Reading List

[Mystic the Orca]

Some of you may know (And if you didn't, now you do) that the sci-fi author David Brin was brought on to work on Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future because he wrote a book called Startide Rising- about a spaceship with a mostly dolphin crew. Brin's Uplift series includes a few dolphin characters but Startide Rising is the most dolphin-centric story.

I make jokes often about reading about space whales or space dolphins, but I feel like it's more of a meme than a plot element. I actually don't know of many books that focus on cetacean characters. So here are a few of the ones I know but please share your stories too if you know any!

Startide Rising by David Brin. This is the second book in Brin's Uplift Series. The first book is Sundiver which has a minor dolphin character early on. The 3rd book is Uplift War which I don't think has any dolphin characters.

Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and Heaven's Reach by David Brin. These all follow the starship Streaker from Startide Rising and concludes the Uplift Series.

Cachalot by Alan Dean Foster. This is about a planet colonized by cetaceans. Humanity felt bad about the whole whaling thing and gave the whales their own planet but now human settlements are being destroyed. The main characters are human. A mated orca pair are major characters, with other cetaceans playing less important roles.

Dome by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry. Humanity accidentally wipes itself out with the only survivors living in an undersea base. This book certainly hits differently after the Covid pandemic. One of the characters is adapted to live in the water and befriends a dolphin, but it's not the main plot of the book.

The Music of Dolphins by Karen Hesse. Doctors rescue a girl who was raised by dolphins and try to reintegrate her into society.

The Anastasia Project by Loren John Presley. A dolphin awakens in an alien ocean with no memory of who she is or how she got there.

A Whale of the Wild by Rosanne Parry. Told from the perspective of an orca brother and sister, this is a coming of age story based on the Southern Resident orca population off the Washington coast. Heavily based on our current understanding of pod dynamics.

Please share any other books you know of!

[Moduvator]

I do not know why, but despite having several of David Brin's books I was never able to get through them. The way he writes them would make it almost a physical effort for me to go through and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Perhaps I should try and give them another go!

That being said, one book that I can definitely recommend but which also, I think, was never translated to other languages is "Green Doors of The Earth" by V. Nazarov.
It was this piece of Soviet sci-fi that helped fire my passion with dolphins. The premise is fairly simplistic in the way it's describing your typical futuristic world where humans have achieved steady technological progress and we join a group of marine biologists who are busy trying to communicate, using their latest technological marvel called Penta-Wave, with a dolphin they have captured to try and study them better.
What they do not know is that the dolphin, whose name is Wuiss (woo-is), is actually studying them himself, deliberately getting into captivity and determined to prove his fellow Earth Keeper dolphins there is more to humans than mere will for destruction.

I like to think that maybe there is an official translation somewhere, because the way this whole story is reminiscent of our star-browed hero is actually quite impressive for 1978!

[Atolm]

A dolphin book I read some years ago was Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians by Mark Caney, which I enjoyed.

Thanks for the list, I will keep an eye out for the others!