The Uplift War

The Uplift War is a science fiction novel by the American writer David Brin, published in 1987 and the third book in his Uplift Universe.

Garth was leased to another species fifty thousand years earlier, and they spoiled it so badly that the galaxy wiped them out; the planet is now a recovery world, and its lease has passed to Earthclan, which nobody regards as a great honour. When the Gubru move in, the defenders are a mixed population of humans, uplifted chimpanzees and others, with a token space force and no prospect of relief. The occupation becomes a contest between the invaders' respect for ritual and the willingness of the resistance to be unreasonable. Brin is interested in biology, in the ethics of raising another species to intelligence, and in what it looks like when the army of an advanced culture has to hold a planet it has promised not to damage.

The book won the Hugo and Locus Awards, and it follows Startide Rising in the sequence of novels about the Uplift Universe.