Joan Slonczewski

A Door into Ocean is a new all time favorite book that I wish I’d read sooner! I’d say this is the sort of science fiction that falls into a “The Left Hand of Darkness” category, and would appeal to fans of Ursula K. Le Guin in general.

A Door into Ocean is a feminist utopia set on a water-covered planet that comes into contact and conflict with a colonizing power.

This book is incredible in so many ways. Through a slowly unfolding philosophical storyline, we encounter an alien society show more that is well thought out and feels realistic. Slonczewski presents the reader with moral dilemmas that are actually dilemmas with no easy “right” answers. There is so much emotional payoff as you get closer to the ending (many tears were shed on my part). Because Slonczewski’s area of expertise is microbiology, they’re able to create this immersive scifi world that actually feels like it could exist. I truly felt like I had LIVED this book by the time I got to the end.

This is one of those books that I think everyone should read, but I especially recommend A Door into Ocean to:

- readers who want to be fully immersed in an alien culture
- fans of slow contemplative scifi
- readers hungry for a story about non-violent resistance

After I was done reading, I stumbled across a link the author has on their website that explains their thought process in creating A Door into Ocean! But don’t click on the link until you finish the book because there are spoilers galore. Putting the link here for ease of access, as it’s a little hard to find: https://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/books/adoor_art/adoor_study.htm show less

Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, from a family with two presidents to its name, goes to space college to escape her family, their security guards, and the memory of her dead twin brother. Earth is near collapse because of global warming and the invasion of ultraphytes, alien lifeforms that excrete cyanide, and America’s two political parties are busy fighting over how aggressive to be in exerting control over the Antarctic breadbasket and whether there are really stars and planets other than Earth show more or only a Firmament. The political stuff seems both extrapolative and to-the-minute, given how much of it focuses on manipulating voting both through carefully poll-tested positions and through making it hard for the “wrong” people to vote. It’s a big, ambitious novel, not really if-this-goes-on but ‘what will it be like to be an idealistic, influential young person if this goes on?’ I can’t say I loved it, but I thought it wove together various strands of scientific and political speculation with real flair and imagination. show less

This book in the same universe as Door Into Ocean and Daughter of Elysium is as different from them as they were from each other. Though many SFNal elements are shared with Daughter, where that book began slowly with mostly cultural observations spread over out several chapters, this book begins with an info-dump that in a few pages sets out a pulp novel baseline befitting its title: vampires (we would call them zombies these days) are biting people, spreading the brain plague, and taking show more their victims to the Slave World. The main character is an artist whose life on a slummy lower level involves avoiding both the vampires and cancerous patches of nanoplast, the material from which the entire city is built. After that blast from the 1930s, things settle down, perhaps a little too much. The main character stays fairly naive for a bit too long, while everyone around her knows more about what is going on than she does.

Still and all, this ends up being more the kind of biological SF that I had hoped for from this author. The core idea is intelligent microbes who colonize the arachnoid matter of the human brain. There are many -- um -- cultures of these microbes. Our hero's culture has grand artistic visions as she does but also subversive revolutionary ambitions. One of the best parts of the book's premise is that it leads to two parallel tales in two very different timeframes. Her story of gradual awakening to social issues and taking a stance takes place over a few months. The microbial timeframe is a several hundred times faster so a multi-generational saga is told of an evolving civilization. Another interesting idea is how each carrier (human with microbes) is like a different continent. There are occasional visits, invasions, and cultural assimilation of microbes from different hosts. The dangers in the relationship between carriers and microbes are several. There is the god-complex relationship between microbes and their hosts, which serves neither side well, but the bigger danger is that only cultural prohibitions -- and eventual host-death -- prevent the microbes from enslaving their hosts through the repeated triggering of the pleasure response via dopamine release. This tension -- that humans can and frequently do wipe out entire microbial civilizations and microbes can and frequently do enslave their hosts -- creates a solid base of tension throughout the book. The microbes are too human-like in my opinion, but I feel that way about the aliens in almost all SF.

The richness of ideas and awkwardness of exposition makes this book feel like a first novel, but the ideas win out. Recommended. show less

I can't remember who recommended [b:A Door Into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean (Elysium Cycle, #1)|Joan Slonczewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312029708l/121606._SY75_.jpg|2640708] to me, but I thank them as it proved very rewarding. The narrative takes a while to get going and is never very fast-paced. The emphasis is on cultural and environmental worldbuilding, as people from a planet, Valedon, and its moon, Shora, meet and try to determine show more whether each other are human. Valedon seemingly has an early Modern-type economy and is peopled by beings who apparently look like us. It is ruled by a distant authoritarian empire, although there are competing military factions beneath. Shora by constrast is entirely covered in ocean and its people are all women, with physical adaptions for swimming that could have evolved or be deliberate genetic manipulation. They are called Sharers and live in a decentralised direct democracy, or perhaps anarchist, society that entirely rejects violence. Their economy is essentially permaculture, involving careful management of the balance of the oceanic ecosystem.

At first the interactions between these two very different worlds only involve a few individuals, which gives the worldbuilding space to unfold before the main plot begins. The narrative subsequently turns into a fascinating, moving, and vivid examination of non-violent resistance to colonialism. A military force from Valedon attempts to occupy Shora and force the Sharers to join their empire, which is helmed by the unsubtly-titled Patriarch. Throughout the book there is a great deal of dialogue and Sharer discussions of how to deal with the occupation are among the most thought-provoking. The same question is repeatedly asked in different ways: can it be morally right to counter dehumanisation with dehumanisation? [b:A Door Into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean (Elysium Cycle, #1)|Joan Slonczewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312029708l/121606._SY75_.jpg|2640708] does not pretend that this there is a simple answer to this, but instead builds a picture of a social structure that resists dehumanising anyone even under extraordinary pressure.

The carefully constructed society and culture of the Sharers is an outstanding example of utopian writing and the plot explores its resilience. Yet the narrative also demonstrates that the Sharers aren't unique, as people from Valedon go to Shora and react to life there in wildly different ways. It defied my expectations by not focusing much on gender. Despite the Patriarch Planet vs Woman Moon theme, gender roles aren't discussed very much. I think this was a good call, as it would have undermined the tone of nuanced humanism to generalise men = evil and women = good. Once I got into it, I found [b:A Door Into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean (Elysium Cycle, #1)|Joan Slonczewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312029708l/121606._SY75_.jpg|2640708] to be that rare thing: an engaging and hopeful piece of utopian writing that does not ignore authoritarianism and cruelty. show less