A Door into Ocean - Kirjakasa

Hardcover, 403 pages

English language

Published February 1986 by Arbor House.

ISBN:: 978-0-87795-763-8
OCLC Number:: 12103029
ASIN:: 0877957630
Goodreads:: 2616051

(1 review)

Joan Slonczewski's first novel, Still Forms on Foxfield, made the Locus list of distinguished first novels and was a nominee for best novel of the year. She continues the tradition with A Door into Ocean.

Thousands of years in the future in a distant part of the galaxy, lies the planet Shora, entirely covered by a world-spanning ocean. The huge and complex ecosystem of Shora is inhabited by the Sharers, an all female race who reproduce by parthenogensis, without males. The Sharers are immensely sophisticated in the life sciences, but have eschewed all unnatural technology. Over millennia of isolation, they have developed a complex philosophical and ethical system, idealistic, communal, and pacifist.

But now, as interstellar civilization rises again, the Sharers are faced with a technological and cultural invasion of man from space. They must develop a system of peaceful coexistence. Two of them travel to a nearby …

Joan Slonczewski's first novel, Still Forms on Foxfield, made the Locus list of distinguished first novels and was a nominee for best novel of the year. She continues the tradition with A Door into Ocean.

Thousands of years in the future in a distant part of the galaxy, lies the planet Shora, entirely covered by a world-spanning ocean. The huge and complex ecosystem of Shora is inhabited by the Sharers, an all female race who reproduce by parthenogensis, without males. The Sharers are immensely sophisticated in the life sciences, but have eschewed all unnatural technology. Over millennia of isolation, they have developed a complex philosophical and ethical system, idealistic, communal, and pacifist.

But now, as interstellar civilization rises again, the Sharers are faced with a technological and cultural invasion of man from space. They must develop a system of peaceful coexistence. Two of them travel to a nearby planet in the hope of gaining a better understanding of the male invaders. There they invite a young man, Spinel, to return with them so they can learn from each other. This is urgent, for in the space of a few short years, the traders who have set up shop on Shora have been reinforced by armed men from nearby Valedon, of which Shora is a satellite, and are preparing simply to take over.

So begins a war, protracted and graphic, in which one side cannot fight because the concept is inconceivable in their philosophy; a war in which the one fragile contact between Merwen, the Sharer, and Spinel, the man from Valedon, might well provide the only hope of of true communication between two radically different cultures.

Every few years, a new author in the science-fiction field contributes a major work to the central tradition of world building. The planet Shora is such a contribution, an ecological system that deserves comparison with the greatest classic of all, Frank Herbert's Dune.

4 editions

Thom reviewed A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski (Elysium Cycle, #1)

Review of 'A Door Into Ocean' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This John W. Campbell award winning fiction seemed slow to me, and great worldbuilding is not enough to compensate for the lack of a strong story.

The worldbuilding is told from a character's perspective, so we don't know a lot of space science or history. We know there is an ocean world and a stone world, and each is referred to as a "moon" of the other. The stone has a standard human society, the inhabitants of the ocean world have modifications - and very different speech, physiology, and outlook on life. We also know that these two worlds are part of a much larger domain (protectorate), with relativistic space travel. The conflict stems from stone world residents on the ocean world, and an inauspicious visit from the protector whose simple order launches a massive conflict.

This clash, while central to the theme, is shown mostly from one side - …

This John W. Campbell award winning fiction seemed slow to me, and great worldbuilding is not enough to compensate for the lack of a strong story.

The worldbuilding is told from a character's perspective, so we don't know a lot of space science or history. We know there is an ocean world and a stone world, and each is referred to as a "moon" of the other. The stone has a standard human society, the inhabitants of the ocean world have modifications - and very different speech, physiology, and outlook on life. We also know that these two worlds are part of a much larger domain (protectorate), with relativistic space travel. The conflict stems from stone world residents on the ocean world, and an inauspicious visit from the protector whose simple order launches a massive conflict.

This clash, while central to the theme, is shown mostly from one side - even though character perspectives on both sides are used. Worse, there are other factors that are left very unexplained - the recent destruction of a separate civilization, the occupation of one character's stone world village, and the nature of the visiting protector (a robot?). Worse yet are the individuals within the two people groups. Standard female advantages (growth, caring, learning) are nearly exclusively from the ocean world, despite the balanced population on the stone world.

As many other reviews have noted, good world building, but the story seems long - it took me more than a month to read. From descriptions of torture to continual threats of genocide, the latter part of this book feels ponderous. The author is a microbiologist, wrote the first half from an in-depth knowledge, and it shows. They are also a Quaker, and perhaps this is why only the failing of war is shown.

Their are three other books in the same universe. I'll probably not be adding them to my list - barring a positive conversation with a fan of this series.

Lists

Campbell Memorial Award