy. Reading it is not necessary to understand any of the subsequent novels.
Startide Rising, which takes place about 250 years after Sundiver. It tells the story of Streaker, the first starship commanded by dolphins, after it is pursued by the fleets of many Galactic clans to the planet Kithrup. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards when it was published, and is considered the best of the Uplift books.
The Uplift War, which takes place at about the same time as the events of Startide Rising. It tells the story of several beings caught up in an invasion of the planet Garth caused by the discoveries of Streaker. It won a Hugo Award.

The second trilogy of novels is called the Uplift Storm Trilogy. It takes place about two years after The Uplift War, and introduces the planet Jijo, illegally settled by several species, including humans. It consists of:

Brightness Reef, which tells the story of the invasion of a ship of alien gene raiders and their traitorous human allies, as well as that of a group of young aliens who attempt to dive into a great undersea trench in a bathyscaphe.
Infinity's Shore, in which the residents of Jijo drive off the gene raiders. However, a battleship full of fanatical Jophur arrive to convert their mentally stable traeki cousins, as well as enslave the rest of the planet. The Streaker also arrives on Jijo in this book.
Heaven's Reach, which tells the story of Streaker's return to Earth, as well as wrapping up the stories of the characters introduced in the first two Uplift Storm books.

This series contains examples of:

Abusive Precursors: Some patron and step-patron species are exceedingly cruel to their clients. The worst (that we know of) are probably the Nr~klat, Tandu, and Oaillie, but the Fonnir, Soro, and Pila are also pretty bad.
Assimilation Plot: The Jophur invaders of Jijo plan to enslave their Jijoan Traeki cousins by surgically implanting the same "master rings" that all Jophur have. Master rings turn the composite sapience of Traeki into the egotistical, quasi-unified will of the Jophur, while routinely torturing and electrocuting the other rings, and forcing them to act against their wills. This is the whole reason the Traeki ring-stacks fled to Jijo in the first place.
Bamboo Technology: A Bamboo Space Program, seriously! Though at this point the Jijoans have only the most primitive one-stage rockets, made out of single pieces of "boo" several feet in diameter.
Banana Peel: Played strait by E-level hyperspace, which is interpreted by sapient minds entirely in the form of memes and tropes. One chimpanzee pilot, encountering a patch of "slippery" E-space, sees building-sized banana peels through the viewscreens.
Carnivore Confusion: Pre-uplift dolphins treat the food chain as a religious matter, and consider it perfectly acceptable if they're eaten by something higher up, though there's strict rules on this (namely, only kill a dolphin for food, not pleasure; tuna nets are also seen as abusive to dolphinkind). This becomes a plot point when...
- I'm a Humanitarian: K'tha-Jon develops a taste for dolphin flesh when he goes atavistic, because he's a hybrid of Stenos...and orca.
Combat by Champion: See Rebellious Rebel.
Death Equals Redemption: In Startide Rising, Gillian sets this up intentionally for Takkata-Jim, making it something of an invoked subversion. She knows he's going to try to sell them out to the Galactic forces, so she sabotages the longboat's radio and sets its weapons to fire automatically, making it look like he's trying to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice in order to distract the Galactics from Streaker's escape. In the end, with no options remaining, he goes along with it.
Derelict Graveyard: In the backstory to Startide Rising, a Terran starship discovers a fleet of derelict ships associated with the Progenitors, and news of the derelicts unleashes a galaxies-wide holy war.
Did You Die?: Alvin complains about this trope in Brightness Reef.
Divided We Fall: In Startide Rising, the fleets of aliens hunting the does not prevent fierce infighting among the dolphin crew. (Fortunately, the aliens don't get along with each other, either.)
Emotion Bomb: Psi weapons in general work like this. As a specific example, the Gubru use special spheres to broadcast fear and self-consciousness in The Uplift War. The Karrank% set one off without a technological weapon, because they're all fearsomely powerful telepaths.
Everything's Better with Monkeys: Actually sapient, spacefaring chimpanzees.
Evil Matriarch: Krat, and by extension all the Soro fleetqueens, literally. They give birth while plotting an entire race's demise, or ripping their own clients apart.
"Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: "Jacob, watch that first step!"
Fantastic Honorifics: The gender-neutral "ser" variant.
Fantastic Racism: Most of the Galactics at least mildly dislike to downright hate Earthclan. Some races, like the Tandu feel this way about everyone. On a lesser scale, the disdain to outright rebellion Stenos feel for regular neo-fins.
Five-Token Band: Parodied, perhaps unintentionally, by the crew of the bathyscape in Brightness Reef, who happen to be five alien children, all different species, one of which doesn't walk, but rolls around on wheels.
Futuristic Stasis: Almost all sapient species are genetically modified and raised to sapience by their patron species and given access to the Great Library. This severely discourages technological innovation, through the sentiment that "if it's good enough for your patrons who dragged you out of animalism, it's goddamn well good enough for you". At one point a group of Galactics dismiss the idea of flight without gravatics as impossible and are utterly flummoxed by hot-air balloons, hang gliders, and solid-fuel rockets.
Genius Breeding Act: Humans use both genetic engineering and selective breeding to improve the intelligence of their uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees. Most chimps and dolphins have to apply for a license to reproduce. The ones with unlimited breeding licenses are the smartest and most talented of their generation. It's stated that most alien clans have similar or stricter breeding programs for their client races.
Humans Are Special: Toyed with. Humanity isn't treated as special, but they do have the singular advantage of not being bound by millennia of tradition as most other races are.
Humorless Aliens: Most of the aliens in the series, with the exception of the Tymbrimi, Tytlal, and Buyur.
Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: E-level hyperspace is a memetic reality. As such perception often literally defines reality, and beings native to normal space can only percieve E-space in visible terms through memes and tropes.
Incredibly Lame Pun: The above Five-Token Band enjoys puns — at one point they break out an incredible string of puns based on units of measurement. Also, the entire plot of The Uplift War is a setup for a Guerrilla/Gorilla warfare pun.
Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Most of the races rely entirely on technologies and knowledge handed down through generations of civilizations, and most never actually evolve on their own terms and time schedule. In fact, many see it as blasphemy.
Low Culture, High Tech
Manipulative Bastard: Uthacalthing. He thinks of himself as a largely benign joker, but one of his "jests" involves stranding his fellow ambassador Kault of the Thennanin and manipulating him into getting his species into a fight with the hostile Gubru, to Kault's detriment. It backfires on him in a spectacularly karmic way when the "Garthlings" select the Thennanin to be their patrons, thus boosting their status enormously while also forcing an alliance with EarthClan.
Memetic Mutation: Literally. Memes are actual life forms who live in E-space. They can adapt rapidly to the rules of a new imaginary environment
Misanthrope Supreme: Those humans who believe themselves clients of some alien race.
Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Ignacio Metz.
Neglectful Precursors: It is virtually inconceivable for Galactic society to accept that a species managed to uplift itself, and so many believe that humanity was uplifted by an unknown patron but abandoned. Having no patron (and claiming they never had one) puts them in the crosshairs of a lot of the more belligerent factions. Other client races have been abandoned before, so their patrons definitely qualify.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In hindsight, Dr. Metz's experiments with splicing DNA from orcas with dolphin DNA was a really bad idea ...
Non-Mammal Mammaries: Athaclena accomodates Robert by switching from averting the trope to playing it straight thanks to the biological adaptability of her species. All other cases avert it hard.
Plant Aliens: The Kanten, a species of uplifted trees. Mulc "spiders" are sort of plant-like, though hardly comparable to any plant-life on Earth.
Portal Network: The Transfer Point network is one of these.
Reality Warper: The Episiarchs, by "denying".
Rebellious Rebel: In The Uplift War, the chimpanzee forces challenge their planet's invaders to face them with equal forces. The enemy commander orders an all-out attack, contrary to the laws of warfare, and a subordinate kills him. On hearing of it, the invader's leader immediately conveys a pardon to the subordinate.
Rhymes on a Dime: Anyone who speaks in Trinary regularly, although not as much as Primal Dolphin or what we imagine the Whale Dream would sound like.
Sapient Cetaceans: Who compose poetry, pilot starships, get medical degrees, etc.
Science Fiction Kitchen Sink: Over half a dozen ways to travel FTL. Also the orders of life.
Self-Deprecation: The king of this trope would be Fiben Bolger, a self-described chimpanzee "with delusions of adequacy".
Shout Out: The names of the Thennanin ships in Startide Rising (Quegsfire and Krondorsfire) are references to Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle series
Space Is an Ocean: Toyed with. Earthclan does use nautical terms to describe things (e.g., a "Gravity-well sargasso"), but the sheer number of drives used in the setting makes it hard to tell sometimes.
Space Opera
Split Personality: Jacob Demwa's Mr. X. Subverted when Jacob realizes Mr. X was actually just an elaborate game his mind was playing with itself.
Standard Sci Fi Setting
There Is A God
Trickster Archetype: The Tymbrimi and Tytlal are tricksters by design (because such behavior could never have evolved).
Turtle Island: In Startide Rising, the Terrans eventually learn that the islands scattered accross the surface of Kithrup are all the larval form of the Karrank% species.
The Unpronounceable: Several of the universal Galactic languages are this for humans. Occasional names like Karrank% or the J'8lek represent sounds that are far outside the human norm. Indeed, there are 12 different Galactic languages precisely because no one language could be pronounceable for all sapient races.
The Unreveal: Egregiously in Heaven's Reach, where at least three instances of words to the effect of "Now, the real reason why Streaker's discovery has the galaxy in such turmoil is —" are interrupted by urgent action. Particularly frustrating because the last one or two come after a semi-plausible explanation: (the Embrace of Tides is a lie, blah blah dross yada yada) has already been confirmed, suggesting tantalizingly that this is not the whole story after all. And indeed, it is far from clear how knowing the exact whereabouts of the Shallow Cluster would help anyone decide whether the Embrace of Tides is valid or not...)
Uplifted Animal: Trope Namer
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Takkata-Jim
What We Now Know to Be True: The Galactics have nothing but contempt for the Earthling concept of the mathematical continuum, and thus for any science not based on discrete mathematics. This may be justified, since even some contemporary Earthlings regard the continuum as a useful shortcut that we can forget about once we have sufficient computing power.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Episiarchs, though this is more a case of great powers coming from the insanity. Their solipsistic incapacity to accept reality gives them their reality-warping powers, which in turn make them even crazier.
Year Outside, Hour Inside: D-level of hyperspace apparently has this property