I like to dabble. I have a great deal of love for select genres and archetypes, but I like to dabble. Sometimes when dabbling, I like to pick up something that sounds utterly removed from anything I’d actually enjoy. Moreover, every now and again, I like to pick up a book that takes a stance that I don’t share so that I may, if nothing else, better understand a particular viewpoint. And then there is that rare novel I pick up, certain I won’t have much positive to say about it, only to be proven wrong. Enter A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski.
Now to get into the real grit, the rub to it all, A Door into Ocean is a feminist novel. When I say this, it surely resonates with a particular message in most people’s minds though what that message is more or less depends on age and what wave of feminism you’re most aware of. Obviously, someone around for the pre-millennium or even in the hippie days of the 60s probably associates feminism best with the type of equality most children growing up today are taught foremost in schools. For someone, say about my age, it is easily associated with the commodification of flesh and the sex workers movement. Regardless of what impression you have of feminism, this novel requires you to suspend all the petty and minor notions of what that movement has to offer in favor of a story that would have most question if they wouldn’t stand with our protagonists as well.
A comprehensive synopsis is not something I can easily give on this book. There is just so much to take note of, and every minute moment, you might find fascinating or blow past them for the main plot, kind of a dealer’s choice. In short, we follow Spinel, who is more or less or main character. He has struggled on his own planet to be anything of use to his family or society. Two Sharers, residents of the nearby ocean-moon Shora an all-female world, happen upon him and want to take him to Shora as a sort of apprentice. This first act, or at least the portion leading to Shora, is very heavy in worldbuilding and, on a reread, is a bit much as you anxiously await the sight of Shora, but all well worth it.
Let’s get to the heart of it with Shora because that is where I was first captivated by Joan’s vision of the world. Shora is an ocean-moon with a flora that creates something like land masses though the term mass might be ill-fit for them. On these structures live the residents of the world known as the Sharers. The Sharers aren’t fish though they are able to breathe underwater, have no body hair, and are nudists. Their skin is bluish from microbes in the air that facilitate much of their abilities on Shora. To touch on this a moment, Joan Slonczewski is a microbiologist, so for a hard SF book, she has a lot of the technical phrasing and understanding of what she’s talking about or ideas she’s inventing.
The Sharers, as stated, is an all-female society. Their procreation is a mystery to outsiders until Spinel arrives. He sees that within their webhouses, there are tunnels leading into lower chambers, one of which houses what is called a life-shaper. The life-shaper is something like a one-stop-shop hospital as well as the means by which they create new life.
As you might imagine bringing an outsider into a group causes controversy, but that, of course, is compounded more so when this outsider is a male added to an all-female society. The Gathering, which is essentially a localized government made up of all the Sharers who have taken a self-name, a self-imposed negative trait to live in defiance in many ways. The Gathering is torn over the coming of a male from their neighboring planet of Valdeon, not only because he is a male but because they see their neighbors as savages or children of a kind.
The Sharers are a nonviolent group; as to why they see Valdeon as children, it is because they are so pre-disposed to war and murder. In addition, the Valdeon’s can not life-shape or go into whitetrance. Whitetrance is a fairly important ability the Sharers possess. It reads something like an out-of-body experience to me, wherein the body is there, alive but emptied for a time of consciousness. In whitetrance, Sharers are susceptible to death by anything that would break their concentration save for intervention by children, something of a purity idea. I could go into the mechanics of the Sharers and their world all day, but honestly, there’s so much to tackle, and I’ll botch half of it that you’re better off reading it yourself.
Returning to the narrative, Spinel obviously has a hard go of it in Shora. Still, we see him learning and growing in a start-stop manner. For a time, he seems like he’s content though still unwilling to fully embrace Sharer ways. Inevitably, the result of these troubles is Spinel returning home to Valdeon. From there, we have another plot rise, that of a Valdeon incursion on Shora. This takes the third act wherein we have a Valedon emissary to Shora flee to the ocean-moon to try to broker a deal. After some time at home, Spinel also returns.
In this final act, we see the nonviolent nature of the Sharers in full, as instead of attacking the invaders, they go into whitetrance before the Valdeon ship. This puts the Valdeons in quite a position as any direct action they would take would kill the Sharers. In addition to whitetrance, the breath microbes the sharers depend on are spread to the Valdeons, who instantly react to the discoloring of their skin with fury and shock. The tumult comes to a head as a Valdeon sets off an explosive on the side of the Valdeon ship. Now there’s a lot of detail to gloss over here, but I won’t leave you hanging on the fate of our protagonist, who remains on Shora after the Valdeon’s pull-out.
This barely scratches the surface, just the heaviest story beats I can give without making a full twenty-page report. It’s worth a read, if not more, and is the first in Slonczenwski’s Elysium Cycle, a four-book series of which I have just recently finished the second, The Daughter of Elysium. Now how to sell this as more than a neat and well-informed SF novel.
I’m no feminist, not that I believe heavily in labels, but I certainly wouldn’t throw my lot in with a movement that has changed drastically in less than fifty years. However, the image of what feminism is, as painted by Slonczenwski, is something more than just that of the female mind. Taken from a 1985 Library Journal is a statement I can’t help but think perfectly describes the novel, “Slonczenwski creates an all-female nonviolent culture that reaches beyond feminism to a new definition of human nature.”
I honestly can’t give this book enough praise, credit, or even enough time to delve into the various facets of its world and the functions of so many of its elements. Clearly, I’m not the only one, as Slonczenwski scoped up the 1987 John W. Campbell award for A Door into Ocean. So if you’re looking for a new heavy SF series to check out or maybe want another perspective than the typical novel of its type, check out A Door into Ocean. Below is a link to Thriftbooks, where I picked up my copy; it’ll run anywhere from seven to twenty dollars.
Trazor 