David Brin has been staying low profile on the sci-fi book scene for almost 10 years. Existence is his return to the genre, and a very welcome one at that.

The story starts as a near future setting. The issues covered run the gamut, from artificial intelligence, to uplift of other species, to the ability of a species to survive into the future. If you have followed any of the various short stories previously written by David Brin you will find a few characters and stories reworked into this novel. It's a good story with an ending that returns us to the more optimistic sci-fi from a previous generation of writers.

The book eventually moves forward in time to a more advanced tech age for humans where we have managed to send manned flights to the asteroids. This is necessary to tell the whole story, but I did feel like it jumped from one setting to the next a bit quickly. And because of that there are some stories in the first portion of the book that I feel did not get completed with the full attention they needed. That said, it still didn't take away for the overall story.

As a side note, because of the uplift portion of this novel, it does make one wonder if this novel tells a story that could be considered a prelude to the uplift series. We may never know since it is left to our own imagination, and Mr. Brin isn't saying.