T. J. Bass (1932–2011)

My reaction to reading this novel in1998. Spoilers follow.

This book belongs to a subgenre that includes Yevgeny Zamyaten’s We, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, George Nolan’s and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run: the dystopic city dweller trying to flee – usually with a lover – into the country and into a better society. (George Orwell’s 1984 featured lovers finding no refuge from their urban hell. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World featured a rustic commenting on his show more world).

This novel’s strength is that it uses the devices and character types of all these novels. Moon is the rustic never part of the Hive, its sworn enemy. Tinker, like Logan, is an enforcer (or, at least, an enabler) of the dystopian order who finds itself on its bad side and throws his lot in with the five toed aborigines. Kaia the hunter, through a pharmacological accident, goes abo and likes it. Moses the Pipe Man also is attracted to the abo life.

Of course most novels with this plot have the loyal supporters of the status quo. Here those figures are the clever Val (who ends up an involuntary stud for five-toed genes to the “buckeyes”) and Walter, who is sympathetic to the buckeyes but feels he must do all he can as he waits for his soul to be taken by O.L.G.A. (the book is full of acronyms; this one is a spaceship). Only Val is pretty consistently unlikeable. I probably had to look up more words while reading this novel – all of them medical terms – than anything other book I’ve read. This book is interesting for being one of the first books in the wave of seventies sf preoccupied with biology, particularly clones. It also, with its intelligent robots and computers, anticipates modern AI and robotic research in that the nomenclature of the “mechs” parts is biological as is the function.

The novel as a whole seems full of hard science. The biological parts all seem either real or plausible (I wonder if the idea of the increase in suicides and homocides seen in crowded rats was thought to stem from an allergic brain reaction to the increased presences of dust mites), and the of speculation about robots and AIs (more simply presented and not explained unlike the Hive’s biological aspects). The society of Earth Society was scary. A world, with such an attenuated eco-system that Man is the chief source of protein (along with the occasional rat to spice up the bland paste rations); a world of three trillion four foot tall, four-toed humans living in squalor (many descriptions of dust filled corridors and rooms and broken machines) in an underground world of casual infanticide, suppressed sexual development (only a few are allowed to be sexually “polarized” – the ES is reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World in that castes are biologically designed for certain types of work), where the citizens are fed promises of a better world in the next reincarnation, where the blow of being de-facto euthanized is softened by the bogus therapy of cryonic suspension to await an unlikely future revival, where everyone is a cannibal, and where the buckeyes on the surface are seen as garden pests disrupting the precious surface farms. ES is a horrible example of the egalitarian concept of the greatest good for the greatest number (squalor for all) as OLGA notes. Yet, she also notes the Hive-mind is admirably suited to that end. However, it has suppressed the genes humans need to colonize other worlds. Gathering those genes and rebelling against ES is the plot of the novel. show less

Very strange book. I knew it was going to be great just for the rampant and unapologetic misogyny (women here were treated like little more than walking uteruses- thanks 1971!) but somewhere in reading it I actually started to get into the story. It wasn't until the end that I realized what was really going on, and I'm sure I'll read this one again in the future. Very bizarre future underground society written by a pathologist that obviously found it amusing to slip medical terminology into show more every sentence. show less

A classical dystopia in which humans are the main source of protein for other humans, with a destroyed ecosystem, a highly regulated / controlled underground society and (barely) no one who challenges these circumstances - at least as long as there's no contact with the few surviving five-toed aboriginals at the surface.

But of course this contact happens, and mayhem ensues. Mayhem that results in the eternal struggle about the questions of freedom vs. safety, authority vs. free will.

I liked show more the cast of this novel, the good guys as well as the bad guys (which is to be taken literally, as women only appear as walking uteruses or to be fridged - 1970s misogyny at its finest). But Bass crafts some remarkable human characters into this inhuman and dehumanised world, each with their own quirks, frustrations and motivations - which sometimes clash spectacularly.

It's no 1984 and no Fahrenheit 451, but it's remarkable enough to have earned its place in the "SF Masterworks" series. An enjoyable read. show less

A mixed bag. High-concept SF with what could've been another 1970's overpopulation yarn. Despite the title, the Godwhale is just one gear in the plot machine. Far more inventive are the Hives (first described in Bass' Half-Past Human), underground multi-tiered masses of humanity recycling all protein, no matter what source, and emitting noxious waste out to a (mostly) dead Earth. 19 is old age in the Hive. In small domes in the sea (almost mostly dead) live the Benthic humans, scavenging show more what they can from the Hive gardens. The ecology and everyday life of both environments is well-developed and engrossing, as well as out-grossing.

The novel is weak on plot structure and character development. New characters are introduced in every chapter till near the end, and all speak pretty much the same sophisticated medical talk. Major leaps in time occur frequently. Much happens and it all ties together in the end, but this is not an adventure but framework of events for presenting a range of interesting ideas. show less