The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

In the "Uplift" novels humans are economically and technologically the weakest spacefaring race and are an anomaly since they have no apparent "patron" species responsible for their uplift from animal pre-sapience (Whether their patron abandoned them or whether humans gained sentience on their own is never definitively settled). Brin has confirmed that this notion in part underscores the notion of humans as "caretakers" of sentient-species-yet-to-be as he explains in a concluding note at the end of Startide Rising; and it plays a key role in The Uplift War where the Thennanin are converted from enemies to allies of the Terragens (humans and other sapients that originated on Earth) when they realize that making the world a better place and being good caretakers are core values of both civilizations. On Star Wars Brin focused on what he called George Lucas's "agenda" describing how he saw the basis of the Star Wars universe as profoundly anti-democratic.

D. He has received the HugoLocusCampbell and Nebula Awards.