Enjoy The Godwhale (The Hive, #2) Penned By T.J. Bass Represented In Interactive EBook
of a pseudosequel to Half Past Human by the same author,
Another great book I've read time and again, On a whim I picked up another book from the SF Masterworks series The Godwhale by TJ Bass,
Turns out it was an interesting find set in the future where humanity has evolved into various underground and seabound dwellers, some primitive and some reliant on AI technology.
The novel starts earlier in time but still the future with the protagonist Larry Dever accidentally truncated ! and choosing to be temporarily suspended until medicinal technology can revive him properly.
He turns up in this strange future and finds himself on the run from the Hive, the humans who live underground and ruthlessly force all to conform to their strict ways.
What follows is a weird ride, predominantly in the ocean and with the mutated inhabitants within, as the oceanic beings are pitted against the Hive.
The author was a medical doctor and this is evident in the biological and medical detail and terminology, but the novel itself is full of ideas, strange beings and technology.
It was a bit reminiscent of China Mieveille's earlier novels in a way like a Perdido Street Station set in the ocean, but with a bit less focus, and peppered with black humour.
Postapocalyptic. That was my first real SFbook, I love it dearly, Regarding it being written in theies, its quite amazing regarding the amount of AI, I say, recommended, including its predecessor, "Half Past Human", T. J. Bass delivered a tremendous work,
What I learned, . . humankind will never fit into a tupperwarebox,
Peter Just reread it, and its better than ay, o. could fully appreciate.
Read ityears ago, and I still remember it fondly, That's a recommendation. Certainly, it's not Heinlein, but it's pretty good, Why hasn't this guy written more scifi T, J. Bass is one of those interesting authors that left a mark on the science fiction genre, but has gathered almost zero notoriety.
The man only wrote two science fiction novels! And that's a shame because Bass is a solid, solid spec fic writer, His works completely deserve their publication under the SF Masterworks, And thank god they did, T. J. Bass is a case in point as to why series like these are so important, People need to read this stuff, These stories deserve the eyeballs,
The Godwhale is a book of big ideas, Ideas of exploration. Expansive time scales. Cultural evolution. Societal foibles. Human carelessness that verges on outright villainy, Extreme violence. Disfigurement. Genocide. And in the end, a kind of rugged sense of hope, All of the good stuff, It also features a genetically modified whaletrawlergoddess but you already knew that, The story is chock full of characters you wouldn't want to be, Most viewpoint characters have tragic origins but damn it if you wouldn't want to hang out with them, Bass is fantastic at making you want to learn what makes them tick, The world he creates is just too interesting,
If you're a fan of world building, the Human Hive book duo would be right up your alley,
That said, Bass's habit of clinical speech can be a little overpowering at times, He was an MD and boy if he'll let you know it, Overall, these passages enhance the narrative hard science fiction has many admirers, myself included but the prose can be a little unwieldy at times.
In the end, The Godwhale has a highly innovative central premise, Boiled down, it's golden. Parts really do shine. The characters are interesting. The conceit of a whale ship is downright awesome, The prose is strong. While often overlooked, T. J. Bass has written a true gem, It's just a shame he had to write so many dietary books, The world could have used more Rorqual Maru's, Don't be fooled by the title, The "godhwhale" itself is only a portion of this epic, century spanning book, Chock full of ideas, hard science, and details, the Godwhale is no less than a masterpiece, It is SF on a HUGE scale, If you've never heard of it, don't let this deter you, The Godwhale is one of SF's lesser known classics, "She was a cyborg Part organic whale, part mechanized ship"
This is going to be awesome, . .
Better than its 's massmarket, pulp scifi cover design would suggest, but that just makes its shortcomings that much more disappointing.
Been so long since I read this but it struck a chord so that after all these years I still remember "Augmented Renal Nucleus of Larry Dever" and "bots and warbles".
Read this first in my late teens then again in early thirties, both times many years ago, Enjoyed it both times. A good romp and some intriguing concepts and ideas, Not sure I knew if was part of a series the hive so I may have to dig out the others,
Might be about due for a reread, . . I didn't enjoy this as much as it's loose prequel, Half Past Human, That one is a classic, Although it was written in the seventies “The Godwhale” is still a surprisingly relevant science fiction novel, Many of the themes explored are very much a product of its time, but themes of morality, economics and prejudice attitudes are still apt today.
The most relevant theme of all is how to cope with overpopulation, which is a problem we are sure to face in the future, namely how to provide enough food to feed so many people.
This has many echoes with our own world as it is estimated that the global population will rise to overbillion by the midpoint of the century.
As well as such prescient themes, the language can be challenging at times, but not to the detriment of the story.
It is clear that the writer was once a doctor through his use of medical terms to reinforce the theory behind the pseudoscience described here.
This adds a much greater level of believability rather than confusing the reader, a skill akin to the likes of the classic authors such as Jules Verne.
The characters that populate the story are not the most likeable, which is a reflection of the bleak and futile existence they endure.
It actually soothes many peoples fear of technology as the most likeable of the characters are Rorqual Maru, the “Godwhale” of the title, and Trilobite.
In fact the machines are more human than the humans themselves, with the exception of Larry, the main protagonist and Drum,
The story asks many questions and doesnt supply all of the answers, I will not reveal too much as I got the impression that the ending is very subjective, It is a very personal experience and conclusions have to be drawn by the reader themselves, Also for
reasons unknown Bass never returned to the fascinating world he created and as he is sadly no longer with us he never will.
Ken Macleods forward in this SF Masterworks edition concludes with an apt assessment of the books ending, “The doctor gave us the diagnosis, and the prognosis, He left it for us to write the prescription”,
I read this book years ago and decided abruptly to find it again and reread it,
It's surprisingly dense for such a small book, and covers and vast swathe of science fiction concepts in simply the first few chapters.
Still enjoyed it the second time around, though I found some sections to be predictable cliche, Despite this many of the ideas presented are still pretty novel and entertaining to read about, With these old school scifis you never know if youre going to get something super campy or a novel with a bit more substance which is part of why I am addicted to buying these based solely on the covers.
I clearly bought this one for that reason, but what I wasnt expecting was a hard scifi heavily focused on technological advancements in the medical field, specifically cloning, augmentation, and genetic mutation.
The main plot takes place aboutyears from now, Its rather convoluted and there is so much technobabble that pertinent events were glossed over, To get you started, Larry is bisected in an accident, Instead of living his life with sweet robot legs in a rather utopian society, he decides to be cybernetically frozen until they can remake him “whole” hes concerned about his penis.
Valid concern, but it seems like quite the risk, He wakes up twice the first time is a few hundred years later but they still havent been able to fix his damage, then he wakes again in the dystopian/semipostapocalyptic future where the bulk of the novel is set.
The story sticks within aboutyears of this time, though it does this annoying thing where all of a sudden its ten years later without warning.
Despite the title and back cover talking mainly about the whale named Rorqual, Im still unsure what the whale even is some sort of machine to reharvest the seas after theyre dead
Whatever.
As you can tell, I wasnt that into this book, I thought it was before its time in terms of medical science postulating, but, quite frankly, the characterization and plot leave much to be desired.
We are given quite a few characters, but just when we get to know and understand or like them, they are thrown from the story only to emerge as minor characters later on.
As such, you dont care about any of them, Larry is the most interesting, because we follow him more than others, but hes more of a way to tie the final section of the story together with part one than someone with a definitive story arc.
It also didnt help for me that women were treated as periphery characters or simply “breeders” in this book, with absolutely no agency or relevance to the plot.
In fact, one of the more equal societies is dismantled by patriarchy without any sort of pushback thematically or by the characters.
Frustrating.
The novel is clearly more interested in its argument about ecological collapse valid and genetic/bodily manipulation hyperbolic than giving us characters to care about and a story.
As such, I grew exceedingly bored and came away with nothing of value from this novel,
I was going to round up to afrom a,, but instead Im rounding down to a, I cant imagine what the first novel was about, nor do I care to find out, lives on in memory for years I massively enjoyed this one, Only thing I didn't like was ARNOLD who essentially seemed to come in and dump patriarchy all over a more interesting society.
I also wish the Godwhale herself had had more of a complex vocal role but still a ton of fun reading it.
Out of the blue whale did I pick to read this book, It had sat abandoned in the depths of my book stack for many moons, just as Rorqual the Godwhale had been abandoned by the Earth people that created it.
But I get ahead of myself, The The Godwhale's main protagonist is a hemihuman by name of Larry Dever, who got cut in half hence being hemi, frozen until he could be properly fixed, thawed, fixed but not to his satisfaction, so he had himself frozen again, then thawed again in a far flung future where humans, aided by their ever present robotic mecks, recycle unproductive citizens for protein to compensate for the lack of marine life due to whatever cataclysm killed the ecosphere perhaps humans themselves.
He escapes the suggested voluntary suicide and the global hive of humans to find himself among other escapees and human evolutions that live under and off the sea.
Amid this, Rorqual the Godwhale, a plankton harvesting cyborgshipwhaleAI constructed by humans of an earlier era, awakens to fulfill her mission, and the main conflict between the humans of the hive and the humans of the sea is finally revealed.
The science elements keep the story grounded in reality and the science fiction elements keep the story interesting to this scifi reader.
Or viewed from another perspective, T, J. Bass wanted to write a scene about a halfman who has sex with a sentient slot machine, and constructed a wild vision of the future that would make this scene not only possible but plausible.
I don't mean to belittle Bass' imagination, but wow, what a creative and crazy futurescape!,