A Darkling Sea: A Novel

When Robert Sawyer, Gregory Benford and Vernor Vinge give a book rave reviews you bet I'm going to pay attention. Sawyer says "Alien races to rival Larry Niven, world-building to rival Hal Clement and lots of rip-roaring adventure." Vinge says Cambias is in the same league as Hal Clement. Benford calls it "Fast-paced, pure-quill hard science fiction..."

Humans are studying the intelligent inhabitants who live underwater on the plantet Ilmatar. Except they are restricted to studying them from afar because the other intelligent race in the universe, the Sholen, would only allow the mission if humans did not disturb the Ilmataran habitat or let the Ilmatarans know they existed. This irks all of the human scientists but none more so than show more Henri Kerlerec who has a devoted fan base that are used to much more adventure from Henri. So Henri acquires a suit that does not reflect sonar pulses which is how the Ilmatarans "see". He gets right in the middle of a group of Ilmatarans with Rob Freeman shooting video. Unfortunately the Ilmatarans are also scientists and they detect Kerlerec and take him home to dissect him. The Sholen intercept the message sent to Earth about this fiasco and come to investigate. They are not amused.

I thought this was an excellently written book and could see it working as a movie. There haven't been many good underwater movies; maybe this could break the curse.

If you like hard sf combined with a philosophical interstellar conundrum, then this book is for you. show less

Really really liked it. First contact, emphasis on the What If and the Sense of Wonder but still interesting characters that we care about, and a dramatic & coherent plot with no actual villains. All that plus gracefully written, complex worldbuilding, respect for individuals of both* genders, even humor.

Totally my kind of book. Almost as good as Longyear's *Enemy Mine.*

The ending, though... hm. Maybe there's a sequel; if there is, I'll gladly reread this before moving on to that to get the rest of the story. And I will look for more by the author.

*Yes, all three kinds of beings are apparently straightforwardly binary. And we don't learn enough about the Ilmataran females (though the concept of how the young are raised is show more well-developed and fascinating). Oh well... there are lots of other imaginative things going on here.

He "doesn't like the idea of starving to death..., but he hates the thought of losing his followers even more."

Apparently this takes place in the relatively near future. Cambias explores human nature, assuming that we'll take our attitudes with us into the future even after meeting real aliens. For example, when one character of this international team is annoyed at another, he expresses the thought that "Europeans have no sense of humor."

One Ilmataran is noting that his work with the humans will probably lead his current mentor to be known in history as colleagues of the great B."... and then he realizes that his apprentice may be having a similar thought, that she might become even more famous and B. will become known as "teacher of the great H."

And then, in what I assume is an homage to Orwell's *Animal Farm,* we have the slogan "four limbs good, six legs bad." I about spilled my tea laughing at that. show less

This novel of first contact and inter-species conflict was done from all angles, and it really grabbed me. I know giving the alien perspective as well as the human has been done before, but Cambias did a great job creating two distinct alien cultures. It wasn't just a story of humans meeting aliens; it was humans meeting aliens even though they've agreed with another race of aliens not to make contact. The ethical questions brought up by the resulting conflict makes for a thought-provoking read.

It's not a page-turner because it's action-packed from start to finish. It's a page-turner because it's just so darn interesting. It's not my normal fare, but I'm glad I gave it a whirl.

Pros: great world-building, fascinating alien species, diverse characters, interesting plot, stand-alone novel

Cons:

An accident occurs among the humans observing the native intelligent life forms deep in the oceans under the ice of the distant planet Ilmatar. An alien race older than humans, the Sholen, have decreed that no contact be made with the natives for fear of human colonization. They send a ship to the planet to verify that no rules have been broken, but their inner politics dictate that the humans’ mission be shut down, regardless.

Meanwhile, Broadtail 38 Sandyslope, along with a group of likeminded Ilmataran scientists, makes a strange discovery that changes the course of his life.

I love it when the first paragraph of a show more book sucks you in and doesn't let you go. And this book has an awesome one:

By the end of his second month at Hitode Station, Rob Freeman had already come up with 85 ways to murder Henry Kerlerec. That put him third in the station’s rankings — Joseph Palashnik was first with 143, followed by Nadia Kyle with 97. In general, the number and sheer viciousness of the suggested methods was in proportion to the amount of time each one spent with Henri.

Rob Freeman is the research station’s underwater photographer and drone operator and the first, and only human, viewpoint character. Through him we see how the humans get along and how they react when the Sholen show up.

Our Showlen point of view comes from one of their two scientists, Tizhos, the subordinate in a race that focuses on consensus and achieves it via sexual contact. Through her we see signs of how their society works, using pheromones to calm and attract, as well as trying to subdue natural reactions, like anger and frustration, to maintain peace.

We’re given two Ilmataran points of view, one through Broadtail, a scientist and landowner, and the other through Strongpincer, a bandit. This, and Broadtail’s adventures, allows the reader to get a wider idea of the Ilmataran society.

The alien societies are quite fascinating, and distinct. Ironically, many of the problems that occur in the book are because each group expects that the aliens think and act the way they do - even when the person making this assumption knows better. So, for example, the humans’ passive aggressive screaming and handcuffing tactic isn’t understood by the Sholen, despite the humans thinking it’s a universal form of protest.

While I didn’t like all of the characters, I’m looking at you Richard Graves, there was a good variety of personalities and temperaments represented. Every character had their own motivations for what they did, and reacted differently to the various crises that occur.

The story was very interesting, with a lot going on all the time. And it's a stand-alone novel.

This is a fantastic debut. show less

I keep reading references to this book as "hard science fiction," which makes me think that I don't actually know what hard sci-fi is. I assumed it was sci-fi with a strong technology focus- but this book uses technology really only to support the social and moral questions that are the heart of the book.

This was a quick read for me, which is also a surprise. Every time I read "hard sci-fi" I expect to have to pull my way through the novel, wade through thousands of words of technical mumbo-jumbo (I respect others' enjoyment of this kind of storytelling, but I have a low tolerance threshold for technicality), and force myself to read enough pages a day to have this done before Book Group.

Instead, the pages just flew by. I enjoyed the show more story a lot, and was intrigued by the misunderstandings that perspectives that form the triangle of this novel. Humans are pretty much like humans now; as a near-future novel, people were pretty much people, for all their goods and bads. The Sholen are an interesting species, though I admit it seemed to me that there was a horrible lack of understanding about how the two cultures think for there to be anything resembling inter-stellar cooperation between the two. Arguably, there wasn't actually cooperation - but even so, it seems like two societies would have a little better understanding of how each other thinks.... this glitch bugged me a big, but I suppose it was necessary since this misunderstanding forms the major impasse of the novel.

The Ilmaterans are very interesting, and I enjoyed discovering them. I think aliens must be terribly hard to create (at least somewhat believably....), and I enjoyed these. They managed to be just different enough from humans to be intriguing, but not so different that they aren't relatable.

Yup, I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. show less

On the icy moon Ilmatar, a group of human researchers is studying the intelligent lifeforms that live at the bottom of its sea. When a tragic misunderstanding results in the death of one of the humans, they draw the attention of the Sholen, a previously-encountered race driven by a code of non-interference. They demand the humans withdraw from Ilmatar, and all traces of their presence be erased...

A Darkling Sea is a fairly light, quick-moving tale of first contact in which none of the three conflicting factions (apart from a few rogue members) can strictly be called villains. The Ilmatarans and humans only want to learn from each other, while the Sholen are trying to preserve the natural integrity of a civilization.

The best thing about show more the book is the portrayal of the Ilmatarans. They are large, lobster-like creatures that communicate by taps and clicks, and see their surroundings via sonar pings. The narrative rotates more or less evenly among the three races, so roughly a third of it is from the Ilmatarans' perspective. Their communication is "translated" for the reader, but this makes them seem no less alien. It's rather like watching a subtitled film. You get a complete feel for what it might be like to live as one of these beings, and it is fascinating. And these crustaceans have more personality each than all of the characters in the last bloated epic fantasy I tried to read.

Recomended musical accompaniment: Aqua by Edgar Froese, Substrata by Biosphere. show less

You know how astronauts train underwater to simulate the atmospheric dangers of space?

Here you get that and an adventure, and a first contact story gone wildly awry - imagine [a:Jacques-Yves Cousteau|86119|Jacques-Yves Cousteau|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1254868354p2/86119.jpg] , [a:Louis Leakey|387037|Louis Leakey|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] and [a:Mary Leakey|433196|Mary Leakey|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391710665p2/433196.jpg] in a Family Guy episode gone horribly wrong with [a:David Brin|14078|David Brin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1352956147p2/14078.jpg] style [b:Sundiver|96472|Sundiver (The Uplift Saga, #1)|David show more Brin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388176548s/96472.jpg|461555] aquatic sentient lifeforms, plus some good ship Orville hijinks and you're pretty close to what you'll get here. If I haven't lost you yet, you'd enjoy this more than well enough to sit down with it for the time it'll take for you to read it through! Or - TRIGGER ALERT - if the idea of being in cold, cold water trapped under miles of ice where it's so deep you might as well be blind totally overwhelms you, yeah this is the place that happens too. brrrrr. show less