A Door Into Ocean

Cover of Avon 1987 edition

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Ajtó zo óceánba

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Tor Books, 2000.

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Art by Alan Pollack for 2000 Tor edition

A Door Into Ocean is a 1986 novel by Joan Slonczewski in the Elysium Cycle. It takes place on the planet Shora.

In the far future humans have been bio-engineered in several different forms. A standard form young human male goes to live with a bio-engineered aquatic & parthenogenetic all-female form.

Blurb: "In A Door Into Ocean, Campbell Award winner, the Sharers develop symbiotic bacteria to help them breathe and swim underwater. They engineer flying fish and other exotic organisms on their planet, covered entirely by ocean."

Awards

• Campbell Award

Editions

• 1986, USA, Arbor House ISBN 9780877957638, Pub Date 1986, Hardcover
• 1987, USA, Avon Books ISBN 978-0380701506, Pub Date February 1987, Paperback
• 1987, UK, Women's Press ISBN 978-0704340695, Pub Date 04 June 1987, Paperback
• 2000, USA, Orb Books ISBN 978-0312876524, Pub Date 13 October 2000, Paperback
• 2000, USA, Tor
• Ajtó zo óceánba

Further reading

• Study Guide for A Door into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski (author) (updated 2001/01/04).
• "Door Into Ocean" group discussion, Group Reads - Sci-Fi, LibraryThing discussion group (discussion begun 2009/10/03)
• FSF the blog

Reviews, discussions

• Library Journal (1985): "Slonczewski creates and all-female nonviolent culture that reaches beyond feminism to a new definition of human nature".
• James Schallenberg, Review of Joan Slonczewski's A Door into Ocean (Feb. 23, 1998)

"A Door Into Ocean is an extraordinary novel, an astonishing explosion of ideas, themes, and speculation. Slonczewski spent eight years writing this book, and every facet shines brightly in the mind's eye long after the book is back on the shelf. We get rich characterization, fascinating societies, extensively realized ecologies, and a stunning plot. And best of all, Slonczewski has a keen sense of balance, especially with regards to the exposition of all the background material. We are always grabbed by the events as they happen, and we are never stopped dead in our tracks by lumps of explanation -- the characters act urgently on what they know, and we gradually accumulate the same knowledge from them. A Door Into Ocean handles complex issues such as sexuality, linguistic barriers, and environmentalism with aplomb, and deftly makes thought-provoking points inside the context of the story. Everything about the book fits together in a seamless, integrated whole, and even the few things that Slonczewski actually fumbles are forgotten against the scale of her achievement."

Influences

• Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein