Reap the Dark Tide
by C. M. Kornbluth
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1953's 'Shark Ship' is a disturbing novelette about yet another dystopian future Earth. It's been generations since the convoys of gigantic ships, each with 20,000 inhabitants, left the land to live in the Atlantic ocean. We're dealing with the 75 ships of the Grenville Convoy, launched from Newport News, Virginia, 141 years ago. It's the southern spawning season, and everyone old enough to work is working hard. If they don't harvest enough food to last for six months (until the northern spawning season), they'll starve. Each fleet patrols two degrees of the ocean.
We learn about their way of life and their ships' construction. 20,000 persons per ship is necessary because they have to constantly search for corrosion and oil what they show more find. Couples are allowed two children, the replacement rate. If a ship loses its net, it and its inhabitants are abandoned by the convoy because there isn't enough material to make a new one.
Captain Salter of Ship Starboard 30 has to help his people when their net is lost in a storm. The ship makes its way to New York City. What they find there (and the flashback that tells us how it got that way) is worthy of a horror movie. I do appreciate the fact that Yeoman Jewel Flyte is the quickest and most imaginative thinker among the team.
Notes: 1. Higher ranks may be required to be celibate (unmarried) to avoid nepotism, but chasity (no sex) doesn't seem to be required since Salter had a mistress. The ships stick to a two-kids-only rule, so some form of birth control is probably available.
2. Mae Bush and Rip Torn were actors.
3. "Alien" in this case means "not from our country". (I'm the daughter of a science fiction fan. I was a senior in high school before I realized an alien could be someone from another country instead of another planet.) show less
We learn about their way of life and their ships' construction. 20,000 persons per ship is necessary because they have to constantly search for corrosion and oil what they show more find. Couples are allowed two children, the replacement rate. If a ship loses its net, it and its inhabitants are abandoned by the convoy because there isn't enough material to make a new one.
Captain Salter of Ship Starboard 30 has to help his people when their net is lost in a storm. The ship makes its way to New York City. What they find there (and the flashback that tells us how it got that way) is worthy of a horror movie. I do appreciate the fact that Yeoman Jewel Flyte is the quickest and most imaginative thinker among the team.
Notes: 1. Higher ranks may be required to be celibate (unmarried) to avoid nepotism, but chasity (no sex) doesn't seem to be required since Salter had a mistress. The ships stick to a two-kids-only rule, so some form of birth control is probably available.
2. Mae Bush and Rip Torn were actors.
3. "Alien" in this case means "not from our country". (I'm the daughter of a science fiction fan. I was a senior in high school before I realized an alien could be someone from another country instead of another planet.) show less
A very interesting story of generation ships living off plankton in the Atlantic Ocean, while the people on land find a very odd way to deal with over-population
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- Canonical title
- Reap the Dark Tide
- Original title
- Shark Ship
- Original publication date
- 1958-06
- People/Characters
- Tom Salter (Captain, ship Starboard Squadron 30 | son of Clayton Salter & Eva Romano); Commodore of Grenville's Convoy of 75 ships; McBee (Captain, ship Port Squadron 19); Captain Degerand of the White Fleet (on his commodore's staff | has disturbing ideas); 'Princess' (what Salter calls a little girl wandering the ship at night); Peale (leader of Peale's Mutiny 80 years ago | his death by bowspritting prevented more mutinies) (show all 17); Retired Sailmaker Hodgkins (Ship's councilmember); Chief Inspector Graves (married to George Omaney, mom of 2 | ship's councilmember); Junior Chaplain Pemberton (son of Will Pemberton & Agnes Hunt | m. Riva Shields); Lieutenant Zwingli (signals officer | ship's councilmember); Yeoman Jewel Flyte (archivist | daughter, Joseph Flyte & Jessie Waggoner | Salter's ex | council sub); Merdeka the Chosen, the All-Foreigner, the Ur-Alien (creator of the horrors in America in the past); Sokei-an (depopulator of China in the past); Dr. Spät (European member of the depopulator trio in the past); Executive Secretary of the Society for Purity in Communications in the past); all 18 of the Brownells (attacking the Starboard Squadron 30 exploratory team); 20 of the Wagners (coming after the Brownells and the ship team)
- Important places
- South Atlantic Ocean; New York, New York, USA; Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York, New York, USA; the Herbert Brownell Jr. Memorial Houses, New York, New York, USA
- First words
- IT WAS THE SPRING SWARMING of the plankton; every man, woman, and most of the children aboard Grenville's Convoy had a job to do.
- Quotations
- [All capital letters in the original of this charter of the convoys]
In return for the sea and its bounty we renounce and abjure for ourselves and our descendants the land from which we sprung: for the common good of man... (show all) we set sail forever.
(Page from a book found in one of the Herbert Brownell Jr. Memorial Houses)
Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. She threw Jack down and broke his crown; it was a lovely slaughter. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A flicker of consciousness was passing through the wounded chaplain; he heard the words and was pleased that somebody aboard was praying.
- Disambiguation notice
- "Shark Ship" is the same story as “Reap the Dark Tide”
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- English
